There have been a billion words on the tip of my tongue these last few days. And why wouldn’t there be? I am a wordsmith, a moniker merchant, a purveyor of plots and a siren of sumptuous story lines I mean, writing is my art. It’s my lame attempt to take a paintbrush and spread some sort of beauty on a page -- and I can’t draw to save my life, so it’s really my only other option.
So I write. I communicate. It’s kind of what I do.
With that said, I rarely am I left speechless, or, for that
matter, lacking in the communication department. Yet, lately, I find myself
unable to do what I do best… convey what’s going on in my brain onto the page,
or even to other people. And it’s frustrating to me. In fact, it’s incredibly
frustrating to me.
With that said, my frustration began dissipating when I
realized my problem wasn’t coming from the fact that I don’t know what I want
to say (not exactly, not yet), because I do. I just don’t know how to say it.
And, truth be told, I’m not ready to say it just yet anyway.
Basically, this is me admitting that I was on the wrong
track, and saying that I am adjusting course and taking a new approach. And
with change comes resistance, and the birth of fear and uncertainty. So the
fear becomes a blockade of gargantuan proportion, and I thought (initially)
that it was that catalyst that stunned me into silence.
But it wasn’t.
Still, I write on.
For now, I backspace, I delete, I close the document, I
throw papers in the trash, I chew on pencils, I twist pen caps, I fiddle with
my hair, I toy with my jewelry and I fidget like crazy. I do all of the stupid
little habits that I do when I’m nervous or when I’m contemplating my next move;
or when I’m thinking really, really hard about what I want to say. Because I
just can’t seem to shut this brain of mind off, no matter how hard I try to.
And, the thing is, I don’t really want to.
Now, here’s the real mind bender in all of this:
I always say that life is short, that we should spend less
time thinking about it and just live life to its full potential -- and when I
say this, I mean our lives (not someone else’s). But despite my best intentions
and my advice, I find myself hypocritically waiting my turn; biting my tongue
until I can feel it bleeding in my own jaw, and until I hear ringing in my ears
from the pounding of the words in my brain, begging for release.
Yet, as I sit here alone tonight, on my bed with my laptop humming
in the background, chomping off every bite I can take of this little blog ‘o
mine, I got it. I had that moment of clarity I have been dying to have for a
while now. Finally, I found the words. Because I’ve never in my life heard
silence quite this loud. Are you ready?
Here comes the paradox:
The answer, the “words” are nothing. That’s right. Nothing
at all. Sometimes you stay silent because you are just tired of explaining
something who will never understand what you have to say because they aren’t
ready to understand it, accept it or even be receptive to it. I guess, what I’m
getting at here (as much as I hate to admit it) is that silence is sometimes golden;
because it speaks volumes when words have nothing to say. It echoes loudly
through the caverns of distance and time when the words on the page have no
power and when the speaker longs to say something, but is responsible enough to
understand that it is better to say nothing, than the wrong thing.
Don’t agree? Prove me wrong. I dare you.
Tonight’s selection
from my ‘Soundtrack of Life’ -- yes, one day I’ll explain all of this is one that
inspired this particular blog, because it’s a mash up that I really liked. What’s
a mash up? Well, simply put a mash up is made up of two things that shouldn’t
go together, but somehow work. You know, like a wordsmith who chooses to be
silent.
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