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[my tongue is tired from overuse]
Song of the moment is "Close to Me" by the Cure. It is one of the best songs in my world. It's got everything—chill, horns, beat—and I can't say no. I can't, so here I go.
I have avoided posting, or writing for that matter, for weeks. It's hard, and that's something I've been afraid to analyze. It's goddamn beautiful outside. I get to sleep with my fan on again, in my underwear, I get to wear just enough clothes to be able to feel the touch of wind on my skin and its very liberating. The improvement in my mood is almost directly because of this, and because I've ridden my bike to work for the past three days, and there's nothing more powerful than that right now. So that's why I haven't been writing, right? It's because I'm busy. Right?
But I beg to differ, with myself. I think that I've been avoiding it because I've realized its a record I can't erase. Of course this applies to blogging, but I'm not talking about that. I have a diary, and I have the ability to write something and then burn it. I can even send my creativity miles away to California, or to Michigan, or if I'm crazy enough even to some small town in the middle of a cornfield in middle america where it will be judged according to an unspoken set of guidelines for living. But I don't want to. Or more appropriately, I'm scared to.
Because as the season changes I do too, so often, and so much that its hard to look back. It's scary to dig up my writing from just months ago, much less a year, because I miss it or I'm sad about it, or I'm so happy that I burst and cry. These are good things, I know, but you will notice I am in fact writing.
It's more than just self-indulgence. It's my song. It's my beat, its what wakes me up and knocks me around. It's what breaks the ice between the two of us, makes it necessary to communicate again. It's why the phone doesn't ring, and why I dance.
Words are floating around me like so many molecules, so often and all the time. It's a little piece of space that I'm forever trying to capture in a bottle, and its not like sand. It does not fly through my hands, like time. It stays there in boxes in my basement and in cyberspace. It's written on my hand. It's in your eyes, right now. I'm changing your eyes. Right now.
And that's a power I'm coming to terms with, in my own way. And you're right, somewhere in Canada, about it being a weight to carry. I can walk a mile in their shoes and print it for everyone to see, and change the urgency with which the lady on the train hugs her children when she goes home. I can write a letter to a friend and save their moment, and we'll both have something to dig up years later and remember the way youth tasted in one another's mouths.
It's a real thing, and I'm molding my perception of it. I'm writing for my classes about police arrests, and I'm editing the way I speak in order to record it later, and I'm thinking in my head, all the time about how important and ridiculously small it all is. And each little thing seems to be passing me by right now, without the yellow liquid of biology rooms to hold it. Memories are priceless, and maybe fading, but my words never are. And they never will. And that's written between the notes of my voice when I tell you how much I want to lay down and take a nap.
It's written between the blue lines of my college papers, when all you see when you look is blank sheet. It's so lovely and I'm just learning how to embrace it, so be patient with me.
It's not easy. But that's what makes it good.
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