Saturday, July 29, 2006

I've been accused of being an idealist, and I can't deny it; I know it to be true. I see more, often, than what's really there. This doubtless works to my detriment. The world is so much more interesting when you add your own details to it, to make it come out, if only in your own mind, the way you'd like it to if kingdoms were yours to command.

I write about some things. I don't write about everything. I write about what I want to select out of the noise and then I amplify and sharpen it into something else. I may even change so many details I find distracting that the retelling may change shape entirely and be something else -- something that may or may not be true to your own particular field of experience and/or vision. I don't know what to say about that.

I see what I want to see.

I like believing all things are possible, even when they're not. My father used to bring home broken machines from his work and store them in the den. I'd fuss over them in the summers, trying to turn them into something else.

I grew up thinking anything could be fixed, which is dangerous, of course (some things can't, or weren't meant to be, even). I remember taking a shoebox full of junk to my fifth-grade teacher and telling her I was making a vending machine. "For what?" "I'm not sure yet, but it's going to be wonderful, just wonderful," I breathed, and the sad thing is, I really believed it.

Or that I actually need to believe it in order to keep going. Needed it then, need it now. I write these posts because it's a way for me to keep that childish impetus alive -- thoughts are things, so you want to keep the good ones around, see? It's the most innocent form of magic.

I'm not having the easiest time right now. I can't go out in this heat and I'm not allowed to drive until I get to Cleveland Clinic next month, which makes me feel a bit like Driving Miss Dipsy. Yesterday it was a zillion degrees out and where was I? I was inside shivering, wrapped up in three quilts with a blood pressure of 71/41. I feel about as high-maintenance as an aging incontinent poodle.

So I laid in bed most of the day with my feet propped up on various pillows, notes and cards and papers scattered about as I wrote out my correspondence and stamped it for mailing out later. I have to get it together, because I have an arts and crafts fair to show up for next weekend. I'm not infirm, I'm not sick (really) I'm just like a car with a flat tire and I want to get on with it.

You know?