In the years I have been writing I probably have had one
hundred first lines pop into my head.
Maybe two lines. On rare
occasions a whole concept emerges.
It happens like this.
I am sitting watching the news or a favorite TV show or reading a
book. Something triggers a thought and
I know I have to write that down.
But first, I have to finish whatever it is I am doing. Then it happens. The first line is either gone or the story that was supposed to
follow it doesn’t materialize as I hoped it would.
Well, here I am again with a first line. No, I’m sorry. That first line disappeared and I am stuck with the one you see
at the head of this article. Damn! It
has happened again. This time, however,
I decided to go ahead and see if starting to write would reproduce the
“creative” urge that first struck my consciousness just a short while ago.
What follows may turn out to be the ramblings of an aging
person who cannot string even a few words together into a meaningful sentence,
or if I am lucky, I may actually tell you what is on my mind. Let’s see what happens next.
Every story has a beginning, a middle and an ending. Without those three elements it is unlikely
that what is written or told will make much sense.
Here is a beginning.
What I am generally feeling when the urge to write strikes
is a connection or a lack of connection where I feel one should
exist. It may be about a person, an
idea or an experience. It surges up
within me as strong emotions that are difficult describe, but clearly
understood within my being. I think one
of the articles I have written in the past that most closely approximates those
feelings was after I had watched the annual Kennedy Honors Program in
2006. I wrote about the experience in my
book, Moments. After hearing the
story of each of the honorees, I had almost indescribable feelings of love
flood my whole being. I felt a
closeness, not only to the characterization of those being honored, but to my
family members and friends whom I have loved through the years and the
experiences we shared. The connection
was beyond my ability to put into words as clearly as I felt it.
For some, love is easy to understand. It is something that is just there. No explanations are needed and no qualifications
are required. Love is! For others love may represent the toughest
of times. It may surround a loss of
some kind. It may seem unrequited,
unfulfilled. And for yet others there
may be the tragedy of being so bound to another person that unbelievable abuse
is tolerated until one somehow breaks free.
I know that not everyone will see these as examples of love, but
for the person so involved at that particular time with their particular state
of being, that may be all they know.
Here is the middle.
I have experienced many levels of love and loss. I know I am not the only one who has. They
have produced impressions on the slate of my soul that are like the
certificates of accomplishment of a job well done or the scars of some
abuse. In all honesty I have to admit
to recognizing the scars of some form of abuse, mostly those I have been
responsible for inflicting, more than any supposed certificates of merit. There are heavy emotions associated with
those events. I am sure the depth of
the emotions has much to do with the fact that the experiences behind them are
unresolved, unfinished. What else could
be the reason that they surface so emphatically that they sometimes bring tears
to my eyes when they happen?
I can hear someone out there saying, “For heaven’s sake,
man, get a life! Get over it.” I hear you.
I know some of the many ways in which one could bind together these
unraveled ends of life events and “get over it.” After all, I have spent most of my life dealing with, exploring,
using and enjoying a philosophy of life that seemed to bring results that
satisfied. Then the story line was
interrupted and I have not yet been able to reconstruct the point at which the
fabric of my life began to unravel. So
the healing has not come forth. Worse
than that, there are times I really don’t care.
This is where the ending should occur.
This is where I should be telling you how I worked
everything out and remembered what was so important in the first place. At the beginning of this article I
said, “I decided to go ahead and see if
starting to write would reproduce the ‘creative’ urge that first struck my
consciousness just a short while ago.”
Well, I never quite got back to where I thought I wanted to go. The emotional content seemed to evaporate
like a wisp of smoke. Sometimes life
is like that. You think you are heading
toward point A and somewhere along the path you change directions and are
heading for point B without knowing if that is really where you intended or
wanted to go. There is a point C in the
offing. If I choose to head there, will
it be where I hoped to go?
As you may note, I have not succeeded in explaining, at
least to my satisfaction, the emergence of the “connecting/disconnecting”
emotions. Such events will continue to
come, I am certain, and I will continue to experience and attempt to understand
them. When the opening sentence, or
paragraph, presents itself I will offer it an opportunity to take fuller form. In the meantime . . .
