Illusion

Today I am trying a new activity.  It’s called Inspire Me Thursday.  This week’s task is to write about an illusion.  I chose to share a journal entry with you.  How does this fit in with the illusion topic?  Well, it’s about the illusion of writing.  I hope you enjoy it.

August 6, 2002

I sit and think about what I should write.  Should it be about my trip this weekend or should I write about the crazy mess that seems to be consuming me at the moment?  No, too confusing;  too long a story.  Wouldn’t make sense.  I’d come off as a crazy lady!

I’m still sitting and I still haven’t found anything to write about.  I even made myself more comfortable.  I’m not sitting.  Now I’m kind of lying on my bed, on my right side, with my legs curled up toward my chest.  My left elbow is propping me up and my notebook is lying on top of my unmade bed.  The deep blue vellux blanket throw I keep next to me, just in case it gets cold is also under my notebook.  And the notebook is on top of my yellow bedspread that looks like a quilt but isn’t.  There are magazines, Ladies Home Journal and Disney and Family Fun.  There’s yesterday’s mail underneath my notebook.  I think I should spend some time making up my bed and tidying up my room but then I’d have to stop writing what I’m not writing about and I don’t want to stop writing what I’m not writing about.

I don’t want to stop writing.  I don’t want to stop doing what I want to do just because it isn’t what others want me to do. I don’t want to stop and I won’t stop.  I always do that and end up forgetting what I want and who I am.  No more.  No.  No. I won’t stop writing.

The shuttered window is up past my head and my body is positioned across the width of my bed.  I’ve opened two of the four shutters to let more light in.  It is a busy street outside of my second story window and every twenty seconds I hear a car go by, sometimes with screeching brakes, sometimes with loud music escaping from inside the home-away-from-home car.  It’s a bright sunny day with the slight breeze blowing the leaves of the taller-than-my-two-story-building-but-yet-young sycamore.  Birds call out to one another, enjoying the mid-summer day.  Just past the street, fifty feet above, is the freeway that provides a constant din that never quite goes away, regardless of the time of day or night.

The birds are noisy this afternoon and I wonder what their “gawks” are about and what kind of birds they are.  They remind me of being out in the wild even as the passing cars remind me that I’m not!  High above somewhere in the beautiful  clear blue sky that has graced us today, I hear the low sound from an airplane’s engine and I let myself wonder where the plane is going; where it is coming from; what stories it carries inside of it and which ones it leaves behind.

Out of the corner of my eye I am aware of the computer monitor being on as the screen refreshes itself.  My desk is a mess.  I have to find time to clean it and a place to put all of those things.  I have to find time to work on my writing but first I have to find something to write about.  I’m still laying here with nothing to write.  It’s funny because I am never at a loss for something to write.  Never.  I have so much to say.  I have so much that needs to be listened to.  I have so much inside of me, waiting to come out; struggling to come out.  I have so much inside of me that I want to share.  I have to find the time to find what I want to write and write it.  But first, I have to clean my desk and make up the bed and tidy up my room.

The three foot high oscillating fan sits half way between me and the desk.  It looks lonely standing there, unused but it just isn’t needed today.  Not right now.  It’s a nice temperature; neither too hot nor too cold.  An occasional breeze on my bare right arm makes me think I may need a blanket or a sweater but the breeze passes and so does another car.

The sound of a door opening comes from my computer telling me that someone on my buddy list has signed on.  I wonder who it is.  I wait, without breathing.  Is it him?  I hope it is.  But no Instant Message comes and I hear the gawking birds; a speeding car; someone on the stairs outside my room.  I lay here and still I have written nothing.