Every time I glance at this account, it makes me happy. It simply reinforces my lifelong love affair with words. They are old friends, these words; they are old lovers and old lives, old fantasies and fears. They are the beauty of goodbye and the excitement of new beginnings, the heartbreak of failure--the hope of something more. They are me as a better man and me as a coward; they are anger and bitterness just as they are joy and regret--and tenderness. They are gentle and harsh; they are reminders.

The account began with force in Ireland for the very purpose of participating in NaPoWriMo, and it's become something of an artifact of my love affair with one burly Irishman named Brody. He helped me craft my poems, some nights; he helped me choose which to post and which to discard--which to keep safe and secret and which to share. And he also became the inspiration for a few--and then a few short vignettes, and then a few short stories, and then--well, suffice to say that Brody gave me back a passion for writing I'd lost along the way. He was, and remains, a receptive, caring, unselfish audience willing to participate in the give-and-take I need to feel as a writer and a man.

Indeed, when looking back, I believe it's our work around this account that made me fall in love with him. It's certainly what led me to leave Ireland and run far and fast away, back to what I wished were waiting. And it was this account, after spending an evening reading through and remembering our conversations about the words, that made me get on a plane and run right back to him.

That, I think, is the beauty of words--of writing. It's not the piece, but the conversation. It's the inevitable honesty, the unfortunate arguments, the trust in forgiveness and trying again. In order to understand a person when they're talking about words from a place of passion and movement, you must truly understand them on another, deeper level. It will not happen with everyone, and it is a connection, once forged, that only runs to ruin through neglect.

I have met several others whom I connect with on these levels, and I cherish each of them. Their conversations are not frequent or planned, but simply happen--and it's sparks every time. It's the hint of something lost and something gained--something exciting that need not root itself in the everyday.

I think it's the everyday that destroys us, sometimes. When we find connections like these, we devour them; we try to enlist them as soldiers in the dreaded war of loneliness, and we waste them--let them wither. We forget the words we needed to manufacture the feelings; we fake it because we knew, once upon a time, it was special--unique. And we think it must still be in there, somewhere. It must.

And it is. But we will not find it while looking. The tragedy is that we cannot force ourselves to stop.

Love is the only cushion for defeat.



Writing Wish List?

I still owe the following people the following things, but I cannot promise I will actually get to them:

A poem about walking alone at night that is not noir and does not deal with thinking about a lover (^SparrowSong)
A poem about ice and piano-playing (~ancient-seeker)
A sonnet about unrequited love (=levdir)
A girl getting wet in the rain who has a raincoat for her books (`lovetodeviate)
"Whilst investigating an old house in her home town as part of a murder investigation, young trainee detective Louise Mayor opens a door she regrets ever opening. Inside that door is a room that takes her somewhere else, somewhere not so delightful… where did it take her? What did she see?" (`Beccalicious)
A science fiction piece about a young couple in their 20's--no kids--who are chosen by NASA to colonized Mars. (~Discgolf)
Something about a dress, a black notebook and a dirt road (~cut-devil4)
Something about solitude and finding people tiring. (~MeadowCress)