What is it that happens when we sit down and write words on a screen or a page or a glass or a table? I remember when I was about five, I thought it was amazing to see "Santa's" handwriting on our glass living room table top. My crafty Dad would buy dry-erase markers and pick a festive Christmas color like red or green, saddle up to the table, and write, "Dear Daly Kids--I enjoyed your cookies. I drank the milk. Thanks for being so good all year." (I guess Santa didn't see when I stole Tommy O'Connor's ice cream money or stole a rainbow-colored heart bracelet from my cousin). Anyway, the smoothness of the marker on the glass, the squared letters my Dad used to dissimulate his own neat handwriting from Papa Noel's, it was very captivating to me and it took me, like it took my Dad, right into its felt-tipped world.
By the time I was 6, my Dad had bought me my own typewriter, just like his, and I would go into the "playroom" of our house -- I still live there most days -- with its dark brown, black and white plaid carpet (the 70s) and it's all glassed walls (it was sun-kissed warm). There, I started typing The Daly News (thought I was pretty witty at the time), that included all kinds of hot-off-the-presses family gossip, like what we ate for dinner that night (I can guarantee it was something with chicken) and what socks I wore to school (navy blue kneesocks, it was Catholic, what else could I possibly wear?). The Daly News evolved into the Essex Express, which was a neighborhood paper since we lived on Essex Street in a humble little abode, and then, when I met my first friend, it grew into our first "Mystery Novel" that I seriously spent more time producing than I have dedicated to any seminar paper. I remember that I was so excited the day we bought this terribly cheap blue, shiny, clear plastic binding to encase the text. It was totally professional, typed by me and my friend, and even included "About the Authors" and "Dedications" sections, not all together shocking, my favorite parts. Photos and all. Braces and all. Big bangs and all. I know that thing is floating around somewhere, buried in a desk drawer. We worked on it so late some nights that my friend's Dad used to ask, "Tara, are you ever going home?" He was clearly not a writer, or he would have understood.
Once I was in highschool, writing became angst-ridden journals. Journals where I wrote about how much I hated myself, or how I thought I was ugly, or how I wished that soandso would call me, or like me, or ask me to the movies. Then there were many entries that were entirely cynical, where I would break out of the pity and ask, "Why does everybody else suck so god damn much?!!!?" Or write things obsessively like, "I hate Renee...I hate Reneee....I hate Renee.... (the name has been changed should the real person ever read this). One time, of course, as mothers do, my mother read my journal and said, "Tara, I am so worried about you, you write such dark poetry." I think to my Mom (who I love dearly) the fact that it was not about butterflies and grass growing made it "dark." It's always fun to go back and reread random slices of me from years long gone. It's also dangerous. It makes me remember times that were terribly awkward, times that one never fully overcomes, to a certain extent. The body remembers those times somwhere, like in a crooked smile or a weird walk or the inability to fully look people in the eye.
Who do we become through and as we write? Do we become other people that we wish we were more like? Do we write only for our audience? Do we become more ourselves because we get rid of what is excess? And do we write, do we really write, when we have readers? Or do we write back, in some way, what the readers want and not what we actually are (as if that actually are existed!)? I am a little bit lost lately, about what I'm writing and why I'm writing it; where it's going and who is reading it. How it will be judged. The words go flying from my fingertips and my keyboard is losing its letters faster every day, but to what end and to what place do I go, and maybe more importantly, why?
Writing. writing. writing. It's a shell of an aura on some days; it hides the aura on others. It protects us like a coat of armor, but it also entirely conceals. The thoughts I do not write are the only ones that are really mine, but I know that I communicate them somewhere between these lines of barely visible, pinching fleas.
