Perfection. If you'd allow, I would love nothing more than to write about you till the universe crumbles to dust. But does it mean anything? No matter how much I talk about Beauty - replete in your aura everytime you glide by - and the importance of acknowledging it, I have to admit what I fear: that if you had anything more than a cursory presence in my life, none of this would mean anything to me. I'm self-aware enough to see that whatever noble intentions I may begin with, they are sidetracked when my heart makes its scene. In writing about your Brilliance, it is as though I am appealing to the universe to make you realize that there is a fool such as I enraptured by your spell. (As for what I imagine happens post this realization, well, I don't think you need me to spell that one out.) So yes, I could fill volumes trying to figure out what it is that takes over me every time I see you. Give me the time and from these sensations, I could probably write every poem worth reciting. You are everything, and everything would make sense if only you drew a step closer. Yet that's the one thing I can't write into being.

People like you don't exist: you are a phantom in my mind. You cannot be the same face that greets others; for should any human learn of the ways you unravel, they would recoil in terror. I would not call you sick. But closed. Impenetrable. Only I can see you standing, so far away from every heart. You whisper your only song into the night, and the water shudders to the melody. Whatever the beauty of the moment, though, to what end if no one else should see it? Life might be a mystery, but no mystery, mind, ever allows such abnegation of the self. Better the whole thing never happen at all should this be your path, spirit.

We exchanged a casual smile, and were it anyone else, that would be that. But this one, a writer! A good one! Mid-smile, I chuckled at the thought of being neatly summarized in one of her pieces. ("Earnest chap, but lord knows why he was smiling long after I stopped.") I suspect she has me written off as yet another diligent student, as I often do with the hapless targets of my own writing. Quite likely the shocking truth of my literary pretensions would surprise her! There's a lesson in here about not judging people, and not thinking yourself to be the only one who knows life. It's prudent to rally against the smug self-assuredness that is so tempting when one is prone to too much reflection. One may uncover truth in the process, but that doesn't make one to first or last to have ever done so.

This is no idle musing on things that might be; it's tangible fact that the entire thing is finite, that whenever the force so chooses, this world is next in line. Whenever I've been confronted with this fact, there has always been a song in (or close to) my head. It makes me wonder: all the years of careful attention to this form, and what I go down with is something arbitrary, something that makes no statement. No great line of Dylan or particularly pretty melodic turn of Lennon/McCartney. All the years' worth of material that I've accumulated would be worth naught. It is partly a directive to go ahead and listen to all that music that's been piling up. Yet it's partly a reminder that music can save your life, but it sure ain't going to cause the earth to stop shaking.

Sometime last week I imagined what it would be like to wake up the next day, pay no heed to what I was supposed to do, and instead sit down and write whole the day away. (Or read; that would certainly be easier on me.) What prevents me from acting on this is probably a modicum of social sanity, although I'm quite sure that were I made of stronger stuff, I'd act on this one of my many whims. Forgetting talent - never a prerequisite in this world anyway ;-) - the allure is obvious. Writing involves expressing something that somehow demands that it exist outside your own consciousness. It has it a mind of its own, but not a body; that's all the writer tries to provide when he puts them on the page. When I read particularly fine book, and the purity of writing makes me pause, it seems exceedingly sad to have a life without being in some way involved in this mysterious medium.

I'm not quite sure what life is, nor what I'm meant to be doing, but I wonder if it's natural at all to feel this calling. As I said earlier, talent is out of the question, and it isn't as if I've demonstrated a particular skill in this area. What makes me concerned is that I can well imagine such thoughts as being literally dismissed as lunacy. I'd be inclined to agree, but only assuming a very limited definition of success in life! What I'm saying I suppose is that writing and other endeavours are only seen as worthwhile if you've already made it and established yourself as a talent. Otherwise you're just wasting your time. It's said that you should do what you love, but implicit in that line is that what you love should be worth something, and not just to you. With art, it has to be something that pleases someone beyond yourself. I see the value and necessity in such a statement, and understand that this is mandated by the fact that other people exist too (!) - but still, I can't help but wish things were not this way.

Granted, at the very least, the pragmatist's view helps inject a bit of groundedness into even the most idealistic minds, and makes one consider why exactly one writes in the first place. Like I said, it's hard to fault this stance when one possesses what I'll call a normal view of life. But this fact doesn't stop me from having moments like this where it all breaks down, where I reflect on how little anything really counts at the end of the end, and ask why I can't spend the rest of this life in conversation with whatever spirit of the aether relays messages to us on earth.