Books I’ve been reading lately have been pushing me into wanting to write. I’m not used to this desire and I’m certainly uncertain what to do with it, but I have a pleasant rainy evening at the computer in a lovely house with cheery people conversation drifting up the white stairs like an auditory treasure touched with light jazz. I’m tempted to try creative non-fiction, because that’s what I write in my dwindling use paper journal. (The pen cannot keep pace with the keys and so is used on transit only, leaving me with practically illegible pages as a matter of course). I’m stuck not knowing what parts of my day to press to the white light of the digital page, which colours compress well, which conversations take well to being dialogue.
I’ve never talked about writing with anyone before, let alone anyone who considered themselves a writer, before Saturday night with Merilee. Processes have started in my head, the realization that maybe I might have a chance to make something, create something, even if it is not the holy awe fiction my hands crave to pour out like light. Barring that, when headlines are Vatican claims to millions, “Condoms don’t stop AIDS” it behooves me to share, to point anyone I can at this. Communication can solve things, can render ineducation inoperable. Is that why I have this thing? Every time I explain why I keep a journal to those who don’t have one, I smooth my heavy skirts and come back to my line about how the dissemination of information is sexy. Then I look up and explain heatedly that this is where my friends are, where it’s possible to meet people not profiles. I have no soap opera on my flist, I have photographers, writers, university professors, and the occasional cross-dressing scientist. I have tried to find the blogs they complain about and in spite of the Random option, I’ve never found one. Instead I find automata who writes down her life in Juneau so poignantly that I want to spend time in old yellow-glass-over-the-lights kind of bars to track down these people she meets every day or quitevolatile who captures still frame moments of scintillating pretty and introduces us to her friend who did the cover shots for Rasputina‘s latest album. I wouldn’t be in Toronto now if it weren’t for these people. I wouldn’t be as well educated or this likely to meet splendid people.
(Hah, there, perhaps I’ve hit on it. Livejournal infers luck upon the user).