More slow motion moments.
A man's head on his wife's belly while Gershwin's classics resonate amongst hundreds of blankets and a lakeside breeze. A cyclist merging into oncoming traffic with a messenger bag on his back, headphones in his ears, drumming on his handlebars - listening to a song I long to hear. A friend describing an atrocity to another with her hands composing violently, mouth pausing when the hands pause.
I'm breathing in with the people around me, trying to exhale words onto paper. Absorbing absorbing absorbing. Praying that the sentences and illustrations fuse into the beauty I see. Because I see so much. I wish a chip could collect what I see in the words that scroll across my mind, reciting it back to me. All the verses and literature leaves. I try to scribble remnants of the fresh, wet thought - but it's usually lost to a cliche phrase, something I hate. Despise. God grant me the vocabulary! I want to be a writer so bad it hurts. Not a blog writer. Or a wanna-be writer. A writer of a page that's turned in a book that is purchased by a person who cares to know. I view life the way an author writes it, a song sings it - an artist reveals it.
I come to this blog time and again, with a list. About the guy who pissed me off because he thinks the uglier the woman, the smaller the enagagement ring she should receive. The romance I sense between myself and someone distant. The lasagna I made that tastes just like my Aunt's. How strongly I resent the short shorts comeback. It's all here. I can't tackle it all. And at the same time, tackling these momentary issues doesn't constitute a writer. What will I do - write a book ranting? In every which direction?
It's one direction that I need. For a book. I need to be grounded in roots. The kind that exist or do not exist but can be created by the colors, shapes and people in my life. Fiction or non-fiction? Start from scratch or re-hash the past? And while I sense that the material of my first 24 years is noteworthy, it's not laced with homelessness, sexual abuse, depression, life-altering love relationships, people with easily-ressurected traits or eccentric habits. Non-fiction needs more than Girl Grows Up Dysfunctionally (But Not Too Dysfunctionally) And Survives Unscathed. I guess I'm a bit scathed. But in the weird ways. I sleep with the light on when I'm alone and always sit at the back of the bus. Send my sociopath mother tulips every year for her birthday just a mere two weeks after she ignores mine. Avoid dating to avoid what I've seen said and done. Dated a stranger on the internet even though I lost Vicki Lynn to the same practice. Only clean when people are coming over, do laundry but once a month, am a lust-hungry but guilt-prone virgin.
I'm not between the writer's lines. The secrets I have aren't really secrets - they're favors to those who deserve a break from my money-thirsty pen's greed. Some of my tales are tall. Gargantuan. But my parents are beautiful people who have their own stories, neither of which would enter the public forum with any kind of a blessing. I love and respect them too much. And their parent's, too. I also fear that some of my memory is a haze. The midnight hours of my childhood spent in cars or on frantic trips to escape my Mother's fear of evil. Domenic crying, Vicki insisting we keep him awake to avoid anything getting him. That's a good long story for you. But a story that could end up with it's very own reprimanding on Oprah's couch. I remember it well, but well enough to verbatim truthfully? I would have to ask Her. The one who'd die if our horror was published. Because I want to write against her belief that it was all real. So I can finally turn the light off at night. Or at least walk in a dark room without feeling like ghast fingers are reaching for me.
The story of Me - a complicated, semi-interesting one. Debate the possibility of fiction until I get bored imagining characters. Their associations. Their timelines. Their drama in an outline. My general ability to accomplish such an act of originality, when millions of books of people and places and plots pave the road for my anti-factual debut. How does one tap into an idea and stretch it to last 384 pages? Is it the slow motion moments I see? Am I constantly seeing my novel unfold but haven't the conviction to undertake it? Or the courage to face a real critic's kick to my precious, undented shin? I need to brush up on so many writing techniques, understand how to better my sentence structure. It's a mentor, not a peer - that I need. How to attain one out of my collegiate years? How do I compell - in general?
Or am I just a blogger? 23.2 visits a day. Half me checking to see if anyone's visited. 11.61 visits a day. If this is who I am, or will be, it's not enough. I am decent at this for now, but I want more. I want to feed my writer ego the pages it needs filled between the hardcover praises. The hardcover affirmation, that even if I was never to sell more than 1,000 copies, I could call myself a writer. A published one. Because somewhere inside is a story, be it the span of a bike messenger's career or the tales of my own mother's hysterical method of child-rearing. And I must tell it. Somehow. Because even though I am not prepared, I'm certain. And that's rare enough to know it's real.
