A note to my reader:
When I think of myself as a writer, I think of myself as a jester of the world, and I belong to those who need a moment of respite. My act of writing is one to entertain. I do not write to inspire; I do not write to change. I am too little to make a large dent in the world, and these words are too simple for someone to take note of them.
Now, of course, a jester entertains but a jester also makes you see things you know to be true but would not accept. He makes it apparent with some wit here and there. A jester is the perfect mix of show and life, often using his own act to show you something hidden from yourself.
A jester is also, of course, a fool, and a fool I am.
I could, obviously, write about three hundred words of la dee doo and give you two seconds of sunshine and false hope. It isn’t hard to do. I can whip fifty of those pieces by the morning for you if that’s what you’d like. That stuff sells too. People love leaving a piece thinking the next rainbow will grow from their footstep.
But, I won’t.
I’d rather give you something else. I’d rather give you the truth with a metaphor snuck in between. I’d give you a moment of belonging, of knowing there is someone else who feels something you feel; that there are others. For that’s what I have always needed too: not to know it’ll be okay, because it always is okay in the end, but that it is okay to feel how it feels as it happens.
I’d rather talk to my demons and my angels all night long, laugh with them over cups of coffee and whiskey sours and tell it all exactly how it all is. Just so we can be together for a minute, you and I, as equals, as humans. No, I don’t know some secret to life, and no, I can’t answer everything.
In the end, we’ll be fewer, you and I, but we’ll be the real ones. We’ll be the ones who sit together and do not say a word sometimes, but the ones who know. We’ll be the ones who know.
That’s why I write to you. That’s why I write at all.