Writing isn’t hard, at least not for me. When people say to me, “Tod, you write so well. I love how you express yourself so beautifully. You do know you should publish the things you write because more people need to read them, don’t you?” Of course, with the entirety of my being, I accept the compliment and my heart feels the humility these compliments deserve. What’s more, I always feel respectful high regard for the intentionality behind these compliments which feel very much like the milk of human kindness. Then, for what’s probably a brief second, maybe less, I wonder if anyone understands how writing is easy for me. As that thought fades, I’m left happy that someone read a piece that I had written, and I wonder that as they read my words if they felt the love I wanted and hoped they’d feel.
I often say that life isn’t simple, nor is it simply understood. So it is with my writing. Something else I often say is that when I’ve not written for an extended amount of time, “I’ve not been faithful to the lady I love.” I say this knowing writing is like someone I can confide in and depend upon, and while writing isn’t hard for me, I regret the times I fail to work at writing. In March of 2020, I described this very thing like this…
“Seems if I were honest, I'd tell the world writing is the love of my life. She's the one I always hold close to my breast and defend to the death. I wrote to you about her after hearing Sting share his story "Fields Of Gold" with me, and I told you this - "I acquiesced to the realization that what he held in his heart he held because beauty happened to him in the realm of warm flesh and blood and that for me, I'll always hold beauty in my mind in the realm of words - a narrative of a tiny two-paragraph story and I felt a contentment in this acquiescence. Somehow, somewhere in my story, my mind can experience a lesser form of his, "See the west wind move like a lover so upon the fields of barley. Feel her body rise when you kiss her mouth among the fields of gold". My story will read another way, with other words of less clarity of beauty, but the story will tell something just as nice. Just as my friend will feel the warm sun in some jealous sky somewhere as he presses against and feels the warmth of someone, in the stories I write, my mind can reveal to me this same feeling, over and over again, even as many years pass."
Still, I'm not always so faithful to this lady of mine. Sometimes I think I miss her beautiful smile and bright eyes that share with me the brilliance of the sun, moon, and stars. Then I miss her soft skin and gentle body she calmly and patiently pushes against me - while at the
same time she knowingly and lovingly soothes me with her soft caresses to my brow, efficiently eliminating all my worries. It's true that in her I know beauty exists in a dark and ugly world.
To move, to positively pass through time, that's so worth it - that's breathing, that's living a life. Fear can steal a breath, end a movement, make an assured step become hesitant. And what do I desire so much that gives gravity to fear? Love, of course; closeness, of course; another, of course. How? Loss of it all. To lose love and closeness and another - that is fear and the gravity that tethers one to it.
But words stay with me until they don't. No words, well no words bring along being scared; being afraid. Then the search. Looking. A feeling, a deep thought, a flood of emotion. Where do I find light? In the Pause. Pause. Pause. In my heart, here. Embrace. Singing, touching with tenderness, being kind. One word, then two, more follow. Poetry in the beauty speaking warmth, calling me, asking me to join in. I desired you with a great desire. All the colors and the places their abundance take me. Stay with me, I want you and your voice where it's written - each and every letter so dear to my heart. Welcome back!"
Writing means so much to me and in a crazy, messy, tumultuous world, writing always gives me peace and tranquility. Yet, I don’t always write, and when I don’t write, I find myself lonely and miserable, laboring to breathe, and pushing steps through time and space become too hard. Then when I finally come back to put letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs together into something that shines light, pops of color, and reads beautifully, then I can finally breathe with ease, I can smile, I can be happy, and I can’t wait to use my feet to push myself through time and space.
Let’s talk about pushing myself through time and space. I’m on a journey, ha, that’s exactly what the time and space thing means. Of this journey, I once wrote this…
“When a man has found a woman's love, he's discovered the most precious substance in the universe. A life lived is hopefully full of emotion. Emotions bring us to so many places, and as we arrive at these destinations we can cry, laugh, hate, love, and feel whatever our destination asks us to feel. At no better destination does anyone wish to arrive than in love and upon arrival, a man wishes more than anything to find that most precious substance just mentioned. Still, when he arrives at this place called love, life continues to demand his undivided attention and causes the beauty of love to look faded and dull. A life lived always seeks to live in loves destination, but life lived doesn't make navigating this place easy. In this struggle to navigate, he can only hope to stay in love. And SO a life lived through love goes as it has always gone. But about that word “so”, it's an okay word because a life lived in love is worth a struggle, anyone who's ever lived there will tell you so.
