I have this need to write, right? It is that itch on your
back you can’t reach until you do and then—ooooh, that’s the spot. Or perhaps
that elusive itch on your foot somewhere you can quite find exactly…right under
the Tibia’s medial malleolus, perhaps, or the Fibula’s lateral malleolus (either
way, it’s the ankle). But it is there, and
I can feel it, and so I pen this and that, but nothing to publish, or even
keep. I have a journal for sneaky midnight dances for which I slip out of the covers
and click on a light. Often it’s just a waltz, but occasionally my fingers
tango. This journal is filled with private thoughts, my silent sounding board,
my record keeper. It is the place to answer the nagging question: About what shall you write? But
journals can get ingrown. I did this, then that happened. I feel like…it is cyclical.
But it persists. This need to write, this molten lake within
one’s mountain of creativity is a volatile force. It can be grumpy! One can
wipe clean entire cities, leave mothers clinging to their crying babes because
of it.
So I write, but I am unsatisfied. These words are not
interesting, nor are these events noteworthy. This description is not poetic,
not even dryly real. It is crumpled into the garbage, deleted from existence.
The very world is in turmoil around me, but I am frozen.
Is this writer’s block?
But I wrote.
But I still want
to write.
And so it seems my need is not really to write; my need is
for something to write about. Like
Clifford “Cliff” Bradshaw of Cabaret,
who city-hops through Europe in hopes for his novel’s inspiration, countless
travelers have run away to write. They chase the story; run from the stale.
Krakauer climbs into thin air and
descends with a horrifically beautiful tale. Steinback travels with
Charlie in a romantic way, that horn-rimmed
romance held up with suspenders and traced with typewriters—the kind of romance
that rides the Trans-Siberian Express or sails to South East Asia and finds
enlightenment somehow.
I have this need. It is wanderlust and itchy fingers and writer’s block, all an infant growing within, and he’s got his
feathered cap and longjohns on already. And I shall call him Adventure, because
he will save me from my stillness.
Adventure. From Latin
advenio, meaning arrive. From where we pass through adventus, or arrival, but Advent has gone by. So now we cling to adventurus—future active participle—something about
to arrive. In the vocative I name that
which I speak to—adventure, come
forth!
