elusive expression

Yesterday, Christmas morning, I awoke with some thoughts in my heart and in my bones that made me want to write. They weren't exactly words, though, and I decided to think on them a bit first. By late morning I thought what I really wanted to write was a letter to a friend; along the lines of a thank you, but a little more related to one of those Christmas letters that get included in cards (of which I am not very fond). Still. Considering the points to include, the realization came that I could reasonably include a number of friends, but realizing that I had no idea how to create a list of "undisclosed recipients," I started to consider a blog post, and just hope that the right people saw it. 

Then it got loud, we went to the beach, I had to start dinner, and my fingers did not find the keyboard; the thoughts did not crystalize into words on a page. 

At long last I sat with the keyboard on my lap, and all of it was gone. 

Not the intent, or the feeling of thankfulness, or the desire to share it all. Not the slight feeling that I had more than one person I wanted to address. What was gone was the tangible feeling of words flowing through my fingertips. Normally, now for instance, I can quite perceptibly feel the words moving through my head, behind my eyes, going directly to my fingertips as they touch the keys. The hardest to write, to release, are the words that make their way to my heart from that space behind my eyes. Those are the words that I fear will take a piece of me with them, leaving my far too vulnerable to the reader. Those are the words that mean the most to me, and that I am usually fairly certain sound like gibberish to anyone but me. Those are the type of words I had playing around inside yesterday.

Until the keyboard sat in front of me. 

There were plenty of other distractions. I knew I was not in the space I needed to be in to write. Truthfully, although I sort of hoped I could lose myself in the blank screen in front of me, I knew there was no way I'd be able to express myself well 'on paper' in the middle of a living room full of people with the television on. In some ways, by then, I wondered if it was too late to share the words. If it would come across as an afterthought, or worse--an obligation. 

Instead, I read old posts: advice I'd been given, but had avoided, and then circumvented. Turns out I may not have seen what I needed to see. Either that, or what I saw with thankfulness in my heart is different from what I may have needed to see at the time. It's funny, because I know that what is taken from the written word is intrinsically related to the reader, and at times I wonder if perhaps that is even stronger than the relationship to the author. I think of my brother who says he used to ask his English teachers if they had spoken to the poet; if they really could say "this is what he meant" without that personal discourse. 

An then I realize that there are times when I finish one of those heart-word posts, and it looks like gibberish to me, but I post it anyway, and someone comes back and says they saw something they needed, or a memory was triggered. Sometimes the words just need to get out. And it doesn't always make sense to me. Yesterday the words decided to stay in to make me think and feel just a little bit more. Indeed, the thankfulness, and the desire to share it is as strong today, as real.