Before, many years ago, when I knew (not hoped for, or dreamt of, but knew) that I was a writer, I told myself that I never really knew what I thought about something until I had sat down with a pen and paper and written about it. It was dreaming in ink, tracing the constellations of my own galaxy, a way to pull the world closer to me and savor it one more time. I scribbled dashes and bits of poems on the backs of my work schedules, sideways in my journal, in tiny notebooks I carried with me. Each scribble would be graced with the date and exact time - it was not 7:30 p.m., it was 7:27. The precise time and date thumbtacked each scribble to the interior map of my life.
And then ... I spent several years living under a cloud, due to circumstances beyond my control and understanding. I did not write. My journal sat untouched and the old ones, crammed with words and wishes, questions and answers, sat quiet. I would go through the scraps of my stories and poems from time to time, wondering at who I had been, and if she would return. One of my earliest desires had been to see a book with my name on the cover in a bookstore. Whenever I visited Waldenbooks as a child, I wanted to buy a book, yes, but if you had asked what I really wanted, it would have been to see a book written by me, with my name on the cover, on the shelf. Although I emerged from the cloud years ago, I did not write. I told myself that maybe that childhood dream was something I had to leave behind, that this key part of my identity perhaps wasn't so important after all.
2013 is turning out to be a year full of beginnings, of seeing old dreams from new angles. My scribbles are digital here, not the scrawl of ink on paper, but they're helping me get to know the writer who's been in hiding for so long.
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