I Was Here; In Praise of Reading

Woodberry Forest, VA; Blowing Rock, NC.

And a terrible documentarian!

I try.

This blog.  And the half-filled, black-bound blank books in which I scribbled out my eighteen-year-old heart.  And the word document -poorly formatted, unaccountably titled- in which I tried to impress the first miserable, blistering weeks of motherhood.   And the scrawled, broken bits of sentences I use to grasp at for my son's first year as it howls past-

-I try.

And, over and over again, I lose my camera.   I have no smartphone.  I forget to write and forget to write and forget to write; or, worse, I shy away from it, edging past the white of the page like a nervous horse.

So why this circling back? Why do I keep worrying at it like a bruise, picking at it like a scab, trying to call up blood -though appalled when, at last, it appears? Why this futile, fruitless thing?

Because futile, yes.  But fruitless- no.  Something is borne, even if it's windfall, pointless, rot.

And because sometimes when I read, I read something so vivid, so piercingly correct, I know it's not just necessary but sufficient.  That it's the whole point: those words, that way, right now. 

And the only thing I can think might be worth anything is to stumble along beside those words, panting, yelping like a dog-

but at least my throat is open.