Yes, I’m still up. I’ll pay for it today morning when I wake up, since, after all there’s only so far I can go on minimal sleep.
Yesterday (22nd) was Janelle’s 22nd birthday. So, at approximately 10:05 I arrived at her house ‘bearing gifts’. Stayed there till around 1:00 AM – at which point I realized I had better kick myself out. After all, if both the occupants of the house are yawning, it’s pretty rude of me to hang around ;-)
At any rate – “Belated Happy Birthday JanL!”
Now, why this title?
As I walked home, I must admit that I was in a fairly introspective mood. I’d noticed this in the latter half of my visit to the birthday girl and the feeling hadn’t passed. I found my footsteps slowing, as thoughts bubbled to the surface. Points I admitted yet never acknowledged. Questions. I don’t know – more than that… I had entire conversations in my head. I felt, at some level, that I was being more honest with myself at that very moment than I’d ever been.
At one point I stopped and forced myself to cease thinking. I concentrated on the scene before me. An empty road curving gently upwards, sodium streetlights illuminating the left with a soft yellow glow. Crickets chirping from both directions, a car engine fading into the distance. Turn upwards – face the sky. A few weak stars pierce the blackness, their light competing against the ones below. I stare longer. Slowly, the stars multiply. A light from an open window – a stark contrast against the dark foliage. The rules on the road receeding into the distance. If I were a camera, I’d be snapping away – engraving that image in my mind.
When I got home, I had the good fortune to find Paul and Rob awake. Since I was in the mood to talk, I had an interesting and varied conversation with both. During the course of that conversation I asked Paul “What do you think of my writing?”
That was when he mentioned the “Weeping Gorilla”.
Perhaps…
I would say I understood. Maybe I’m one of that statistically significant percentage of ‘bleak diary writers’. Do I write because fundamentally, I want to express myself? To converse in a way that I never could before? Perhaps at some level it’s more than that.
Right now, tired as I am, I write because I need to.