Stafford's Golden String

The other day, I was working on a piece. I had story to tell, and of two requests, one was that I leave behind some grains of truth. After some thought, I realized I would tell a story on my life. I sifted through the knots and jumbles of my memory for a while, and then a smile spread across my face as I realized with a sense of relaxed glee, I had wonderful records of those pieces of memory which are hardest to grasp- the thoughts and feelings of the moment. How did I feel? What was I thinking? How did I see the world? How did I get a long with the people in my life?

My years of journaling have taught me that my self is not static, and neither is life. Everything about the self changes: Ideas change, feelings change, friendships alter, family dynamics shift, preferences change. (A good movie for thoughts on this: Waking Life) Life changes; in the United States we are on average estimated to change professions at least three times, and to move residence one every seven years. As time goes on, as humans multiply at starting rates, the rate of change we experience in our lifetimes is growing at an exponential rate. 

So I record my heart; my feelings, my experiences, my beliefs, my moods, my shifts in health. I make it sound so disciplined, but so far it hasn't been. I don't write at a certain time of day, as Stafford describes, though I do admire that habit. I write because I have to; I scribble out words, sometimes with rough illustrations, sometimes in neatly drawn print as small as I can make it. Because of this at any time I choose, I can grab hold of the rope that ties me to my past, to I who I was, to who I became. 

For years I have wanted to be a writer. A "real" writer; some one who knows what she's doing, who has ideas, who tells stories. Maybe I wanted more than that in the beginning, like little girls who dream of being movie stars until they realize it's too impractical. Yet now I realize, (still with much hesitation,) I am a writer and have been for years. After all these years, and all the hours I've spent, sharing stories with friends, telling stories to strangers on the side-walk, clerks in the store, I've been reaching out. I'm reaching out to touch some one and say, here we are. We are here, together; and if some where along the way I can touch some one else, can help them lose for even a moment that sense of being alone in the universe, then I will be satisfied.

Writing is who I am. I would not be alive with out it.