Three

I don't write much anymore.

There was a time when I would scribble poems on napkins in coffee shops, lest I forget a particular piece of graceful phrasing. I would turn on my computer late at night, and the words fell out of my fingers, unbidden and untethered. It was the truest and safest way I could process the world.

On my secret tiny blog, in tiny tiny font, with a teeny tiny audience, I wrote words that felt like they had to be sounded out against the void, or else. The soft weight of a million moments of triumph and heartache both.

I have to tell you, that it is weird for me to write here. It is very, very bright. White. Modern. Something. It doesn't feel very natural for me to be writing in, what I perceive to be, an incredibly public forum. Public because I hit publish. Public because I choose to share it. The other world of secret teeny tiny blog writing was blue, and soft, and safe. I didn't share that link with many Others.

It takes a lot of effort for me to think of a post to pen, here. I struggled with this thought all last month. Why have I become such a dispassionate writer? Why isn't it as natural as it once was? Necessary? How do I process my world without writing, now that it is arguably more nuanced and complicated as I grow up?

And the answer of course, comes to me unbidden, untethered.

He is now the truest and safest way I process the world. He is my tiny tiny audience, with whom I share all matters of triumph, heartache, grace.


Years ago, fierce independence and solitude was food for my voice. It fed my need to create and write. It was a wilder country, back then. Loneliness is a wilder fire.

And then when love comes, something is tempered. The need to sound out and grab the universe by its shoulders is lessened. I am satisfied and wrapped in a cocoon, and fewer words are needed to test for the edges of the water.


It is an interesting trade off, this.
(One that I would never trade back for anything!)
(But I do miss my moments of unadulterated need for the written word.)


Happy three years, to him. Thank you for being my tiny audience these last few years.

In homage to both my love of him and my love of words, here is an old entry from the secret tiny blog, that comfortingly also resounds with the number 3.

If only she knew what was coming in the years ahead...!

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Saturday, November 22, 2008

whenever i leave him whenever i leave him, i'm struck with the notion that everything comes so easily to us when we're together. fireplaces, cooking together, candle light, stanley park walks, really good hugs. and it's those things that make things muddled in my brain because in actuality, nothing about our situation is easy. much will not come easily to us. we don't talk about the implications of what his moving to the Yukon in january to teach means i don't say anything (except for encouraging noises) when he tells me that he's applying for an amazing temporary teaching job in dec on saturna island, before he moves to aforementioned Yukon he mentions that in the summer, he plans to do an exchange in Europe, after he gets back from aforementioned Yukon and i don't say a word any words because, after all. we've only been on three dates. so whenever i leave him and i feel all those things that comes along with being cooked for, and appreciated, and thought of i can't help but think that these three dates have had more meaning (or something) (depth?) (maybe) than any other three dates, consecutive or otherwise and whenever i leave him i'm cognizant of the fact that both of us, usually i, sometimes him does something to pull away, with an air that whatever this is can only be casual and the goodbyes are tinged with something palpably distinct from the intimacy of the dates laced with a certain awkwardness, the kind, i suppose, that comes with the territory of not knowing the other person intimately yet. being intimate is separate from knowing intimately. i can't tell yet whether i mean anything to him (it's only been three dates!) and i can't tell whether i long for him, or the idea of him (it's only been three dates!) and i can't tell him any of the things i've told you because it's only been three dates.