paused

I could sit here another year, another series of days (ah... too many years and not enough days) without writing down the things I see. I could continue to pretend that happiness is a barrier to creativity, that only the Hemingways -- drunk and maudlin-- have the ear and voice of the muse. But I have so little to compare this to, so little sense of where normal will be when I become accustomed to loving so much, to feeling so abandoned to this thing, so lost in it-- and at the same time, found. I wonder where my feet will be when I near whatever ground is left-- when morning at Sauvie's Island, cold mist rising from big water slapping slapping sand, waiting for the bell to ring, him obsessed with fishing, me obsessed with him, just happy to be along for the ride-- when that ground rises to meet me. I must must must figure out how to keep the pen moving in the presence of contentment and suspension of all known things. To create still the fiction of my soul, to allow the words to come through-- even when I know he's looking.

Such is the pressure of an audience.