The Written Word
I sit here amongst stacks of papers, with the cold chill of spring lingering in the room though the window has long since been closed. I decided after my jaunt to lunch to come back home and finish putting this place in order. Of course, instead of doing that I climbed on the couch with a blanket and listened to some music as I broke open the container housing all my various writings over the years.
I am not sure anyone can relate but I often feel a sense of embarrassment to read things I have written weeks, months and years ago. Surely, the journal I kept when I was twenty-four seems to me now to be an experiment in brainlessness. I am ashamed that the person writing some it all was me. It steadily implicates my present self for the eyes of what the future me will think; such a passionate, albeit foolishly ignorant boy. Certainly, twenty years from now, I will think myself no less a ’boy’ today than I do looking back today on myself at twenty or eighteen.
I had forgotten how deep the passion for the written word had run within me. I have always known it to be a talent, but the things I uncovered today in those stacks of notebooks and scrap paper revealed so many layers I had forgotten about; so much talent and though contained within the erratic mind of a misguided youth.
As always, one of my favorite things to come upon was a paper I wrote for journalism class in which the teacher wrote a novel of his own on the back praising my abilities; ”You truly have a columnists voice. If you really don’t know what to do with your future, please become a writer.You can still be all kinds of other things but don’t ignore this talent.”
Oh Mr. Hall, you could have no idea what great many things I chose not to become and how I did, and still do, forget about the fire within me.
Much more evidence of how my mind worked for so many years is found in the number of paper scraps; falling out of notebooks, stacked in folders. Pieces of paper with half written thoughts, unfinished letters and quick etched poetry I certainly found so important at the time it could not wait for a moment set aside to write in any of the half dozen journals I bought to do so in.
One is such a testament to how I have always seen myself; I wrote it when I was about 22 I think, maybe 23... such a dramatic mind I’ve always had:
”I looked in the mirror today
And for the first time
I saw a man
Old and beaten
Youth has fled from me
I can no longer cower behind the false dreams of adolescence
Life is no longer waiting for me to grasp it
It is racing on”
I’ve always felt old, and always existed with a sense that life had already passed me by; even when I was in it’s most prime and worshiped state.
I was so tortured as well. Throughout many of my school writing assignments and many of the things since, depression and drama seem to ooze from everything. I was a truly unhappy, unhinged person. How I made it through I am not sure because if I was reading this stuff and it came from another person’s pen, I’d be awaiting to hear about their untimely suicide.
”I still long for days of the past
A dream I have that they will last
Though my mind will not believe
My heart has already begun to grieve
I cannot seem to let go of the pain
For now it seems, this darkness will reign”
I was writing all this as a teenager and young adult. What was it back then I had to be so sad about? Was I really that alone then? Am I still that alone inside?
What is this scrap of paper about? A hookup?
”The crisp morning air comes to me, like an unwanted friend.
A small streak of sunlight pierces through the grayness.
A minute sign that morning has arrived.
I lie bare and unprotected from the rising day.
Pleasure’s sweet kiss has passed with the night.
My soul now awake; soaked in her venom.
The urgent need that had once plagued me has gone.
The passion that had burned into me has grown dim.
I grow angry....”
And, so I left it unfinished.
It may seem like a glib amount of arrogance, but I really can’t believe I wrote some of the stuff I leafed through today because the language and control I had over the words seems so advanced for some teenager. In the typical fashion of the world today I have often longed for the shell of the artist. The appearance and facade of someone far more deep that any average person. How I have longed for the appearance of depth without any of the efforts involved. Clothes and conversations and a shelf full of books that I read just by looking at their covers.
I think maybe part of what I have been searching for all this time now is a return to me; Not just the artistic ability of the person I was, but in all that he contained with his singular driving passion for knowledge and the constant presence of a pen in hand to record every broken thought.
I have about twenty eight days to come up with excuses why I have not written a story for that contest I found out about.
I am not sure anyone can relate but I often feel a sense of embarrassment to read things I have written weeks, months and years ago. Surely, the journal I kept when I was twenty-four seems to me now to be an experiment in brainlessness. I am ashamed that the person writing some it all was me. It steadily implicates my present self for the eyes of what the future me will think; such a passionate, albeit foolishly ignorant boy. Certainly, twenty years from now, I will think myself no less a ’boy’ today than I do looking back today on myself at twenty or eighteen.
I had forgotten how deep the passion for the written word had run within me. I have always known it to be a talent, but the things I uncovered today in those stacks of notebooks and scrap paper revealed so many layers I had forgotten about; so much talent and though contained within the erratic mind of a misguided youth.
As always, one of my favorite things to come upon was a paper I wrote for journalism class in which the teacher wrote a novel of his own on the back praising my abilities; ”You truly have a columnists voice. If you really don’t know what to do with your future, please become a writer.You can still be all kinds of other things but don’t ignore this talent.”
Oh Mr. Hall, you could have no idea what great many things I chose not to become and how I did, and still do, forget about the fire within me.
Much more evidence of how my mind worked for so many years is found in the number of paper scraps; falling out of notebooks, stacked in folders. Pieces of paper with half written thoughts, unfinished letters and quick etched poetry I certainly found so important at the time it could not wait for a moment set aside to write in any of the half dozen journals I bought to do so in.
One is such a testament to how I have always seen myself; I wrote it when I was about 22 I think, maybe 23... such a dramatic mind I’ve always had:
”I looked in the mirror today
And for the first time
I saw a man
Old and beaten
Youth has fled from me
I can no longer cower behind the false dreams of adolescence
Life is no longer waiting for me to grasp it
It is racing on”
I’ve always felt old, and always existed with a sense that life had already passed me by; even when I was in it’s most prime and worshiped state.
I was so tortured as well. Throughout many of my school writing assignments and many of the things since, depression and drama seem to ooze from everything. I was a truly unhappy, unhinged person. How I made it through I am not sure because if I was reading this stuff and it came from another person’s pen, I’d be awaiting to hear about their untimely suicide.
”I still long for days of the past
A dream I have that they will last
Though my mind will not believe
My heart has already begun to grieve
I cannot seem to let go of the pain
For now it seems, this darkness will reign”
I was writing all this as a teenager and young adult. What was it back then I had to be so sad about? Was I really that alone then? Am I still that alone inside?
What is this scrap of paper about? A hookup?
”The crisp morning air comes to me, like an unwanted friend.
A small streak of sunlight pierces through the grayness.
A minute sign that morning has arrived.
I lie bare and unprotected from the rising day.
Pleasure’s sweet kiss has passed with the night.
My soul now awake; soaked in her venom.
The urgent need that had once plagued me has gone.
The passion that had burned into me has grown dim.
I grow angry....”
And, so I left it unfinished.
It may seem like a glib amount of arrogance, but I really can’t believe I wrote some of the stuff I leafed through today because the language and control I had over the words seems so advanced for some teenager. In the typical fashion of the world today I have often longed for the shell of the artist. The appearance and facade of someone far more deep that any average person. How I have longed for the appearance of depth without any of the efforts involved. Clothes and conversations and a shelf full of books that I read just by looking at their covers.
I think maybe part of what I have been searching for all this time now is a return to me; Not just the artistic ability of the person I was, but in all that he contained with his singular driving passion for knowledge and the constant presence of a pen in hand to record every broken thought.
I have about twenty eight days to come up with excuses why I have not written a story for that contest I found out about.