I wrote a post with this same title and image that I thought out in advance as an ongoing mid-day activity. It was careful to be: careful, mindful, and neutral-gear neutral. Maybe that was the problem. Or maybe it was just retro merc shadow type stuff or one of those lazy thumbed keystrokes you don't intentionally make.
Gonna take that as a hint and stay in real-life-while-on-the-internet mode which is how I've been for the past couple of days. Just say what's true for me. If the sheer certainty of my voice's willingness to speak at that level is either off-putting or offensive that's a very unfortunate point of unintentional impact on my part.
I've shuttered my creativity blog for reasons I'll be blunt enough to label underbelly bullying of an eye-rollingly tenacious nature. And that's all I'll be saying on the subject barring uniquely extenuating one on one circumstances.
As far as this primary blog space I'm going to get back to where I left off within my planned blog posts somewhere right around the time Covid came along. Somebody I taught to be the kind of person who could facilitate such a thing sat with me yesterday after carefully but firmly suggesting I allow myself to at least make a full and complete list of people central to my life who've died since the beginning of the year. The phrase "pragmatic grasp" was applied and I had to ask for a pen so I could write it on my hand lest I forget.
I taught him very well. And that's all that really needs to be said.
so I said it to him directly there in the moment and his eyes lit up above his mask. And his mouth was already moving to ask well what did I simply want to say to him? And I smiled under my mask. I said I wanted to tell him a story he's tired of hearing but I wanted him to stay with me all the way as if he never heard it before - right up until the end of my trademark rim shot interrogative that's a major part of my storytelling-for-a-purpose shtick. And he shut his eyes and threw his head back and groaned because he knew what was coming.
When this person was three I met him for the first time. His mother was a friend of mine I'd met in the UK and that's where they lived. Until they came here for the first time and I met him as a three year old who marched directly in front of me and pointed just as directly at my third eye with bold certainty.
he said "I know you. I know you from BEFORE."
So I said that but with a lot more embellishment about their home when they first arrived and his mom and also stuff his father said about it all later on in the evening. And he was nodding with his eyes shut trying to push himself past his resistance to yet again hearing this story he's heard way too many times. But never from me. Because let's face it. I have my own son to annoy with comparably off-told stories that prove some or another hippie-dippy point of mine. This other guy's father? Is relentless with this particular tale.
And I saw him make the pivot in his 'memory' of everyone under the sun telling him this story which he doesn't remember because HIS big takeaway of that day was apparently this person arrives with chocolate bars. His eyes shot open and he looked at me. He was nodding his head okay. I never heard YOU tell me this story before about what I said. I was getting this all from his eyes and that's because of masks. And, obvi, people who are willing to wear them. Eye language flourishes when there's nothing else to scan that speaks to collective humanity as we instinctively best recognize through our own and each other's faces.
And I watched his eyes think (another favorite thing of mine to notice about people important to me) and then he said "what is the interrogative?"
"What if," I asked him. " 'Before' was Now?"
Whoa.