~ For Marianne.
It was a Friday, yesterday.
I saw that Marianne was online, so I tried to chat her up, you know, the way lonely people tend to chat up a person who looks kind. I asked her whether she kept one or two notebooks in her bag, because I just happened to browse her blog, you know, I do that all the time, and I saw this picture she had taken of the contents of her bag. I thought I saw two notebooks in the picture, but she said there was only one, actually. Now I am itching to see what she has written in that book, but I think asking to see it will not be very polite.
Anyway.
She then asked why I seemed not to blog anymore, and she put a "hiks" at the end of her sentence. I am startled to realize that maybe (just maybe, just maybe) she wants to read new posts of mine. I answered that I had dried up, and writing had become a struggle.
"Bit by bit, perhaps?" she asked, and added that I was one of her favourite author. Panting, I opened a Powerpoint document and tried to assemble my next class' material. The last thing I wanted to happen was to realize that the chat was only my imagination.
I toyed around with the Powerpoint slides for a good half hour, and went back to the chat window. Her lines were still there. The chat wasn't only my imagination.
I could have wept.
"But you are too kind," I stammered. Because you know, when an author you love says that she loves your writing, you'll stammer and you will feel like crying, and you will feel stupid for feeling like crying and you realize that you are so happy to your very core.
[Do you know, Marianne? It was a bad day for me, last Friday. I still couldn't shake an ugly thing happening to me the day before. You know, the day before, a Burly White Man on A Speeding Bicycle thought I was driving recklessly, although I wasn't, and he gave me a finger and screamed FUCK YOU to my face, and it was 5.30 AM and my day was ruined. But: your words healed me.]
I was thinking hard, about what should one do when one hears her favorite author asking to read one's new blog post. If I were clever I would of course know the answer in no time: one of course must write. But I, being simple-minded, need over a day to gather the courage to write.
Knowing that you will someday read this. Hoping that you will know your words sparked a disconnected wire, and helped a faucet drip a bit.
Bit by bit, Marianne said. Bit by bit, I told myself.
So I write.
May I forget what ought to be forgotten; and recall, unfailing, all that ought to be recalled, each kindly thing, forgetting what might sting. ~ Mary Caroline Davies
