Journal - 1/14/2021

I have an urge to write. An urge to write quickly, without thought. For my words to flow from my mind to—sometimes my mouth, to—the page. To feel connected to the next idea as it takes form and give it life, and a home, and root it in a reality by making it corporeal. I have an urge to write with flowery words, to stop and smell the roses of ideation, and for those ideas to plant seeds and carry fragrance as far and wide as the writing goes, perhaps even I it goes nowhere.

I have an urge to write. An urge to capture my inner world. My knowledge and wisdom and experience. My yearning, for people, for community, for my own becoming. Who am I, in this moment? Who do I think I am? Who will I be? I want this to not be lost. More, I have an urge to practice the careful art of preserving myself. I want to look back on this time capsule, whether six months or six decades later, and see today’s me, trapped in amber. I’m sure I will say: _he was so young. So immature._ And I want to remember that.

I have an urge to be read. To use my voice in ways that don’t leave me hoarse. To scream, not a scream of the throat but one of the collective laying down of bricks, the feeling when you plant a flag and someone plants a flag right beside yours. The two of you, waving in the wind, perhaps alone in being together but together not alone.

I have an urge to come up with metaphors that make sense.

I’ve been putting this off for some time. I don’t know, it’s hard to write when you have so much swimming around in your brain. It’s hard to write when you’re an extrovert and there’s someone you could hang out with right outside your door, and you have to fight and ask for your own time so you even have the idea to sit down and write. It’s hard to write when your life is turned upside down and you’re underwater and you take a breath because you think it’ll be fun and suddenly you’ve forgotten to swim and breathe altogether and somehow, someone brings you to the surface and resuscitates you and you go to months of physical therapy, slowly learning to use your limbs and lungs again. And now that you’re walking again, you see the water but you don’t know if you’re ready to take the plunge.

When you do, the water is cold but familiar. It leaves a metallic taste in your mouth. And you dip your head under the surface, just to know you’re still alive, and this time you don’t breathe. You’re still. You’re you. I’d like to write more about that sometime too.

I have an urge to close this entire text editor, right now. To delete everything I’ve written. To say “nice job experimenting, let’s pick this up in another 6 months” and let my life carry on. To open the door to those voices outside, calling to me, telling me it doesn’t really matter and I can just walk in step with them and that’s that.

But I have another urge, too.