My only memento...

How often do we tell our own life stories? How often do we adjust, embellish, and make sly cuts? The longer life goes on, the fewer those around to challenge our account and remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life - told to others but mainly to ourselves.

As a writer, I remember everything. And especially the hurts. Strip me of my skin and muscles and leave me bare to the bone, and then point to my scars, and I'll be able to tell you the story of each and every one. From the big ones, I'll be able to weave a novel and sustain the conversation well past the point of my own comfort. Being a writer has very little to do with talent. The only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar. Writing consists of the persistence of memory. And one's consistently quiet wish, fuelled by a myriad of addictions, to forget. 

How deep is shallow water...

Truth is the beginning...

He was looking out the window of his cramped office space at his mundane 9 to 5, once again struck by the realization that he is very much on borrowed time and that the lending agency exacts its premium precisely when he is least prepared to pay and is desperately seeking to borrow more. He is not wise at all, it seems, to always be falling for the same traps life sets for him. Yes, he knows books and how to string words together, but that doesn't mean he knows how to speak about the things that matter most to him. Maybe he does, in a way. Quite the same as he lives. In a way.

I need some help...

But this thing that almost surely won't ever be, still beckons, even though I secretly want it to end. Or at least progress to be freed from this agonizing limbo. I know I won't be able to unwrite this failure, never unlive it, or relive it - it will remain stuck here like a vision of fireflies on a summer field toward evening. Could I have had something else instead? Something that would lead me down a more steady path? Where moving ahead wouldn't be false, and looking the other way would be just a fun pastime. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there might be another life out there. Another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.

Can't see the light from the dark...

How deep is shallow water?

How high is too high up? 

I feel it pull me under,

just another touch.

The point of no return...

Still miles away...

This road is like his life; knee deep in shadow. Once, it had been the quickest way home and he'd taken it easily, turning onto its potholed surface without a second thought, rarely noticing how the earth dropped away on either edge. His mind had been on other things back then, on the minutiae of everyday life. Chores. Errands. Schedules. And he hadn't taken this route in years. Just the thought of it had been enough to make him turn the steering wheel too sharply; better to go off the road than to find himself here. Or so he'd thought until today.

The writing is on the wall. All I am waiting for is the final confirmation. An ending I can see from a mile away, yet still, it will knock me off my feet. So this is my proclimation that I will follow my own advice, and not bargain my future with outcomes. I understand what I want and how I want to live, and I will reach for it despite the failures that come my way. Forward is the only motion I have ever truly understood. The only direction that can make sense of the loss, that can perhaps, even one day, even restore it.

I'm the it boy...