Written on the Moon

Back in late 2002 my friend Alana and I were chatting (via ICU instant messenger magic of the early aughts) about writing.  I was wanting to do more creative writing but I was struggling to do it.  She told me about this new online journaling thing people were doing called Blogging.  She suggested that maybe a new format with an audience as big or as small as the growing internet might inspire me.  She helped me set up my first blog which was probably on Blogger or some other very generic easy template sort of program.  This was the beginning of a very important part of my life.  I didn’t know it at the time.  That seems to always be the way, right?  We only know that a time period is important in retrospect.  A whole new world of bloggers opened up to me.  It was a pretty small world back then and I was blessed with finding some really amazing people during what we now amusingly call The Golden Age of Blogging.  What I was hoping for happened, though not in exactly the way I thought it would, but nonetheless…I started writing.  Writing on a regular basis.  I met other writer in the blogging world.  I made friends in the blogging world.  Good friends.  People I went on to meet in real life and am blessed to still be friends with to this day.  Alana always encouraged me to keep on writing.  She was an early participant in my yearly writing adventure every October (Writober).  When she was doing stand up we’d sometimes write jokes together either though IM or email.  She always had positive suggestions for me when I would get frustrated with myself for my chronic procrastination.  If those didn’t help she would make fun of me in the best possible way so that I would laugh and stop taking it all so damn seriously.  There were years when she would do tarot readings for me over the phone and I swear every single time I would ask some question about what I should be doing or if it was time to change jobs or how I could solve money problems it would always end up right back at Alana saying, “yeeeeaaahh ya know it seems like you should be writing”.  Over the years, Alana and I discussed everything at some point or other.  We talked about relationships, sex, politics, staying flexible both physically and emotionally, annoying co-workers, cats, puppy dog noses, and writing. 

When Alana got diagnosed with Stage Four Cancer two years ago I felt my heart break.  But, as Patrick Rothfuss wrote, “broken isn’t shattered.”

Last Monday it became clear that Alana had fought all she could and was slowly leaving her body.  That same day I got a notice from a professional writer that that I am fond of that she was teaching an online novel writing class.  I’ve never taken a writing class of any kind.  Not even in college, though heaven knows I should have.  I clicked over to the website for the class and read about how the whole thing worked, only 8 people in a class, 8 weeks long, must submit writing twice over the 8 weeks for crit and must do crit for other classmates writing.  I clicked to her specific class and saw it was starting THAT DAY…and there were two spots open. 

I thought about Alana.  About how she spent the last two years fighting that fucking disease and doing it with so much humor and grace and creativity.  She made a goddamned short film in the last year that is currently showing up in film festivals all over the country, while fighting fucking cancer.  I knew if I could ask her about taking the class she would have said, “Yes, you should…right now.”  So I paid the money and signed up.

At 7:20 this morning my sweet funny friend Alana left this world. 

Her name will be forever carved into my heart.

And I am writing.

So much swirling around in my head today.

My good friend Patricia managed to turn my old blog posts into a Word Doc that isn’t filled with all the coding info which is so damn cool. It’s pretty mind blowing to read what I was thinking and writing 15 years ago. The document is roughly 800 pages long and spans from 2003 to 2014.  What is most interesting to me is how regularly I was writing back then. That was the purpose of the blog, so it did its job. Every post wasn’t brilliant but some of them, upon review, I really like.  I wrote some funny stuff, some serious stuff and a whole lot of political stuff (no wonder it’s hard for me to write much of that now). Mostly I keep coming across bits of observation that I find amusing such as this, “But anyway, back to the older men at my gym. The ones that are minding their own business are kind of interesting. They are often reading a paper while they are using the cardio equipment. There are a couple of guys that look like they were all made from the same mold. They have gray hair and reading glasses that they sort of perch on the bridge of their noses…not like regular glasses that are firmly in place, these are glasses that seem to only be visiting their face, soon to leave. They seem a little annoyed at the need for physical exercise, so their reading seems to be an attempt to not be wasting valuable time. I assume they are business men, I have noticed that they are often reading The Wall Street Journal, but they could be school teachers or truck drivers or who knows what. I don’t really know why but I find them to be just the teensiest bit mysterious.”

I realize it’s rather meta to post part of a prior blog post inside a current blog post but that is just the crazy kind of world we are living in these days.

Next swirly thought…I started listening to the audiobook version of Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography, “Born To Run”. Bruce is the narrator which was a very good choice. His voice, both his literal voice and his voice as a writer, is so distinct and specific it would have been jarring to have someone else do the recording. He is a storytelling musician and he is brilliant at connecting his very specific, personal experiences to a wider communal experience so that when you listen to his songs you immediately and easily place yourself inside the narrative of the song.  Whether you are the guy racing in the streets or the girl being coaxed out for some illicit fun running around on a summer night…it doesn’t matter that you’ve never been to New Jersey, it doesn’t matter that your name isn’t Rosie, those songs are about you in some way.  His gift is in the way he imbues those stories/songs with universal emotions, the specifics give you a way in, the emotions give you a way to make the story/song yours.  I’ve only just started the book but he has a muscular relationship with words.  There is something demanding about the language he uses, mostly I think it’s because he thinks in poetry, as though he is most comfortable speaking in lyrics.  It makes sense, he doesn’t lose the narrative, but you have to listen along a beautiful and winding verbal path sometimes, then, suddenly, he’ll get to the emotional point in three short words.

It’s wonderful.