Living in this place, when a man discovers he loves this woman in return, he knows he's found loves true destination. For them, the light found in their love has given him every color he ever hoped to have and it's with this color that he finds nothing but ultimate beauty in this place he'd previously felt to be only as real as the city of El Dorado. So while he'd sighed before, he's never sighed with true contentment. He's grateful for this sound, this sound he makes as he experiences this truly contented sigh. Then, simply as a matter of logic and fact, time and space makes its presence known as a life lived happens.
So while living in love, life throws so many things his way. While love floods his heart with all its warm light, he has the opportunity to experience every color every rainbow has always offered everyone. Best of all and most importantly to them together, with all the tenderness in the world, he experiences all this light and all these colors with her! Together with her, he chooses to see bright happy colors and his heart smiles abound. Eventually, the science of time and space affects this place where they reside in love, and his lived life allows the light in life to become dull. Navigating love now becomes harder for him as he notices more and more colors that to him are darker and colder.
So now when a life lived has asked him to consider the attention and loyalty it requires and as he dutifully gives life lived its due, as loves light begins to diminish in his heart, he becomes ever more cognizant of the truth of this woman's love. In love, but more and more despite her love; bad taste has a life lived seeing him choose to drink over sharing her continued precious substance. Still, as drunk as he gets, she continually brings him into her home wherein love she keeps him warm and safe from harm. Then, as time and space wear him down, he becomes louder, more menacing, even baleful. Even here in love, the place where her heart has always thrived, she begins to feel insecure, and doubt knocks on her door and none of his gratitude can alleviate doubts knock. In his heart, as he feels loves light dimming, when he's not run away to live in destinations that ask him to hate and cry, he becomes darker and acts colder toward all the love she freely offers him. Living life means he now forcibly takes from her all the love she freely offers him. But a life lived is a funny thing and although he's often living in the cold and acting on his darker impulses, he's still aware her love for him is the most precious substance in the universe, and despite his tendency to follow his inner demons, there are still those moments lying next to her while he steals her loving light, in his shame he manages to gently caress her lovely cheek and she feels the spark of light still in his heart. They both sigh an uncertain sigh.”
It’s interesting, this thing we all do because we must do it - live life. A life lived isn’t simple nor is it simply understood. So it is with rather I write, or rather I don’t write. You see, my writing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The Letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs I write don’t just appear out of the ether - the place that's wholly outside my skin. They come from a deep, real, and meaningful searching of my heart to find out what is really real, true, needful in my ever-evolving journey. So to say as I have in the past, that I’ve not been faithful to my writing, I’m actually saying I’ve avoided my heart.
All the light I find for my writing, well it shows all of us the many colors I’ll happily mention. Then, when I use all those marvelous and wonderful colors to write something that’s beautiful, where did all that beauty come from? I'm writing this with tears - it comes from the heart of Tod w/ only one d, it comes from me! As someone once said, “I’m cute, I’m cute. She said I’m cute!” For a life lived mostly in the darkness that was void of light, colors, and beauty, I’d almost rather say I receive compliments about my writing and encouragement to publish my written pieces because everything I wrote about simply came from the ether. But the truth of the matter, a new truism for me, is this confession - all that light, all that color, and all that beauty I ever wrote about came from the depths of my heart.
So what about not writing? Am I merely avoiding typing out letters to form words, that then form sentences, that form paragraphs, that form a short, but eloquent short story because I don’t want to tell this beautiful story? Ha, I already told you life isn’t that simple. In fact, that’s not the case at all! The truth of the matter is how not writing indicates how cold and dark my heart is feeling. Beyond that, it’s also an indication I’ve failed - for fear of what - to look at and write about whatever it is that has made my heart fall into a slough of despondency. I do know that there are times when I wrestle to remove my heart out of this dreaded bog, but, and this hasn’t happened in some time, the more I wrestle and fight the bog, the deeper I sink into it. These are the things, stuff, and issues that dim, and eventually relinquish the glorious light my heart desires to bask in. A further fact is how in recent days, weeks, and months, I’ve acquiesced to the darkness. I’ve laid myself down so that this slough might overtake and engulf me. The things, the stuff, the issues, I just don’t want to face in the dark. In this darkness, I desire to keep it to myself or said another way, the meanness of darkness has never been something I wish to share, at least not until there’s the silver lining of a life’s lesson that’s been learned. The funny thing is, I’ve just found the beginning of said silver lining. Light, in tiny slivers, is piercing this veil of darkness. As I look around, faint colors are adding much-needed variation to everything that previously had been distorted and hard for me to know and understand, like, this bog isn't so deep nor is it hard to move through and out of. Beauty now seems a very possible possibility. I’m writing, and I think I’ve already mentioned I love writing, and holding her close to my breast is something that gives me nothing but rich dividends.
Love and Peace
Tod w/ only one d
Comments