still here

the words arent gone, i'm just waiting for some important ones to come along.

Bicycle Race

The human mind is a well-oiled machine, with a multitude of functions. The relevant information is moved to our consciousness as needed, while our memories unrelated to the current story are moved away. They may as well no longer exist, until a moment comes along that brings the event back into our mind's eye, almost as if it never left. Sometimes what we see is mundane, boring, like someone else's home movie, and we save it and put it away. Other times, we watch our defining moments like high-definition, technicolor blockbusters.

They say that you never forget how to ride a bike, but do we always remember the first time we tried and succeeded? I hadn't thought of it more that a few times over the last two decades, but the senses of pride and accomplishment help to round the details of the day.

My training wheels had been removed from my bicycle, and my father walked alongside me as I pedaled, stopped myself with my feet, and fell- over and over and over. I was especially jaded to see a young neighbor who couldn't have been much older than me, riding with confidence and bravery. I was frustrated and humiliated. I cried and stomped my feet like little girls at that age tend to do, and I was unreasonably certain that I would never learn to ride my bike.

While my brother and I were playing on and around our long driveway, our parents would park one of the cars at the end to discourage us from venturing into the road. I had mastered the art of pedaling down the sloped concrete, but hadn't quite figured out how breaking came into it all. I typically rode down the hill, gaining speed before crashing into the family station wagon. I did that over and over, growing more and more frustrated at my inability to keep moving, or to stop efficiently.

On one summer morning, early enough that dew was still on the leaves and grass, I set my bicycle up in its familiar starting line, at the top of the driveway pointed straight down, towards the car waiting at the end. I pedaled with a huge amount of effort, pumping my legs and standing up to gain momentum. As I approached the car, I veered around it, continuing to pedal as I rode into the yard. I hadn't fallen, I hadn't stopped, I hadn't crashed. I had actually ridden my bicycle, in the correct sense of the word. I don't know what the difference was. Perhaps it was patience, or focus, or determination, and at this point I am not really sure of the answer to that question, but I had figured it out. That was really the first time in my life where I could see the fruits of my labor present themselves. It was one of the first memories I had that is associated with pride.

I am going to try to make the conscious choice to be brave in all my endeavors, no matter how afraid of the crash I am. It worked at the tender age of 5, so I have the faith to make it happen today.

save

cut a rectangle out of a piece of poster board and you have yourself a much cheaper camera... you just have to save the images to your brain rather than your computer.

wait for it

I can't let this go down the tubes. I can't. It's too important. It's my life. I think in prose and in the lyrical quality of words, but you can only write so much in your mind before you lose it... Some days its just easier to lose it, though. Sometimes, having the self imposed expectation to write... something, ANYTHING is just enough to make me want to back away, at least for that moment. That mechanism, that switch, that shut-off scares me on a deep level. Writing is akin to breathing for me, even if I can count the people that read it on one hand. No, that's not the point and it is the wrong reason to take on this passion, this dream... or this hobby? Please let it be more than that...

I've given up everything and put it back together, I've experienced the darkest and most desperate places a human can go. I've also lived and seen the beauty and light that exists in the world... And I've always documented pieces of it all. No matter how preoccupied or depressed or dysfunctional I became, I always had with me the drive to write. Sometimes, and I truly believe I speak for all writers here, the desire to write does not exist in a certain moment, and trying to unnaturally pull it from where it resides produces nothing but shallow fallacy.

Sometimes, to have that honesty, you just have to wait for it.

words lost

You could say, it seems, that I am much less prolific since I found the life to light my way out of the dark. That bit of light appears to be a sign of the positive space that I appear to be in. The intensely frustrating part is that without my writing, I feel that I am only a fraction of the person that I could be. If I don't pick up a pen and a pad of paper or tap on the keys, I feel empty. I feel like I haven't accomplished what I should have at the end of the day, so my potential is never really reached.

Writers block, or The Midnight Disease strikes without warning, and feels akin to trying to play a concert without instruments or a voice. I feel progressively less committed to doing the work that will guide my life and carry me to the place where my dreams are waiting for me to make them come true.

I need to take every offer, every opportunity seriously. Life or death, I need to commit and recommit every single day if I have to. I have played this game before, and I always lose if I am waiting on the sidelines. Always...

At times it is disheartening to know that essentially no one is reading the words I am publishing here, but I have to continue to remind myself of the journey. Part of that journey is writing because it is what I love to do, and not because I want to develop a fanbase. That is the dream of a failure-to-be, because shifting focus to the wrong things make the right ones blurred and fuzzy and harder to attain.

I have many dreams, and I will do whatever I can to make them happen. Right now, though, most of my dreams lie in the words and ideas that spin themselves into my consciousness. I am just trying to get to the place where I don't lose them before I can write them down.