AQE: Wordy Mist

The Writer—who is me but a third-person version of Aspen—slowly emerges from her hiatus. Hiatus sounds pretentiously romantic. It wasn't that at all-just cold weather and chilly emotions taking the wind from her wings.

The Writer plummeted from the chill. She crashed.

And she lay unmoving and looked up from where the gravity of life and culture pulled her down. It could have been a moment to find some breath. Maybe find some space if life were that easy.

It isn't.

The Writer didn't find much rest or space. She found breath and

now is the time to dip the metaphoric quill into the nocturnal ink.

She hesitates.

The Writer knows she needs to write through the mist of unknown words.

Or something.

The Writer doesn't actually know. So, she takes flight through the mist, totally lost. Glides with newfound trust but is totally clueless about where to pick up. Where to resume. It doesn't help that she never knew where she was going in the first place. There is an overall goal that she tries to reach. But at the end of the day, the goal is as shapeless and opaque as the mist.

Is the goal the mist?

Maybe?

In the last three years, the elements of writing she's picked up have confused the Writer about voice and style. She questions her process and outcomes. When she reads words authored by others, her frustration grows. What is good and what isn't?

Words that once appeared eloquent now look tarnished. Where she thought there were answers, there are none. But looking at other collections of words and bunches of lyrics, ideas popping out from the page are words that did not shine before.

It is intellectual and poetic growth causing these manifestations and decay. None of it helps her find confidence in her own words. Knowing the movement is there does not create security but seeds more worry.

Doubt gnaws her mind.

The Writer's heart grows heavy. This heaviness once drove her to seek beer's hoppy kiss and the warm, caramel embrace of whiskey.

She doesn't crave the sharp numbness in the same way (s)he once did. She counts herself lucky that the escape is no longer a crutch. She stays aware that a balance exists. One false step, one moment of laxity created by despair, happiness, or exhaustion, could send her sprawling back into a sticky mire that may be impossible to escape again.

And, still, as she worries, time and material continue to churn together. We all are just bodies moving in constant transition.

Transition never gives way to the stasis found in imagined security and peace. So, the Writer clings to the pain and curiosity of her art, her life. She searches for something that just might be nothing.

But for now, she closes the notebook and lays her pen down. It's time for a walk.