OFF-LINE LIVING


*****(photo by pleasebreathe)*****

Dear You,

It used to be that I turned on my computer and found myself lazily drifting through emails and websites while frost licked over the windows and the cold settled deep into my bones, chased off by cups of chai and blankets. It used to be that I had tons to report about myself, my writing, my view of things from here but I've gone incredibly quiet. All I can say is that *life* has been happening. I walked through the neighborhood yesterday, counting the mailboxes covered in vines and the numbers of flowerbeds rampant with black-eyed Susans. The blooms distracted me but then this thought entered my head unannounced: transition is the most painful stage of (re)birth. This is where I am now in my off-line living.

The trouble with not being anonymous on your blog is that some stories aren't yours to share. Other people with faces and names are present and at some point writers must decide where their own tale ends and the other person's begins. When friends and families follow your online words, you choose them carefully or else risk them being misunderstood...and so it is. Honestly, I am not exactly a non-fiction writer. I am in love with fiction, infatuated with poetry and addicted to my *private* ink and paper journaling. True enough,I have published a few first-person essays--but I am generally not able to share the quiet innermost side of me in print (or online!) like so many of you brave souls are. But it all ebbs & flows and I know I will return to this space with stories yet to share. For now, all I can say is that I'm taking some space as summer winds down to tend to off-line things.

The summer I turned fifteen, I was linked up through my school's foreign language program with a boy named Adrian from Murcia, Spain. Through that whole long confusing season, we exchanged letters about our daily lives. He was living alone with a single mother surrounded by large families with fathers who smoked cigarettes and sat on their terrazas, watching women pass by. I was living with two parents on the edge of their divorce and knew something about how strange and bittersweet and lovely life was for both of us. There was something about the way my heart would thrum like a locomotive in my chest when I saw his spidery handwriting and the crooked row of stamps. School began and our correspondence eased off...by winter, my parents split and I found a boyfriend who didn't take kindly to letters from a strange boy on the other side of the sea. No matter that they were always polite and friendly without even one trail of xoxoxo's along the signature or perfume pressed into the page. Lately, I miss that pen and paper exchange. Since I have been so inspired by the Be Brave project, I am going to put myself out there a little bit and say that if you (yes, you) are interested in working out some sort of letter exchange, please let me know...maybe an "Adrian" is out there somewhere with some fine stationery and crooked cursive stories to tell?

I am, otherwise, going to be headed mostly off-line from this blog for right now. Take good care of yourself and thank you, always, for reading along.
Love,
Delia