The trouble with blogs and journals is the (probably entirely imagined) demand for temporal continuity. I'm pretty sure no one reads this thing but me, and yet there's an implied requirement to create a frequently-updated, linear documentary of some sort. The longer the time lapse between posts or entries, the harder it gets to resume. Not because I've gone mute or illiterate. Not because there's nothing to say. On the contrary, it's because of the mountain of thoughts that have passed by unwritten; the life that slid along full of events unrecorded and travels unexplained; the apology owed for letting them fly away without looking them in the eye first.
When was the last time I wrote? Not just wrote here, but wrote anything anywhere?
The last time I wrote was June 21, 2015:
Coming to the end of a year at a job that I intensely loved and hated, I was down to my last weekend of living in St Louis. My belongings were distilled to only the stuff that would fit in my hatchback. Just the vitals: clothes, a few books, my piano keyboard, dishes (plates, saucers, spoons, forks; only 2 of each, like Noah's Ark), a chess set my dad carved, a pillow case my mom sewed. My bed had sold inconveniently quickly on Craigslist, so I'd been sleeping on a camping pad on a cold bedroom floor for weeks, eye-level with the flecks of dust that settled on the bare hardwood. I felt battered by the Now, excited and scared by the What's Next, weirdly adrift in the transition, and somehow unrecognizable in my own skin.
My chaotic, colorful, fantastic roommate had moved out in a cloud of shoes and scarves and cat dander and climbing gear. June 21st was a rainy Sunday morning, and I drove alone into a rough part of town to return the moving truck for her. The ride to bring me back from the U-Haul place fell through, so I was walking home in the rain north of Delmar Avenue. The walk took me along broken sidewalks, past churches with a glimpse of sparsely-attended services through the open doors, between a school with a misspelled word on its sign and the crumbling ruins of boarded-up houses.
Then I passed this one. It doesn't always fit, but it did that morning.
I think it's time to write again.
When was the last time I wrote? Not just wrote here, but wrote anything anywhere?
The last time I wrote was June 21, 2015:
Coming to the end of a year at a job that I intensely loved and hated, I was down to my last weekend of living in St Louis. My belongings were distilled to only the stuff that would fit in my hatchback. Just the vitals: clothes, a few books, my piano keyboard, dishes (plates, saucers, spoons, forks; only 2 of each, like Noah's Ark), a chess set my dad carved, a pillow case my mom sewed. My bed had sold inconveniently quickly on Craigslist, so I'd been sleeping on a camping pad on a cold bedroom floor for weeks, eye-level with the flecks of dust that settled on the bare hardwood. I felt battered by the Now, excited and scared by the What's Next, weirdly adrift in the transition, and somehow unrecognizable in my own skin.
My chaotic, colorful, fantastic roommate had moved out in a cloud of shoes and scarves and cat dander and climbing gear. June 21st was a rainy Sunday morning, and I drove alone into a rough part of town to return the moving truck for her. The ride to bring me back from the U-Haul place fell through, so I was walking home in the rain north of Delmar Avenue. The walk took me along broken sidewalks, past churches with a glimpse of sparsely-attended services through the open doors, between a school with a misspelled word on its sign and the crumbling ruins of boarded-up houses.
Then I passed this one. It doesn't always fit, but it did that morning.
 |
| She was beautiful once. Look past the surface and you can see it in the details. Maybe life got hard. Maybe she disguised herself to fit in. But she was beautiful once. We all were. |
I think it's time to write again.
