The Conclusion

Twenty-eight days. Or twenty-nine days, if you want to count the one I skipped, which I agree wouldn’t be quite ethical. Either way, it’s a February. A month. I did it. Almost, anyway. Close enough for me.

Did I learn anything from a month of writing a hundred words a day? Let me see. I learned that worthless internet is...well, worthless. I learned that I could usually write even when it was the last thing I wanted to do. I learned that I look at writing differently from most labeled writers. I learned that I can hide a little less when I write and tell the truth a little more. I learned that writing isn't enough. I learned that it doesn’t matter as much as I once thought it did.

Am I glad I did it? Sure. Would I recommend it to someone else? Absolutely, especially to someone who has more to write about than I do. Will I do it again? Probably not.

Day 29

Babies and cats. Two of the best reasons to visit my family. Of course it’s always nice to see my family, but the babies and the cats are pretty special. My mom also makes darn good chicken.

We still have snow on the ground. It almost feels like winter. And now that it’s really winter, I’m dreaming of a night walking an empty beach under the full moon. I think I’ll go find a beach.

Another week begins. Work, lunches, band practice, LS, music transcription, living, sleeping, dreaming about living, living about dreaming, and seven days till another week begins.

Day 27

And you dream of Columbus
with an ache in your traveling heart...

My heart got on a plane yesterday and flew south, betraying me--it knows I want to go north, away from the south. I am angry in my powerlessness. If I can’t even direct my own heart, what is there to be sure of? My hands are tied. Life could strip every scrap from me and still be in its right.

So do we learn to hold loosely and to value nothing, to protect ourselves from loss? Or do we simply spend our lives learning to grieve well?

Day 26

He got here young, when the stakes were high. He won a little, and he should have taken what he had and gone home with the world. Instead he stayed long enough to learn that only what you get in the beginning is what you want to keep, that it’s only the first time one time.

Now it’s just a game, and the decks are stacked. The players all get in each other’s way. There’s no one to walk him home. His loss is everyone else’s gain.

He got here young, and now he’s leaving. But now he’s old.

Day 25

It’s amazing how a conversation with an Italian cook can make one’s day. The food was good, too.

And now I have an unexpected free evening, a wonderful crazy idea to ponder before saying no, and a door that I’m not sure I want to open because I don’t know what’s behind it or how much it will hurt me or them to close it again if I don’t like what’s behind it. Maybe I should say yes. Maybe I should walk through the door.

Maybe it’s just today. Maybe I can sleep it off.

Wake up, child. Wake up.

Day 24

If I ask, will you listen?
Do the words I say change the tune
of the song?

If I ask, will you hear?
And when I find for my asking your reply is
as if you weren’t listening at all,
will you explain?

If I ask, will you listen?
Will you teach me
the letters and sounds that make up
what it is I have longed for?

I can’t ask. Not this time.
I can only hope that when it is done
it will be seen that you knew my desire
better than I knew how to ask it.

Day 23

“A man takes his sadness and throws it away, but then he’s still left with his hands.”

I find myself confused. I learned all the equations, but two and two don’t make four anymore. I find myself enraged, thrown in the middle with nothing to hold onto, like a child left behind. Everything I thought I knew doesn’t apply. I shake my fist in life’s face and yell, “No fair! You cheated.”

I have been here before. Then it was God himself who told me he was making something beautiful. Where do I find the strength to believe it now?