Sisyphus

I really wanted to write something. Really. I had this nebulous blossoming something in my mind, waiting for me to wrap its misty tendrils around my hands, to string them from finger to finger like pearls prized from the mouth of dusk, to listen to the whispering of shades and shape their wordless murmer into language, to give them mouths, give them tongues, give them a place among the living.

I had myself all set to do it, and do it well. I sat down, I poised my hands over the keyboard, I waited. I felt the drifting shapes moving in the ether.

I thought maybe I was supposed to talk of rainbows, of rain, of the seres and golds and ochres that mantle November and squeeze the heart with their desolate beauty. I thought I was supposed to talk about God, about promises, about love and the freedom love gives from the constriction of fear and the way in which wounds I was too young to remember receiving have broken open and are being restored. I thought I was supposed to weave those things together, the threads from many shrouds, into breathing woolen warmth to swaddle you as you sit chilly and alone on the couch, or pace sipping coffee, sipping tea on a rainy or sunny day, or stretch out for a nap, or turn your hand to the always unfinished labor, or take just a moment to stare at nothing and breathe. I wanted to do it -- wanted the words born of that something to reach out and arrest you with the loveliness of truth, give you something to drop into your pocket and carry with you through the day. I wanted that something to say something. I wanted to be just the right kind of channel, write just the right words, hit upon that one thing waiting to be said.

But I don't know what it is, the film keeps wafting just away from my fingertips, and I can't quite move lightly, quickly enough to take what is formless and forge it into form. I'm watching it on a day dying down toward winter, watching it borne away from me trailing hints of secrets, hints of undiscovered, life-giving truth, and I'm rooted to the ground with yearning, watching it fly, because I want to capture it and give it to you, want to draw out the truth and secrets with loving skill, show you the colors lifted perfectly from the gray. I want to tell you, and I don't know how, and all I can tell you, in the end, is the wanting, and the promise that what I wanted to say was beautiful.