Oh dear. How the rain pelts and makes me fickle. It is just as I have feared, I am feeling antsy to the point of nausea. To be free, slung to my backpack and clutching a passport, but now instead find myself receiving continuous streams of mail to a little blue house in the center of a city.
But, no bother, things on the literary front are looking up. The exorcism of my characters has proven to be both violent and rewarding, and I am at least wise enough to know that both are part of this process (though my wisdom doesn't stretch much further than this).
I have found myself wondering this week about the concept of distance. I have been on this for some time, and have been so enraptured that I fear I may digress from more important or realistic things at hand.
As Heather and I, dressed in our going-out-best, entered the night bus to the sound of coughing, laughing, and vibrations of IPODS on parade, I had to wonder at the immensity of distance that exists between people. How my life, to me, is the centered pinnacle which all other things rotate around, is merely a distant star to others, if seen at all. But each of us find ourselves the victim of this self-obsession, and I don't believe it to be so much indulgent as it is natural, but still it is beyond me to comprehend that each person feels the same kind of oneness with themselves as I do with me.
That, in my day, all things bounce into me, through me, and at times off me, but no one else can sincerely feel those hits. They see them, at times empathize with their impact, but they will never truly care about my beatings like they do their own. This, is an incredible thought.
Mark, that by incredible I do not mean brilliant (otherwise, shame on me for my pompous tune) but instead I mean that it is so vast that I don't believe anyone is capable of stripping it to its nakedness, watching it shiver there in the corner.
There, across this coffee shop, is someone making a latte, and they are at work, thinking about temperatures and foam and perhaps why their girlfriend keeps her eyes open when she kisses him, and I won't ever truly feel any of that pain. Or the man across from me, flannel-clad he has been typing vigorously for over an hour, and his eyes have that look of true passion glaze but I feel nothing. All I feel is a pull to my computer, my thoughts, and my dearest Ian as I continue to chisel away at his little imaginary world that will, if I'm lucky, really only touch a few people.
Just something to think of, on a gloomy day: The distance between us is great, but it is important to know, in a way, that you are the only one who can center yourself properly. No one, not even your most cherished and trusted companion, or dearest mother, can know every intricacy of you.
And, I think, there is a liberation in that. So rejoice, and celebrate yourself, the way Whitman once did, and I do today as I turn my phone off and let myself write in the peace of afternoon mist.
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