Words

The most wonderful thing happened this morning; I missed the bus.

As I rode up to the bike dock next to Union Station where other BikeShare riders circled like vultures for a bike to be returned, the bus passed me.  I walked up the hill to the bus stop to await the next shiny red Circulator.  Lines were churning in my head.  Thoughts.  Ideas.  I strode over to the long wall opposite the bus stop, took the small notebook from my purse, set in on the wall’s ledge and began to write.  I wrote!

I wrote until the bus came.  I let much of the long line of people board, getting as much out as I could before joining the fray to hope for a seat.  I sat.  I continued to write, letters bumpy but legible enough.  The bus reached it’s second stop.  I thanked the driver and disembarked.  But I was not done writing, so I did not stop.

I sat at a table in front of work, the grey metal tables that fill with people in the hot noon sun but sit empty in the morning shade.  I sat and I wrote.  I wrote until I was done writing.

Then I went inside that massive stone building, walked under the bronze relief of falling books, tumbling words, to a metal room where I would sit and write some more, but not for me.  This morning, I had written for me.  And my world was at peace.

Where Have All the Letters Gone?

It’s no surprise to anyone who still follows this space that I don’t write here much anymore.  The less obvious part is that I don’t write much of anywhere anymore.  No garter skirts, no lions, no stories, no essays, no articles.  I write tweets.  Just tweets.

It makes me sad.  I do not like this, this not writing.  It is not intentional.  I want to write.  There are millions of things floating in my head.  About a bus, and a frog, and  copyright, and copyright, and copyright.  About privacy and how in America that so-called “right to privacy” that people clamor over is really a right to be fake, to completely control what others have available to perceive about you in attempt to control the perception itself.  About my new church.  About my new car.  About my life.  That’s not new.

But I do not write.  I force myself to write in my journal at night, to at least catalog my day.  It is not elegant.  It is barely legible.  It is not for public consumption.  (Which has not stopped the DOJ from demanding photocopied pages from it, but I digress into another thing about which I have not written).   But I do not write.

I draft in my head as I bounce along on a crowded bus—I am not dexterous enough to write in moving vehicles.  I draft in my head as I maneuver a bicycle around crowded streets—I cannot write while steering a bicycle.  I draft in my head as I stand under the warm shower spray—water and paper do not mix, water and computers mix even less.  I draft in my head as I drive down the highway—see moving vehicles and bicycle.  I draft in my head as I loll off to sleep, snuggled under my covers, too aware that if I turn on the light to start writing, I’ll be up for hours and I need sleep for the next day; I hope I’ll remember in the morning.  I hope I’ll remember when I get home.  I hope I’ll remember.  But I rarely do.

I remember the ideas, the topics, the opening lines.  But I rarely remember the words, the phrases, the way things fit together.  And I never remember the passion, the excitement.  It is the drive that has gone.

So I do not write.

I come home from work exhausted.  Less exhausted from work than exhausted from the act of getting home from work.   Three miles; it takes me 30 to 90 minutes to make the trip depending on mode of transport, and no matter what, it ends with walking up a steep hill.  Sometimes it is physically exhausting; sometimes it is mentally exhausting.  Often, it is both.  I am tired.  I change into something that isn’t plastered to my skin.  I make dinner. One hour.  I eat dinner. Two hours.  I get ready for bed.  It is time for bed.  And I draft in my head.  But I do not write.

Tonight, I have written.  I have not made dinner, yet.  Tonight, I will go to bed late.  Tomorrow will be hard.  But I wrote.