No Place To Fall.

This day had passed by gently and I was lost, scattered inside a silent, shapeless reverie. The shocking suddenness of the season, a sharp shift into a summery spring. I had been searching for some patron saint, some living literary figure whom I could look up to. It was only so recently that I was told that was what I needed. I was told, "You deserve someone to whom you can look up, someone who cares about literature." And I laughed because I thought it impossible. But, perhaps that is not true.

The heat had suddenly descended upon the city. I woke up this morning in a thin sheath of sweat. I rolled around sleeplessly in my damp sheets. The fan blew brazenly at my body. And all the while I had been writhing beneath some unknown thing, beneath many unsaid things, beneath the sounds of my own silence. I am always wondering if all of this is scribble and nothing else, if I can find some breadth of meaning inside this waning youth of mine.

I am always sinking into some selfish dissatisfaction and I wonder if I had some goal in mind- if perhaps then I would feel useful or even moderately moving toward something. I remember all those years I spent training myself to think in words, training myself to see what I was looking at and to immediately, inherently spell it out in words, in articulate words inside my head. And I have found myself now, seated alone in a smoky bar scribbling things only to see them as they appear in black ink before my eyes. And I am watching the door and waiting for some uncertainty which I already view as a brightly glowing possibility. Is it because I have so rarely, perhaps never, met someone so full of words, so calm and quiet and full of knowledge of literature and what it means and what it is?

And I spent the day trying to press something literary out onto the page only to sit and scoff at myself, only to chew thoughtlessly at my fingers and produce nothing. Even after a whole day of trying, of bouncing back and forth between attempts and the lack thereof, I still ended up only speaking of myself. But, perhaps that is better than nothing. Perhaps, that at least articulates my own thoughts to myself. I am too mutable. I am too liquidy. I am caught up in all the things that I feel and I follow them off into distances and beyond the farthest limits of my own understanding.

I fell asleep this afternoon beneath billowy, beautiful clouds. I felt the wind blow breezily on my bare back. I felt the grass soft on my face and I heard the dogs barking and playing right beyond my half-asleep consciousness. I dreamed of the sky, of the birds which flew through it. I dreamed of light, spring-time dreams: the trees budding, the pollen flying, people peeking out open windows and laughing.

And then I sat in a dark, smoky bar and I listened and spoke. It was strange to speak to someone who knows more than I do about literature. It was very strange indeed. And I was my normal self, opinionated and absurd but I understood an inherent point in things I used to scoff at. I listened long enough to understand because the person speaking was not emotional and ridiculous and I saw someone else's point, a point which I don't wholly agree with but I was able to understand several things all at once. And, usually, I do not do that. I can only see one perspective or another. So it was strange but pleasant to understand something shades of grey. Even if I didn't admit to it at the time.


I am caught between too many understandings. I am drawn to too many things at once. I really don't care to do much about it but behave as I naturally would. I am only fearing feeling some whole, full-on guilt. But, I suppose that doesn't really happen. I will very soon write another Fernando letter. And it will be full of many things that I have been meaning to say but have only been wavering on the brink of everything I don't know. Ah, to know. It is a life-long effort. One I will never grow tired of.