You know you're emotionally unstable when you start crying from a Google Chrome commercial...just another reason to love my Chrome-y*.

Before I get into this blog post: Tom Brokaw gave my brother's commencement address. This is topical because I am watching him on the Colbert Report right now. He is talking about 9/11 so I guess I'll just keep right on crying all night. But this is not going to be a 9/11 blog post. I don't know if I really could write a proper 9/11 blog post. I believe in the power of words but I also believe that there is a lot of life that cannot be put into words. All of this discourse on the anniversary of 9/11 has me considering the balance between words and the substance they attempt to capture. As a writer, of course, I want to believe that these words that I write can convey a fully realized feeling and make it known completely to my reader. But there are some things, like 9/11, that cause me to question the power of words. I think this is how it should be. Writers should be aware of the enormity of our task. Writing should not be a passive, idle activity. When we write we should always be conscious of the question - as we remember and as we write, are these words enough? If I sit down and try to write about this weekend's anniversary, it will not be done lightly**. 


[And now we can move on to the regularly scheduled programming]


Last night I took it upon myself to clean up my computer. I need to start some serious cleaning and organizing in my life so I thought I would start with the easiest part - my hard drive. Well, I thought it would be the easiest task because I could just sit on the couch like I do every other day...but I forgot about everything I have hiding in forgotten corners of my computer. 


I am one of those people who keeps her computer password protected. This isn't just a diary with a lock on it. It's like a box of all my innermost secrets. I open up a word document, write down a few thoughts, and Save As in a back corner folder where it can live forever in peace...until last night. Maybe other writers are better than that but I have random little slips of writing hidden all throughout my computer. Most of them are crap, but these little short pieces come from the darkest, loneliest hours of the night when I am my most honest. Re-discovering all my thoughts from those miscellaneous nights was bittersweet. I'm too nostalgic to delete all of these little bits of writing (thank god for external hard drives), so I thought I would come here, where I post all my crappy random musings for any and all to see.


So here are 5 little pieces of writing that I found last night.


1. 
There is something I have always wanted to know: What is it that keeps us moving forward?


Everyone is moving forward through life in one synchronized motion. It may seem like some people are moving faster than others but they aren’t. Everyone moves through life at the same speed, passing through every moment at exactly the same time. And no matter how hard you try, you can’t slow down or stop for even just a moment. The seconds, minutes, hours, etc. keep passing, carrying us onward downstream the river of life. As long as you are alive you are caught in the current. Everyone moves forward. Time passes. And the pace of passing time is persistent. There is no pause button. There is only an eject function. Either you persist with passing time or you perish. 




2.
I try to think of what I believe, what I know to be true. And I can’t think of anything. I feel like nothing about life or the universe is fixed. I don’t feel like I know anything. Even what I thought I understood feels so strange to me now. Everywhere I look there is more chaos and confusions and I’m drowning in it. I can’t make sense of it all. I can’t make sense of anything.


I want to know something. I feel like I’m living in that moment when you can’t quite remember the right word. That feeling like you know you know the word but you can’t think of it. That’s how I feel every moment that I’m living. Like I know something but I can’t think of it. Like there’s something important on the very edge of my consciousness but I just can’t think of it. And I just want to know it. I just want to remember the word. I just want that certainty. That feeling of “Of course. I knew it all along.” But it’s lost to me.




3.

I know every detail of this night by heart - someone's parents are away, park down the street because neighbors are suspicious, don't look at any family photos but proceed straight down to the basement. There are the empty pizza boxes on the kitchen counter. Through the glass door to the porch I can see the dots of light at the end of cigarettes in the darkness. There's the sweet old family dog who is excited but confused by having so many new people around at night. I can hear music coming from the open door to the basement and sure enough I can now hear the unmistakable sounds of a good game of 'ruit, lots of sporadic yelling and cursing.

Play some drinking games. Drink some beer. Smoke too many cigarettes. Smoke a few bowls. Take some shots from the handle of vodka/rum/whiskey that was purchased for the extravagant price of $12.99. Trade stories and talk until night becomes morning.

In the basement, Johnny is talking philosophy. Ryan is playing the guitar. There's a book of poetry sitting on the table open to a William Carlos Williams poem.

"These
are the desolate, dark weeks
when nature in its barrenness
equals the stupidity of man."

This poem about the tragedy of war should seem out of place but I reread it several times before setting it down.

"Is this the counterfoil to sweetest

music? The source of poetry that
seeing the clock stopped, says,
The clock has stopped

that ticked yesterday so well?
and hears the sound of lakewater
splashing - that is now stone."

What does it mean here in this basement room? Well, it means that on an ordinary night of extraordinariness I found a moment of pure, unexpected beauty.

4.
The January sun glistened off the surface of the frozen lake. Loch Raven, the majestic man-made reservoir that provided the city of Baltimore with tap water, was quiet but not silent. An unexpected course of warm weather had settled upon the city. The sun had struggled out from behind the forlorn cloud cover if only for one afternoon. Baltimore, often undecided on its weather especially during the winter months, had made up its mind. It would be warm and sunny and pleasant. At least for the day. Who could know what tomorrow would bring—a cold front, blistering winds, surly clouds, frigid rain? The winter brought its fair share of surprises.


The uncharacteristically warm afternoon had drawn a smattering of locals out of their homes and back to Loch Raven. The reservoir provided some of the most picturesque parklands in the county and, during the summer months, it bustled with the energy of the nature lovers who looked to the park to fulfill their addiction. This warm January afternoon found among the park’s visitors an elderly couple walking hand-in-hand, a father and son flying a remote-controlled air plane, a young woman and a small brown pup, two young women deep in the heartfelt conversation of best friends, and a group of five boys who had been kept inside too long.


The stories of these visitors would never intersect except for one trip to the park. The elderly couple had raised their children, survived the turmoil and heartache that troubled children forced upon a family. The father and son were testing out a new Christmas gift and testing out new boundaries resulting from the recent divorce. The five boys had come to the park out of boredom. The young woman, alone after yet another break up, had just bought her puppy and named him Gatsby after her favorite novel. The two young women came to the park uneven, one broken and one trying to put her friend back together again. 


“Sometimes I feel like I’m trapped under the ice,” Sascha said. She was staring straight ahead at the frozen lake. Erin wordlessly reached over and took her best friend's hand, squeezing everything she felt into Sascha. The two young women looked out across the melting ice.


“Drowning in dark, freezing water and trapped under the ice.”

5.

The grass is cool and wet underneath my bare feet. I tilt my head back and can see another world spread out above me, the world of the stars. A light breeze pulls gently at my hair. I hear first the sound of crickets but then, faintly in the distant, the sound of cars. My back is to the house. There is nothing but fields spread out before me. It is nighttime. The world is cloaked in navy and gray with shadows of the deepest black. I can smell the sweet grass, the past rain, the organic scent of fresh compost drifting to me on the breeze.

This is what I know. I know it well. But now I feel lost in this scene that I know so well.

I know every detail of this moment. Midsummer. Midnight. But tonight it feels different. I think of how I reached this moment and the vague reality begins to whisper in my ear. I do not want to listen. 

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*I just love Google Chrome, ok? And I like making cute nicknames for the things I love.


**Of course that turned into a nice little tangent. Why can't my tangents ever be light and fluffy? Why am I always wandering off into deep thoughts?