“O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side!” William Shakespeare
Very often, there is a difference between what we say and what we do. Along those lines, pun intended, the same applies to writing and doing. Most of my brilliant statements, like the two above, come when I am sitting around with nothing better to do, unless you get points for thinking.
I think I am already a bit too self-deprecating in my stories and this is not intended to be more of the same, although it is sort of in the family. Most of the time, we really don’t spend too much time thinking about what we are going to say, before saying it. One of the cool differences about writing is you have unlimited opportunities to change the page. Of course, it is certainly reasonable for a reader to believe the writer means what they’ve written.
I’ve got several hundred thousand words, indelibly recorded and shared with the world, such as it is. There is no way every single thought, technologically tattooed into forever, can be etched into the mountain of profundity, not even close. I know it takes me a while to get where I am going, but we have arrived.
I decided to read the first post I put up in Nov. 2014, entitled Loneliness and the Technology Placebo. I wanted to look for something really stupid I could use to make my point. I’ll be damned, I didn’t find anything cringeworthy. In some ways, it makes my job easier. My concern is more about a possible misperception and not a correction.
There is a permanence about print, when it only captures a moment. I guess that’s what has been bothering me lately. I don’t coast into my stories and very often they come from a painful place. While it sounds monumentally presumptuous, I write for us. Platitudes are a slippery business; just when you think you got there, it slides out of reach. I actually think it is supposed to be that way.
I know I have written about the Four Vows before, a very basic Zen statement about the nature of things that I will spare you, except for the last one. “The Buddha Way is unsurpassed. I vow to embody it fully.” The deal ain’t about getting there, because you can’t and that is not the point. It is all about aspiration. You gotta keep trying. It is like walking toward the light and never getting there, even though it keeps getting brighter. The ultimate arrival is the same for all of us, but the journey is just like our finger prints, no two are alike.
Unlike journaling, I write with you in mind, too. It is like creating maps of the moment, with different destinations for each reader. Sometimes, I think I write about writing too much and I’ve mentioned it before. In celebration of my capricious nature, I take it back. Writing doesn’t always have to be about absolutely everything else, never about the act itself. What never changes is always writing with you in mind.
In moments of herniated egoism, the turn of a phrase will inflate my chest, just for a second. Writing brings me joy and I love sharing it with you. Half the time, I have nothing that demands my attention, but i want to write to you anyway and that is when stories like this crawl on to the page. It’s just me, breathing and thinking about nothing in particular.
It is not easy being a human being and we seem to go out of our way to make it more difficult, mutating our lives into a bitch fest. When I started this whole word business, my intention was celebration. I have never bothered counting how many people surface in the pages of my memoir, Halloween in Portland. I had no interest in perpetuating negativity, which needs no help from me. My story was filled with beginnings and endings, but absent judgment and/or criticism of the people and circumstances that populated my history.
Don’t tell anyone, but there is a part of me that enjoys being different. My primary job in all these stories is to share myself with you and being as honest as I can be about it all. Of course, I write about things that are going on around me and it is my choice how I want to portray them to you. This last statement applies to all of us. I struggle with this stuff and just because it takes shape in sentences and paragraphs, has no bearing on the weight this shit carries inside me.
Maybe that is my point in all this. It is too easy to get the idea that I know what the fuck I am doing, because I’m a fairly decent writer and that is what got me going on this in the first place. My stories are not a bunch of words, choreographed on a dry stage and thrown away upon their completion. They are alive and there is no curtain. Forgiveness is the ticket for the best seat in the house, your house.
These are the stories of one old guy, who whispers words only he can hear, but being completely amenable to your eavesdropping. Maybe that is what is troubling me about all this, giving you the wrong idea. We are all the same height, one incredibly long line of experiences unique to each of us and that is what we share.
I guess I felt like taking this opportunity to tell you how much what I am doing means to me. I am also celebrating my fallibility, which is only a word away in all my writing. I don’t want any of you thinking I’ve got my shit together, just because I can turn a phrase. I want you to know that.
My story is our story. Meet you on the page.
LISTEN TO THE STORY HERE:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1292459/episodes/18271470-accidental-hypocrite