the fragment file

I have started to write three or four blog entries over the last few weeks & then have left them hanging, unfinished and vulnerable.  Nothing has grabbed me, thrust me forward and allowed my fingers to fly across the keyboard. 


I've been suffering from a big ol' case of writers block. 


This lead me to examine my whole "process". Writing isn't something I think about. Writing is something that creeps up on me. Words are whispered in my ear....fragments of sentences slide into my head while doing the most mundane of tasks- washing the dishes, driving to the grocery store, while I'm in the shower. Gently at first and then suddenly forceful, as if they must make a powerful and immediate escape. 


But then what? What comes after those sneaky slivers? 

Sometimes, they materialize into something bigger. Sometimes, I come up with something great to post. More often, they sit & simmer..alone. I have an entire file dedicated to them on my computer, a composition notebook beside my bed. The fragment file...

An absence has a shape as particular and as detailed as a presence...

and he bounded out of the boys bathroom with a "heyyyyyy" and wrapped his arms around my leg and went on to explain to me how he had originally mistaken the dinosaur on his sweater to be a train but the realized it was in fact a tyrannosaurus rex but that I shouldn't worry because it wasn't a real dinosaur, they only live on tv. 

like when you drunkenly slurred to me over a game of Gold Edition Monopoly that I was a jerk because I made you really like me and I never told you that I really liked you too, I just smiled. And to this day I wish I had said it right then instead of laughing cooly at you & telling myself you didn't know what you were saying because you were drunk and now the smell of alcohol reminds me of your kiss. 

You loved oatmeal raisin cookies. Although I learned to appreciate them- I often found myself wondering what business fruit, particularly strangely wrinkled raisins, had nestled within a delicious cookie. This is often how I felt around you. We fit, our flavors and styles were often complementary, depending on your taste & the situation- but I never quite belonged. 

The hostess of your own, secret party. Precocious, possessive, unafraid to push an 80 pound dog out of your way. Overwhelmingly gracious to any adult that walks in the room, gazing at them with your denim-colored eyes, a sly smile betraying your shy nature. 

Fall came. Leaves fell slowly from the trees, disentangling themselves from the branches where they sat shivering as the heat faded. Cold enough for sweaters but not yet right for wrapping yourself in scarves and gloves and losing yourself in a good book and a steaming mug of hot chocolate. 

And you were gone.

And so was I. 

Gone was the girl who did what others expected of her. The girl who was so worried, who cried about nothing, who made herself sick with her worry and her unhappiness and what it all might mean. You chased her away. With your silly carelessness. With your intoxicating laughter. With your intoxicated kiss. With your inability to promise me anything remotely close to stability. Stability was all I knew and nothing that I thought I wanted. 

The whip-crack of pain, of giving yourself over to everything your body knows instinctually how to do. The pain then suddenly being replaced with cries, cries of finding your voice and finding yourself in a brand new place, bright and white and stark. Pain replaced instantly with an unbelievable overwhelming love. Wrapped up on me,  in me. I feel not like we are meeting for the first time, but reuniting after a long absence. 

There are pages more where these came from. 

And surprisingly...I often wonder- do I really consider myself a writer? Yes I write. But I write like someone else might play recreational soccer- it doesn't make them David Beckham. I write like someone might sing karaoke on a Wednesday night at a slightly seedy bar- because they love it, because it makes them happy, because they've had a few too many long island iced teas. I talk about writing a best-selling novel and buying myself a beach house. But is my dream tied up in the writing...or in having a place in the sand to call my own?

I try not to take writing too seriously- because I'm afraid if I do, it will lose some of it's magic. Some of the release, the euphoria of something finished, of creating something I'm proud of, it will get lost in severity and sobriety and seriousness. 

So will I ever be a true writer? Or even understand what that means? Who knows. But for now, the fragment file keeps growing.... 

  and this little lady keeps me smiling...

trying out our squishy faces at the beach...