I have been away from here for far too long.  No, I haven’t stopped writing.  I just haven’t been here.  The other day I was going through files on one of my flash drives and came across some things I had written about 5 years ago.  This is one of them, written in June of 2005.  It was 5 years ago, but yesterday.  It is old thoughts but not. 

Why write?  Why not?  Someone has to, needs to, to keep some form of communication going, to see what spills out onto the page.  If I write I might surprise myself.  Samantha just called.  She is talking to her dad, her voice carrying over the phone to my end of the couch.  I keep writing, one line at a time to reveal me to me.  Sometimes I think this is such a waste of time, to write for why I don’t know, but I keep coming back to it.  I cannot not do this.

The air conditioner hums in the background, the TV is silent.  Paul, now off the phone is reading.  I am writing.

The couch is scattered with books, a pen, the digital camera, a TV remote, a cell phone.  These are some of the trappings of a modern day existence for me, yet also things of substance and stability.  The written word and tools to write, these I need.  Pens, my journal here in my lap, don’t leave home without it.  One never knows when the writing bug will bite and the need to put pen to paper will take over.

Why, oh why do I write?  Do I want to write?  Need to write?  I write to see into clarity, to understand or to question the hows and whys.  How do things come into being?  Why are we here?  What is to become of us?  Of me?

This all seems like such babble but a baby must babble first to begin the foundation of speech.  Isn’t the same true for the writer?  Don’t we babble ourselves through nonsense into clarity?  Into fuller and deeper written words?

I write to catch moon beams off the crescent sliver in the night sky.  I write to calm the dry dusty desert windstorm blowing through my soul, stopping up my ears, making it hard for me to hear the deep voice of sanity.  I write to calm my mind, to gain direction, to get off the merry go round, or maybe to get on it, to seek adventure, to see where the spinning wheel will stop.  I write for my mother and Minnie, to carry on a familiar yearning, this blood deep need to write.  Some days this feels like a curse, other days, blessing and gift.  Some days I can ignore it, but not for long.

What happens when I don’t write?  My body aches, my soul parches, even reading about writing is some help.  It is a tease but it leads me back to the page or the computer again.  How does this writing, just for the sake of the practice shape me?  Us?  Shape our lives?  Our souls?

Reading and writing a life..We read, we write, we write, we read.  Our thoughts and the thoughts of others, weaving together, insights and aah’s…yes, that fits, no, that’s a discard…keep writing…see where you end up.  There really is no beginning or end…Writing is this ongoing  journey, a spiraling into, going deeper, coming up for air, for insight, with new questions, then going back to the blank page.