These threads of my life, and sometimes exaggerated fiction, are now woven into a narrative. I wonder if there is some benefit to this ordeal. It may be hubris, but sometimes, I think about how this is a golden volume of the quintessential experience of being a person in this day and age. And if it may not be everyone’s experience, I would still say some bits here are more pedestrian than others. When I say pedestrian, I do not mean it as some negative, run-of-the-mill quality but as common as the air we breathe, as regular as laughter, and as present as time itself.
But all that aside, it is an archive if it ends up being nothing else. If my life turns out so that I never write stories or books and maybe even wholly cease this practice as time treads on, I could still return to these words, and they would still remind me of things. And if I become someone celebrated for all the tales I lived to tell, these words would serve the same purpose still.
Often, conversation around a dinner table moves into my writing. “Are you not writing anymore?” Someone pops the question. “Oh, I am; every day, in fact, only I do not talk about it now,” I answer earnestly, trying my best to not sound pompous. Then, I sense it: the gasps and sighs, the rolling of the eyes. I sense it immediately and spontaneously, and I sense it all. Then, I remind myself of how those who want to read my work do so without a loaded question, and those who do not (and, perhaps, never do) find a way to tell me how I ought to find ways to get these words into more hands, how I ought to write more about things people often think of, how I ought to make it all approachable.
I do not know what people think about, but I reckon they think about their hearts here and there, and I feel they worry about others sometimes, and I am sure they struggle to find their place in the world. If my assumptions are valid, then these words are precisely what people think about, and the banality of my work is its appeal. But then, I wonder if facing what you think about often is even desirable. That could be the case. I, too, wish I could escape the unnecessary burden of being a living, thinking person now and then.