A Long Line of Ordinary...
Magic memory closes every lane down. Still, these words leak like heedlessness—jammed on every page with no one switching footpaths. They were the most eminent teachers who left imprints like roads that tethered me to my spot on the map. Even through the blockades of death, first loves, or valiant blisters of heartbreak, they have remained. And I owe it all to the craft.
Why am I still penning about my life this way?
It's not that I don't remember or, for that matter, want reminding, but this documentation style has a way of solidifying certain truths in my life. It all started the year I graduated high school in 2010 and has remained through bold efforts of never fitting in. There was no hidden quest in the act of journaling from which I began, but to name it as such was to start anew.
All I needed was a clean slate and a wealthy heart
"Better start scrubbing," I thought as I scrutinized the filth that had become wildly apparent. At 32, I knew exactly where to start, but I couldn't tell you where or if it may ever end. I come from a long line of ordinary and have surrendered plenty – C’est la vie, it’s no excuse to stop composing. These words may end up being nothing more than an ode to the life I've been living. All that I inherited from a last name, written like a fortune in these stacks of paper.
For the past 14 years, on any given day or occasion of inadequacy, I've engaged in the act, if only to make sense of the mind. Now, I hear those thoughts that impair the heart with liberation and get lost in them. If nothing else, it would be the sequence from which I knew to begin, between two lines on paper, where my thoughts come undone. What has been hidden in my ventures from one state to another between new cities and storage units, one dark closet after another choosing to resurface itself. And for one reason or another, they’re throwing me a line as I recall each year by the bind of a notebook cover, only this time, it feels like poetic justice.
"What a difference a door makes. Its versatility alone is impressive.
It's all about the ability to function, to do both - let someone in or shut them out completely. Picture the magic of memory to start closing all these lanes down. I'm trying to forget what feels beaten down. But it's a bid back to reality when I'm caught up in every thought revolving around all that needs fixing - like this door.
Don't even talk about it now. I just let it escape my mind, with no thoughts of catching it as it withers into the dust of nothingness. I'm like the last kid on the bus; I feel the physical ache from each one departing. I know what I know, but somehow, I’ve said nothing. Then, close your eyes and paint a picture with the silence of sounds in the breeze.
The curtains may close, but never put the pen down.”
- a.lipp