Sometimes When I Write

There is a part of me--a part that even my family and my best friends have never met--a part that feels everything too deeply, internalizes everything, absorbs everything. It weeps easily, feels for others easily, feels for itself easily. It is tender, yielding, and has nothing to do with the "Good Time Charlie" that I am in my everyday life. It is solitary and happy to remain so. It hears the deepest nuances of music, the undiluted meaning of words spoken and unspoken, of charged air. It is the real me, without the trappings of Steph, SK, Kaye, or Berg.

Mine is a splintered soul; it always has been, and I've yet to meet the person who truly recognizes and encourages this side of me. It is sometimes dark and sometimes light, but is is always hidden behind the ready laugh and the jokes. It's no wonder that I relate to and understand clowns, and hate the bias and bigotry they experience.

This is the side of me that surfaces when something grand comes from my writing. I weep for my characters. I fall in love with them and mourn the fact that I will never meet them outside the confines of my mind. This is the side of me that drinks too much wine, listens to too many love songs, and never seems to adequately express itself. Sometimes when I write, my soul weeps.

When I was 20 I attributed this to drama-loving youth, but now that I'm 60 I'm beginning to acknowledge that that's far too easy an analysis, for it's still here, undiluted, unfiltered, and more vociferous than ever before.

"You, my own deep soul, trust me.
I will not betray you.
My blood is alive with many voices telling me
I am made of longing."
Rainer Maria Rilke