Without Hope, Without Despair

For a long time, I thought these sentences were for a specific reader. They were for someone.

Over the last week I have taken them down, thrown them away, pulled them back out and put them back into this space. I did all of this because I have realized who my audience really is and frankly, I am not at all pleased at the revelation.

All these thousands of sentences, for over a decade, were over-burdened with metaphor and mangled with symbolism and code. They were always obscuring the truth because the truth was too hard to face.

And the truth is: I am dishonest and I am selfish. I am a child who needed to understand what it means to be an adult.

Leaving the sentences up in this space means facing myself. Continuing to write means growing up and moving on.

So, I am beginning again, which does not mean the sentences or the writing will be any better or more interesting. However, maybe it means that whatever it is that I put out in the world will be more true, clear, and creative.

Maybe Love will extend more fully when I am no longer distracted by shame or desire or some idea of lack. Or maybe I won't have another damn thing to say at all.

All I know is that hitting 'delete' doesn't change anything, nor does ignoring the call to write.

I remember reading Karen Blixen and going to all her old haunts when I lived in Kenya. I know my experience of living there wasn't the same as hers, but it wasn't all that different either.

I remember reading a specific line by her and deciding in that very moment that I, too, would write. She said, “Write a little every day, without hope, without despair.”

How much I have forgotten since.

How much I remember.