Some Thoughts on the Present

   Writing is a strange beast.
   I was trying to think of why I have been having trouble writing lately.
   Was it that my writer's brain needed new stimulation? Some of my best works of both fiction and non-fiction were produced in a time that I was taking college classes - some on writing.  Perhaps I needed more learning, more enrichment, more.
   Then I remembered a book that I read once, where a writer got block when he got into a relationship.  As it turned out, the person he was with was stifling a part of him, and he needed to get out of the relationship or give up on his writing career.  I wondered if I had traded my writing for something different... then I shook such foolishness from my mind.  Of course I wasn't blocked by my true love.  I wrote one of my favorite books while we were dating, and the analogy was quite imperfect (the writer who was blocked in the story was only blocked because the foolish girl he was with wanted him to be someone he wasn't, while my husband loves the person I am).  This explanation could not prove to be the truth.
   Then it hit me.  I've been trying to harness an agent for my most recent book - and I've been trying for four months.  It has been a long and frustrating road at times, and I think it has bred a poison in me.  A poison called greed.  Greedy for publication, for a book deal, for commercialization.  And armed with this greed, I have successfully sunk into a completely blocked writer.  A writer I do not want to be - a writer who cannot produce.
   In the end, I dearly want to be a published author, and I've always thought that if I persist long enough, I will be able to attain this goal.  So even if I don't publish the book that I'm submitting to agents now, I'll write new books, and submit those.  Even if I have to go to writer's conferences and grab agents by the throats, that's what I'll do (in a gentle, convincing way, of course).  I'll make it through.  But the thing I was missing was this simple truth:

   I should write for the mere joy of writing.

   If I miss out on this, then I could be neither happily published, nor truly alive.

   So back to the page I'll go, this time with a renewed respect and zeal.  And perhaps I'll come out on the other side with joy for the fact that I have written, with a joy for the fact that I am alive.

Strings

As I sit writing, I am surrounded by strings - strings of conversation, strings of emotions, the strings that make up our lives.  So many strings floating lightly and delicately through the air like discarded spider’s webs.

I wonder if I’m the only one here who notices it.  Everyone here is so immersed in the reasons they came - food, conversation, work.  Everyone living in their own sphere, aware of only their own strings.

The men sitting in the table next to me have come to discuss some sort of business plan.  They are different in race, marital status, and age, yet business has united them in conversation and goal.  

The girl sitting diagonally across from me reminds me of a character in a movie who had to cut off her hair so that pirates would think her a boy and ignore her.  Yet – this girl is lacking in spunk and depth.  The way she's laughing too hard at the boys across from her tells me that she is immersed in only one of a few different strings.  Attaining, perhaps, or pleasing, or keeping.

There’s a young man in the corner who is charging his phone and listening to music I suppose through those earphones.  His hunched disposition tells me that he is not only unaware of the other strings in this room – he does not want to be aware of them.

And then my eyes graze a girl about my age, who is sitting by herself, sipping a hot drink.  I remember seeing her come in and observing her long, slender, carmel-colored legs, and her dark, shining, braided hair.  I remember thinking she was one of those people that make me wonder if  all humans truly are one species.  Yet, when my eyes scan her face, I realize she is looking straight back at me.  She stares back at me unashamedly until I finally look away.  And I wonder.

Is she another, like me, who is interested in seeing the strings? Does she wonder about the mother sitting in the corner without a wedding, or the couple who won’t meet each other’s eyes, like I do?  Does she look not just to find, but to see and to understand?

Perhaps.  But it’s a question I’ll never have the answer to.  Because while I am brave enough to look for the strings and wonder about them, I’m not brave or free enough to track them down and find their meanings. 

And so I’ll sit here amongst the strings, seeing without understanding, and wondering a bit which is the better fate: to never see the strings that surround you, or to see them without understanding?