I thought it was time I would give a hack at this thing again. I also thought about a disclaimer apologizing for the over indulgence of blogging, but you know what, clearly people would not blog if they did not in fact have something to share and something that they value as important. So no disclaimer, even though (that practically was).
I have forgotten what it is to be a writer or maybe I am just negating that I am giving in to lethargy because it is summer, I don't have any writing peers in my immediate location to excite and inspire me, I also feel like I don't have much period in this location to excite and inspire me; of my highest concern, it has occurred to me that this idea of "location" is becoming nothing more than a word. I am drifting, I am birch bark peeling up and separating and maybe that is okay. But maybe, just maybe I feel ready to be settled. Maybe, just maybe I have felt this way for a long time coming.
New Hampshire, my first home, my home home is more or less just a "container" to paraphrase a Matt Pond PA song, apropos "New Hampshire". Then there is Chicago, a place that has drawn out brown and raw roots from my feet and set them in the soil (of course, temporarily). There was San Francisco, there was Israel, there was Montana, next week there will be Wisconsin, after that maybe New Mexico and the ever amassing states and countries of my future. My point is that I am a traveler and I have conditioned myself to believe that I want to be a traveler however, I want to stop somewhere for more than a few months or weeks at a time. I want real earth that I can rip into, burrow and sit. But of course, I cannot ignore the years of telling myself things are transitory, impermanent, yada yada yada and all that other westerner-trying-to-understand-eastern-philosophies-and-failing-considerably-because-we-simply-do-not-have-the-design-for-such-simplicity, kind of shit.
However, I consider myself lucky despite this fog of bitterness. I am lucky that I have met so many different walks of life, more than some of my peers can say and yes I will boldly take bragging rights here. I also feel lucky that I feel nothing more than compelled to write about these people except, I often do not. I spin stories like a cotton gin but I can't get it down to paper, I don't want to. I want that moment to be that moment and let it go, or do I? I am a glutton for nostalgia...but this brings me to think about an idea a friend was talking about.
He was about to go on a trip and was asked to document it because the organizers (that word sounds so intimidating) knew that he had producing and camera skills and what not. However, he decided that he didn't want to because he felt like he would miss that "location" by looking at it merely through the lens. Which leaves me thinking, that writing is the same thing. If I were to only internalize and sit on every event that has occurred in my life, it would be much too much to write and everyone would be bored to tears, myself included. I would only have that experience as recorded by paper and not by my very own senses. I want and need the distance between living and writing but knowing that I can resort to both at any given moment and I suppose this blog might be a good example of that.
Another thing on my mind that is somewhat related was a comment another friend had said to me that has sort of stuck because it was irksome. "How can you write memoirs; you are only 19." Now I'm 20, by the way. The thing is, we all have stories, some good ones, some circular ones, some irrelevant, some cliche, but most of all they are important. I truly believe that stories are important, they shape us, they redefine us, they stop people for a god damn fucking second to get outside themselves and listen and learn something or laugh at something or cry for fuck sakes. But most importantly whether it be memoir, poetry, fiction, short stories or any other storytelling medium, it is how you tell the story, the details you include or the details you leave out, because what I have found which is no new revelation to anyone or myself but it is simply, what you are saying, what you want to say has been said and that is where the relevance of how takes effect. I'm still learning the how so I will stop preaching for a moment and not explain ' The How to on How' because I am sure there is a book on it...and I don't feel right talking about what I don't viscerally know.
Where I leave this now is that I have 8 weeks of new stories ahead of me, years of new locations, and the ever-looming tug and pull of the drifting vessel in which I sit.
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