An Affair Such as This

In the center of your heart lies the center of the universe which beats the seconds by like a drum. You cannot hear it as much as you can feel it in the pulse of the blood as it courses through the veins in your neck. When he presses there gently with his fingers it makes your breath quicken, and he knows this. There is a perfect pressure point. He’s learned it. And so you are his but only when he’s holding you.

The dream is the same each night but with a different person. I try to kiss a faceless man. He always disappears, but just before he does, his face is revealed. It is handsome. I can never remember it. The night hangs around into the pale blue of early morning, a pink blush sky and the soaring cry of geese, outstretched and black as ink against the wind.

As my eyes flutter awake, my mind is already alight with ideas, words, tiny flecks of embers of imagination. It has been quite some time since I felt hopeful. But somehow today I do. Like perhaps things can get better for me if I could just learn a lesson I have been fighting learning for years. I’ll keep that to myself because it is, as are most lessons in life, complicated. What I can tell you is it has to do with the lies we tell ourselves to keep from accepting the naked truth.

Somewhere down the street, a dog is barking and I know the one. He’s a beautiful German Shepard puppy, maybe nine months old. I met him weeks ago but forget his name. All joyous flashing brown eyes and high perked ears, alert and a tad rambunctious. There is some kind of spirit in him that is so innocent with passion for being alive it could almost break your heart into bits. What is it about some creatures that melts your insides. Claws the iron bars away from your calloused heart. The pure charm of his oversized paws could kill me dead with adoration.

I have written on this blog for so very long now. Lately it feels a bit more like an observatory. A journal, a diary of sorts. I think of Nin and Miller, sending massive bound handwritten journals, letters, and various correspondence to one another across the sea. No subject, no observation or experience of event or circumstance or feeling, was off limits. That, to me, is every kind of riches.

People, writers, artists, have been writing for centuries and yet it is never done, never complete. The work of living as though through the pen. Mmm… the keyboard, as it were. This never ending quest to feel the words come through for their own sake. What is there to say of writing, its allure? It is an affair. An affair with all aspects of life and death and every experience inbetween. I ache for it.

What was it that Elias Canetti said over half a century ago... ‘I cannot be modest; too many things burn in me…’

Imagine all the things you could write if decency were of no concern. I do.

I pour my dark coffee and pick up my jet black pen.