things that live
the weather, these days, has been unbearably beautiful. the kind of weather that has me walking through campus flashing a goofy smile, sometimes raising my arms and eyes to the sky, not really caring how i look.
but i am not here to write about weather.
yesterday, i read a story and fell in love. have you ever fallen in love with a story before? (of course you have) like, an i-want-to-carry-it-around-with-me-everywhere-exactly-as-it-is-now-printed-on-A4-paper-with-my-inarticulate-scribblings-all-over-it love. you know? like the kind of story that hits me in a way that very few do. i even had to clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from crying out in the library. but not only that, this was written by someone i know. Damien McRae, from my fiction workshop.
so, i don't know. for me, that is weird. after growing up in a suffocatingly small pre-k to twelve school where hardly anyone else appreciated the written word? you know, there has always been something about stories and the characters in them that were more alive to me than real people. but since coming to Sarah Lawrence, it has sort of been like those two words collided. the worlds i have always sort of been between, the written world and the tangible world. and the collision was often painful, but...hell, would i ask for anything less? because i really don't think someone like me can live fully in either world without immersing themselves in both. i mean, because what is writing if it isn't a distilled reality? am i making sense? am i? i hope so.
it's funny, too, because i wrote a story last semester that shouldn't have seen the light of day, and it is like this story does what my story reached for (albeit very weakly, especially since i didn't even understand quite what i was trying to say and, more importantly, didn't have the courage to really reach) and there are some elements in mine that do appear in All the Beautiful People, but, i mean...there is just no comparison. none.
...
anyway.
i might not be so good at the love, these days, but what can you love more than things that live? - this story lives. doesn't everything, really?
[there may be more on this later]
but i am not here to write about weather.
yesterday, i read a story and fell in love. have you ever fallen in love with a story before? (of course you have) like, an i-want-to-carry-it-around-with-me-everywhere-exactly-as-it-is-now-printed-on-A4-paper-with-my-inarticulate-scribblings-all-over-it love. you know? like the kind of story that hits me in a way that very few do. i even had to clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from crying out in the library. but not only that, this was written by someone i know. Damien McRae, from my fiction workshop.
so, i don't know. for me, that is weird. after growing up in a suffocatingly small pre-k to twelve school where hardly anyone else appreciated the written word? you know, there has always been something about stories and the characters in them that were more alive to me than real people. but since coming to Sarah Lawrence, it has sort of been like those two words collided. the worlds i have always sort of been between, the written world and the tangible world. and the collision was often painful, but...hell, would i ask for anything less? because i really don't think someone like me can live fully in either world without immersing themselves in both. i mean, because what is writing if it isn't a distilled reality? am i making sense? am i? i hope so.
it's funny, too, because i wrote a story last semester that shouldn't have seen the light of day, and it is like this story does what my story reached for (albeit very weakly, especially since i didn't even understand quite what i was trying to say and, more importantly, didn't have the courage to really reach) and there are some elements in mine that do appear in All the Beautiful People, but, i mean...there is just no comparison. none.
...
anyway.
i might not be so good at the love, these days, but what can you love more than things that live? - this story lives. doesn't everything, really?
[there may be more on this later]