The First Tentative Steps

I know that it’s time to start writing again because scraps of paper scribbled with unfinished ideas are beginning to pile up on empty surfaces.  Snatches of thoughts constructed in fragmentary words are spilling out, and I’m grabbing whatever medium is at hand to capture them before they drift away.  

I know this is unsustainable.  When the words begin to pool and eddy, I have only so long to construct a functioning waterway for them to exit, before they stagnate.  And, living with stagnant, unexpressed words inside me is a dangerous way for me to live.  I’ve tried on that particular brand of brokenness, and I don’t intend to slip into it again.

And, so, I’m here again, trying to find the edges of my experiences by wrapping them up in letters.  After the necessary silence that came with the intensity of crisis—some particular to me and our family, some universal—I believe I’m able, at last, to step back just far enough to express some of what I’m seeing.  

I don’t mean to give the impression that my silence here means that I’ve been mute this whole time.  I’ve logged hundreds of spot reports for myself in my journal.  I’ve had important conversations with important people in my life.  And, I’ve used this time to begin to feel around the great expanses of a brand new (to me) language.  All of these have been critical and have changed me.

What I have not had the emotional bandwidth for is the meaning making writing I attempt here.  For that, I have to have time and space away from my reality.  I have to be able to observe, not only this one moment, but all the moments that have come before, or may come after, like flipping through a great, temporal Rolodex.  That type of distance has simply not been possible for me in the last year.  Everything in front of me was so very BIG.  It filled the horizon, devouring my attention and emotions in one demanding gulp.

Most of that reality hasn’t diminished in size, and shows no sign of relenting.  But, I have grown, if not to accustomed to it, at least acclimatized a bit.  The kind of stability I had come to take for granted seems unlikely to return any time soon.  But, I think I may have developed my sea legs just enough to begin to take a tentative ramble.