Morning pages, afternoon pages, pages of my woe, of obstacles designed specifically for me, for a perfectionist like me, who likes to ponder about commas and where to indent the line and fickle or sickle to my wrists, oh ye control freaks, and perfectionists, who like to ponder moments before they arrive and long after they are gone, what little worlds are you and I constructing in the neat gardens of our imagination? What worlds are we conjuring all of us as we sit on the subway in silence, avoiding one another's eyes, looking at everything, posters, bits of rubbish on the floor, old vandals' signatures, and rereading advertisements, all to avoid holding a stranger's gaze? What is it that we are avoiding? What do we have to lose but the little worlds and big thoughts that consume us in transit?
There are 10,000 ways to greet a stranger, and not all of them involve words or speech. And I near my stop, time flies when the pages flow from me, I need this like my body needs exercise and stretching, I am not quite sure what I am stretching when the pages consume me, but it is somewhere inside, maybe my head, maybe even faintly in my hand, but most certainly somewhere inside my gut or chest, is my throat involved at all? Or is that only when I am conversating freely? Is this a form of conversation? Who am I having a dialogue with when I write freely in the pages? Is it me and myself? One part to another? Which parts are involved? If this is truly conversation, does it reflect the same dynamism as the dialogue between two persons? Certainly not, right? I mean, it is much slower to write a word than it is to speak it, for another, you have no idea what could be said next in a conversation, could the same be said of this inner dialogue? Could I really surprise myself? Could I checkmate myself without knowing it if inner dialogue were a game of chess?
I don't think so, but what do I really know without swimming the length and depth of the morning pages? So I will swim, and doggy paddle and pull myself through the sluggish waters of my soul, and commit to the pages every chance I get until I have an answer, or until I start writing poems again.
There are 10,000 ways I could write this; I am lost and I am looking to be found, no I am lost and I am looking for myself, a part of me is in the lost and found, but I can't remember where I lost it so I don't know where to look, or I am blind to parts of me, so I believe parts of me are lost, but really I don't know what I am looking for, I don't know what's lost or found, I am looking for something I cannot name, I am looking for something I am not even sure I can recognize.
Good to know these thoughts run through another human being. Made from the same fabric.
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