I wish I were at the beach. Even if it were Old Orchard Beach in Maine, I'd rather be at the beach than here. I could put on a sweater over my t-shirt and shorts, and walk along the water's edge freezing off my kneecaps and loving every second of the sensation. The air would be salt-laden, a wonderful lung-cleansing tonic for the soul, and the wind would tousle the seagrass. I would watch the kestrels darting up and over the dunes and listen as they called to each other. The sound of waves alternately caressing then crashing against the rock outcropping up ahead would bring my blood pressure down as if by magic, and I would be free from the constant worries of my life. Free.
Here I stand again, speaking to an empty room. My thoughts aren't worth the cyberspace they would take up if I cared to tweet or post to Facebook, but here I stand anyway. I had no idea how long it had been since my muse had forced me to write. I used to write almost daily, poetry mostly, when I was younger and believed that someone cared what I had to say. I wanted to be e.e. cummings or T.S. Eliot or anyone who seemed to be so comfortable in his own skin to pour out his emotions onto a blank page. It took me a few years to realize that the writers who filled my pantheon of literary deities were not that comfortable after all, but wrote because not writing was more painful than the spilling of emotion. So I think I will take up my keyboard once more, wade out into the battle, and write.
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