I don't like to write.
There's a time capsule nature to writing that goes against my grain, ruffles my feathers, and pinches my nerves.
I'm not the same person I was a year ago.
Did you want to be? He asks, raising an eyebrow, effortlessly balancing a slice of a rainbow roll between chopsticks. I can hear the his sharp perspicacity.I want to ask if they're called slices. If he minds that I'm eating sushi with my fingers. If he knows that he has amazing hands as much as he knows that he amazing thoughts.
If he knows that I like that he knows because, people should know when they're amazing.
But all those thoughts roll together like the sushi. They're tucked tightly and neatly together and packed away somewhere in the back of my mind. On occasion, I pull out a roll and eat the leftovers of yesterday's ideas.
... with my fingers, because I've never liked chopsticks. Once upon a time, I avoided Asian cuisine just to avoid chopsticks. Now I just avoid dining companions who mind when I eat with my fingers.
As with my methods of dealing with my chopstick dislike, things change. Thoughts change. I roll away my ideas because I might not even care what the answer is in five minutes.
If I write it down, it sticks.
It's a horrifying thought to me.
Can you imagine if you kept a log of every leftover that has ever lived in your fridge?
That's what my writing is. A leftovers log.
Maybe it'd be different if I could write fiction, or a thousand lies, or even one good one. It'd be as if I was a foodie and my list of leftovers were really distinguished things, like bacon-wrapped-goat-cheese-filled-figs instead of grilled cheese sandwiches.
But ultimately, it's still a long list of things that don't even make sense out of context. And it's always out of context because time changes things, thoughts fade, dining companions go home, and leftovers eventually go to leftover heaven.
Take care of your thoughts when you're alone, take care of your words when you're with people, they say.
Writing is a fail on both levels. It gives me an excuse to simmer in thoughts that I probably shouldn't even let myself think, and then I have a finished product that motivates me to share words with people.
Words I might not ordinarily share.
Leftover words.
Words that should be tucked, and rolled, and hidden in my refrigerator of shame, because who thinks these things?
Why have I half-eaten so many grilled cheese sandwiches?
Because they're delicious, but overly-filling, that's why.
Oh nevermind. If you don't get it now, you won't even after I explain it.
I wouldn't want you to.
You enjoy your chopsticks.
I'll enjoy my grilled cheese.
And I'll only serve you the type of food you can hold between those strange slender sticks. Maybe I'd feed you something different if you ate with your fingers, too.
Probably not, though.
I like you.
I trust you.
I'm giving you as many thoughts as I could give another person, but maybe that's only because I have been time-shifted by life.
Did I want to be the person I once was?
Yes, I did.
She was a good person and I am grieving my loss of her.
She was going to change, of course she was- change is inevitable- but this last year has not been a simple shift, it has been a total transformation.
One you can only see on the inside.
One some people don't see at all.
There's no way she was going to change into me if a series of extraordinary events had not occurred. But then, if I was her, maybe I wouldn't be here, watching your hands.
You've asked a question that has already been folded into a rainbow roll, and sealed into Tupperware. Should I reheat the entire bin? Do you want me to reach in, grab the rice out of the middle and serve that up because it's the only relevant part? Do people re-heat sushi rolls? I don't want to keep coming back to this, but are they called slices? Does eating a rainbow roll make you more likely to see rainbows?
Can you eat this idea with chopsticks?
Good grief, this is why I don't have a podcast and- quite frankly- why I order grilled cheese sandwiches even though I know I can never finish them.
It's why I rarely store leftovers, and I just give the food away.
It's why everything.
Somehow. I'm sure of it.
Probably.
And if I just sat down to write it all down, it'd make sense. For about three minutes.
Then it wouldn't make sense at all.
Which is why I don't like writing. Which is why I probably won't bring back the 500 some posts of Rarasaur blog past.
I don't want to build time capsules.
But I do.
I do it at all.
I write, even when my hands hurt so much that I can't sleep. My hands do too much. They hold a lot of the world- my world. I know you know. I know you can see them gripping to the girl who I was. The one you never even knew, so of course you don't miss. You can tell because when hands are doing too much because your hands carry too much, too.
I like your hands.
And I like mine, even though they cramp up sometimes and clench to things that should be let go.
Which, by the way, metaphors aside,
is the very literal reason that I don't
use
chopsticks.
_______________________________
I recorded this at 2:30am because my hands were hurting and so many people have been saying podcast lately that it seemed like a brilliant idea. Then, when the recording came out terribly, I decided to type it up.
I thought I'd like the idea of recordings because I've been trying to carve myself a space for less focused thoughts. I had started a secondary blog, but that didn't work out. I tried a notepad file, but that didn't work out either. The truth is, when I start writing- I have to try to weave it into a full thought. I flesh out ideas and slide into general vagueries. But right now, I just need to get ideas out of my head.
I hyper-focus on silly things. I worry about questions no one else thinks twice about. I ask a lot of questions that involve rainbows.
It just happens.
Which is why a recording is a terrible idea, and why it didn't work out. I'm still posting this because I already typed it, crampy hands and all.
It's 5am and I started this whole crazy process at 2am. If I'm up much longer, I might go hog-wild and start using chopsticks willy-nilly.
Do you listen to podcasts? Do you have insomnia? Do you like hands as much as I do? Do you use chopsticks?
