---nov, 2005---

it seems that when i can't bring myself to write on my novel (which is
currently a few thousand words shy of ploddingly reaching 50k words
on exactly 30 november in equal increments, but by no means a loss),
i still want to write, and i still do write, here, or on livejournal,
or i just get all wordy in email.

i love words.  perhaps that's akin to loving water or the air we breathe
or the fact that one has a corporeal or mental existence, but nonetheless
i love them.  i guess many people don't love the world, love themselves,
love being.  but i love those things.  it's funny for me to realize that,
because i haven't had love in such a long time, and i haven't had much
of it.  i mean of course the "in love" kind of love, not the sort of
thing that one enjoys immensely and would be sad without (for me, pixel,
exercise, sleep, reading, words, water, friends, and i could probably
go on all night but someone already wrote that book, 14,000 things to
be happy about).  being in love, something i yearn for (do i love being
in love?  perhaps!), is something which i wonder if i still have the
capacity for.  
i mean, i'm not sitting here morose and saying, i'll never love again,
oh woe is me, but it just takes such a confluence of the right things,
and for me, unrequited love doesn't seem like something i can create,
only something that can happen, so it also requires someone to be loving
me as well.  i suppose it's good that i don't go falling in love with
the unavailable types, all kinds of tragedy averted and whatnot.
so i miss being in love, yet i have so much love in my life, and so
much of it is even reciprocated, that how can i complain?  my family,
i love and am loved by.  my kitty, though i may anthropomorphize a bit,
surely loves me when she won't sit with anyone else, and i'm not even
the one who feeds her most often.  my body loves me back when i give
it love, (yes that kind but i was really talking about it working well
when i exercise, though sexual pleasure is rewarding as well), and my
friends, well, i see that as a collective thing--there are certainly
a lot of friends whom i love individually, like cyndy and shay and peter,
but i have intense like, trust, and respect for the rest of them and
definitely love them all, and together, despite the ones i'm totally
unsure of like mhat, the net affection amounts to returned love and
i bask in that joy.  nature, well, it may be cheesey and too mystical,
but there is a bond there, mutual respect sort of thing, even if a
bit indirect.  and food and water, well, more of a tactile/physical
reciprocation, hitting the spot *is* their love.

but words.  i think they're the closest i currently am to being
*in* love.  it feels totally like the most successful relationships i have,
not in that they get me off (though they do!) but in that they are
variable, they are strong, they are hard, they demand a lot from
me, but they are the most rewarding thing in moments like this when
together we create a picture of what's in my mind, of what may be,
and then we send it in a message to you, or to a future me who will
no doubt have trouble remembering this moment, probably even tomorrow
but definitely next year, next decade.  and i hope to look back with
fondness and say, i am still deep inside that relationship.

i feel shame when i cannot put the right words to a feeling, to express
exactly what i mean with exactly what they mean, and that too is like
my understanding of love--challenging, not always perfect, but always
striving at least, and willing to try again tomorrow if today just fell
flat, but able to forgive, to divert the stream down the path of least
resistance to a resting place at least, instead of shattering or
abandoning.

but my consciousness is composed of words, mostly.  i mean that in a
non-pedantic way for of course consciousness is only something that
can be explained or attempted in so many words, but i think that
others think in images, or concepts.  i think i do sometimes too,
to be fair, but i usually think in words.  for example, in my sexual
fantasies, i tell myself a story.  my fantasies are not very fantastical,
to write one down would probably aside from making me feel sheepish
do absolutely nothing for anyone else, since my fantasies have become
well-worn canyons revolving around similar situations and familiar
people, but always the story.  "and then she started moaning, and
her body tensed and she screamed as she came..." instead of just the
image, the "movie" of it happening.  it's strange and i've not tried
to explore the explanation for it really.  also, the only person i've
really talked about it with claims that he just pictures the actual
event occurring (and i do get flashes of it) but for me the story is
key, somehow.  i certainly don't see or imagine an orifice performing
each physical stroke that my hand makes.  so my word-love can be sloppy,
too.

and so then it is some kind of primal worship, the type i've learned
to do (and am sorry i didn't learn to do earlier) to lovers, what they
deserve for bringing me closer to god.  words bring me closer to me,
closer to god, closer to understanding what i feel and that is one of
the highest purposes of my life.  understanding myself, understanding
others and being understood.  and doing the right thing.  oh, and not
being bored.  i think those are the high purposes of my life.  i'm
probably missing some, but those are the ones i think about and try
to actualize every day.  words might get in the way of some of the
understanding, really i think maybe it should be at a more basic
level.  one of those wordless, shared understandings.  but i
don't think i'm deep enough to know that, or know it consciously,
or, well, understand it, quite.  maybe something to aspire to, but
it will be hard to reconcile with my love affair for words.