On Writing

I have been itching to get back to writing. I take vacations from writing sometimes and without much consideration and then when I finally return to it wonder why everything in my life feels topsy turvy and carelessly thought through. I have the need to write; it feeds my brain like oxygen and when I supress it for too long the words fall anywhere they may - a napkin, a letter to a friend, a grocery list, a magazine cover turned journal. But all of those things are half-hearted, a temporary fix for the urge. It is when I sit down in front of a computer screen, lay my fingers across the keys and start writing a bit of my life story through the stroke of the space bar and backspace that I really find my groove.

I like having the option to delete whether it be words or memories. Maybe it's the control freak in me, the same person who alphabetizes her bookshelves or can count on her hands the number of times she's listened to her heart without consulting her head first. I used to think that a pen-to-paper journal was the way to go. I thought it was more raw and real and I would look back when I was 80 and care that I had a hot dog for dinner the same day I lost my first tooth. Or that when I was 15 I bought a new shirt the same day my heart was broken for the first time. Don't get me wrong those are the same details that bring any story alive I just want to tell those stories in a way I remember them. I want to make them as pretty or as ugly or as real or as fictionalized as I believe them to be and I can never seem to do that the way I like when it involves frantic scribbles, bored doodles or eraser marks and crossed out words that show an ache to find that perfect word admist the clutter of colorful and half filled journals.

Granted, there is part of me that wishes I could love dirt, grime and disorder. I love paging through the (ironically enough - published) journals of Kirk Cobain or Andy Warhol, or the book of poetry by Ani Difranco scrawled in her own handwriting. That is the same reason I love liner notes to albums. So often, they are scrawled by the artists own hand and I like imagining the words pouring out through a lipstick liner in lieu of a pen on a dirty mirror on a tour bus at 2am. I love the seagull drawing on the edge of the page not because it pertains to the actual lyrics or journal entry or to anything at all but just because they happened to to be at the beach when they wrote it. There is so much lyricism and poetry and beauty that coincides with impulse. And I know no one who wishes less lyricism, poetry and beauty on their lives.

Which brings me back here. It has taken me 3 hours and 42 minutes to write this entry. It has taken 3 episodes of Nip/Tuck, one walk around the neighborhood, 21 tosses of the ball for the dog, and 1 very strong White Russian to get here. I wonder if my desire for control has made my life any less beautiful, but I quickly realize that life today is all about editing. We edit the way we speak to appeal to a certain audience, we edit our phone book to add and delete as we see fit, we edit our lives when the in-laws stay over: pretending we cook, get plenty of exercise, don't subsist on a diet of caffeine and take-out, and that we just adore that ugly vase they bought us that sits in a place of prominence during their stay.

We all edit. But it seems that my editing, my careful consideration of verb or noun, brings me to a more truthful place. This is obviously not the case for everyone, but when I get to take a moment or 3 hours to thoughtfully think through the present, I find that my world stops toppling over itself. I feel more at peace. I have momentarily controlled the uncontrollable.

I may not have sketchings of seagulls or butterflies scribbled on the edges of my journal but I do believe that I have something equally as beautiful: this.