...arrive, already

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!