Last night I wandered in Target for a bit after dropping the boys off at their dad’s. They love spending time with him so it’s a nice relaxer at the end of the week. I meandered down the book aisle where I would normally salivate at all the possible adventures hidden behind each jacket. Something was missing. There was no lack of beautiful fonts, intriging titles and captivating images but there was no appeal. More than a promise of escape the books seemed to be in competition with my own life.
As not every thought can be plastered on a blog, I’ve written some of my journey and emailed it to a friend. She knows me well and has a knack for hearing my heart. “You need to keep writing”, she encouraged yesterday. I think as artists, we often get stuck in our minds if we don’t put the brush to the canvas or the melody in the air or the fingers to the keyboard.
So, last night as tiredness cloaked my brain, I feared that reading even one sentence of another person’s life (real or ficticious) would crowd out the words of my own story. It is an odd thing how writing can tell me who I am and where I’ve been. But it does. It pieces together the fragments, frayed ends and all. And oddly, as I stood there in the aisle, too tired to smile, too frayed to care, when normally I’d want an escape I was so completely satisfied and excited to be in a moment where the story of my life and all of it’s glory and mess and Love and heartache and redemption was the only one I wanted to read.
Not surprisingly, by the time I left the store this song was dancing around in my head and I smiled at how perfectly art imitates life and vise versa. Click the picture and enjoy the reminder that yours too is a journey just as vivid as those books on the shelf. 🙂
All Write Now 