[ Sunday, January 18, 2004 ]
Poetry. Blogging. An insane drive to communicate? Discussion with one's self? Discovery? An anonymous reaching out? A desire to say 'Here I am. This is me. Told in first person. There's no need to speculate. This is my way.'?
I've been wondering why I do this--though my attempts are at best half-hearted, half-assed, sporadic posts with no real continuum. An act of processing perhaps. Communicating with myself in a form that is tangible, real...that I can lay hands or eyes on.
Reaching out occurs everyday in little ways. We learn to communicate in a way that provokes the least amount of upset. 'I'm doing pretty good. You won't believe what happened... Long hours. Overtime. I'm thinking about getting this... going here. I don't know what got into me. It's so cold out. I'm burning up.' Subtract the hours of bullshit conversation we've endured and uttered during our lifetimes & and how much of what we've really said or heard means anything?
10 minutes ago I finished The Fuck Up by Arthur Nersesian. Face aglow & smile plastered to my lips I wanted to tell somebody, anybody, everybody about this book. My eyes communicated what my lips wouldn't utter--I was lost in that world, roaming the streets of NY, heart open & raw & hungry & mourning, quietly following the misfortune & learning of a 23 year old fuck up. I wanted to take this fictitional character in. Offer warm food, clean sheets, soft pillows, socks. Creature comforts. The ultimate luxury. Softness against the cold sharp stinging reality that is life.
Hurts. The item for thought yesterday. Hurt ten houses away. Fifty houses away. Next door. Inside my house. Thirty years removed. Seventeen. Three. Hidden wounds opening before my eyes. Always opening. Just never exposed. Quietly festering & shaping the body around them. Honing survival instinct. The need to reason or explore or say 'this is just how it is. i'm moving on.'
Several quotes have dangled in my mind for the last week. Handwriting on paper that has crawled into my ribcage & kept repeating itself, over & over. Sadness pushed back in memories. You are not alone in your worship of the past, present, future. Profound. Quotes that make me want to bawl like a baby & say I see you. For the first time I really see you.
Documenting our lives. Had my mother documented her life better, left something for me to read, to touch, to explain how she was...artwork even, I would feel like I know her. Like I have some knowledge of who she was separate from being a mother & a wife. I don't have journal entries or sketches or recipes or notes scrawled on the backs of envelopes. I have one letter written in a baby book to me. And stories about her life, who she was, her temper, her plans. My brother doesn't have a letter in a baby book. He was younger than I was. His memories have probably faded just as surely as mine have. I wonder how he deals, how it's shaped him. I want to ask. To make the first steps in that hollow planet of loss. I'm afraid to. And I worry. Do I pick at the scab? Has he healed? Would I upset one aspect of his life that has become more factual instead of emotional? It's our truth. His and mine. Young & motherless. And left with that void. The screams. He was six years old and saw his mother standing at the foot of the bed. She wasn't there. She wasn't anymore.
Perhaps I pick pick pick. Analyze. Rationalize. Attempt to understand too much. I just want to be able to see everything clearly. To know what is true about our lives & how much is pretend. Wisdom I suppose.
Ignorance really is bliss. Self-induced blindness is not ignorance. The equivalent of a child closing her eyes & thinking, she's hidden. That if she can't see you. You can't see her.
I don't want to stay hidden. Silently worshipping this process called living--history, present & future so intricately woven. I want eyes wide open. Heart full. Words with meaning. To be and be seen--beautifully flawed but still beautiful & human.
~ Rebecca 5:23 PM [+]
