2007-02-27 - 3:14 p.m.
One of the good things about getting a little older is that I have the ability, if I so choose, to think a little less literally. This can come out in my writing.
I remember being twenty-two or something and trying to write little things and every time I'd try to write with any kind of metaphysics or swirling emotion, it came out pretty poorly. It was all cliche and didn't really make sense. There's that trait of the just-awakened that, when faced with an opportunity to wax poetic, they do it badly. I remember that I was supposed to think above the daily fray, but when I tried, all I could do was imitate.
I'm still not very good at it, but now I can more successfully get above the fray. I can, sort of, throw a switch in my brain and talk about a conversation or a scene or a feeling in a way that's somehow ten feet off the ground. Sometimes it's higher than that. Sometimes I fail and it's awful and I feel silly for trying. I don't do it often, but I like knowing that I can. I think that boys, once they stop having hard-ons twenty-three hours a day, turn into different animals. Some get bellies. Some lose their hair. Some develop kindness and empathy and become teachers and fathers. The world, I think, has the ability and if you let it, to reveal brand-new colors.
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