painted, palsied, sweating and drooling

(I honestly can't say.)

Some things I just miss. The stretched flesh of stereotypes, the salt pillars of lofty ambition, maybe the distended air of knowing that each step you take will be met by certain, pompous earth. And some things I just don't miss. The montony, the rigid colours, the distended air of knowing that each step you take will be met by certain, pompous earth.

I miss writing. I know, I know. I'm embarrassed, too. Thinking about this feels tantamount to playing with imaginary penises in public. Never mind thinking about this and blogging about it, too. To boot. But, it's my birthday (no, really, it is), and if that's not reason enough to grant my inhibitions some leniency, I don't know what is. Maybe I should do drugs next. And sex with... no, never mind.

I don't believe I was ever brilliant at writing, although I was never one to negate any compliments thrown my way for sure. It was contingency, mostly. That Lia, she's never been pretty, always been fat, never been exactly, strictly smart. But she can sure spin a yarn (is that the right metaphor?) sometimes. I haven't written in so long now, I wouldn't even know how to start a haiku.

I'd like to write though. And maybe one reason why I never allowed myself to consider it seriously and actually pursue a career in it was because I was afraid I'd find out I absolutely suck at it. It's one thing to write about little boys and God for the college magazine/paper/whatever, quite another to sit down and write a 500-page treatise on human error, frailty, triumph. Because that's the kind of book I'd like to write. Something expansive and dreadful, searing, endearing, ostentatious but in a bearable sort of way, easy. I'd like to write about that quiet gleam in your eye, the blue shadows shimmering on the walls to your every move. I'd like to write about history, and how circumstances so ostensibly detached from your present situation inform the way you talk, the way you tilt your head to the side whenever you feel stupid, the way you flick your wrist while you gesticulate. I'd like to write about absence - empty spaces and the quiet and savage memories that pool in them like black water. I'd like to write about your mother. I'd like to write about ideologies and how sometimes they can get reduced to inconsequential blips on TV, and how sometimes they can be tremendous and absolutely blinding.

Another reason would be (maybe) because I was afraid I wouldn't find out I absolutely suck at it, and end up hating the world for not appreciating me and my deluded sense of self. Yet another would be because I was afraid of having absolutely nothing to write about. What have I done, like seriously done, to merit fleshing out the written word? There's that tawdry little saying, about how one cannot sit down and write when one hasn't stood up and walked around and, I don't know, picked flowers and have conversations with hummingbirds. I'm not ready to tear off a bloody chunk of flesh and thought and put it on bloody display, and I couldn't subject others to anything half-assed. Not with my name on it. I may have no morals, but I'd like to think I have some standards. A few.

Maybe I'm just afraid of rejection. Maybe I'm afraid of being poor.

(No, I am afraid of being poor.)

Whatever. I'm boring myself.