Just Once

Hey Iris, I need your help. My problem is that I need to be you right now, and you're nowhere to be found. I know what I want to say, but I can't figure out how to say it. I'm not the writer, you are. And now, when I need your words the most, I find myself struggling to imitate whatever it is you do so well. I know how you write, but for some reason it's just not the same when I'm trying to prove something. I think that's it - you don't need to prove anything, because you write whatever you have to say and don't need to edit it. How, then, do I fit you into 500 words that take so much effort to write, only to be glanced over for two minutes at best? I wish words weren't so limiting. I need you to get inside my head and organize it the way you to, or at least to take the important stuff and push it through my fingertips into the keyboard. This is the challenge, Iris - you've spent all this time enjoying the words instead of manipulating them. Now I'm asking you to change tactics and show the proof, to validate that which needs no validation. It seems impossible.

It reminds me of the scene in Seabiscuit, where they let the horse just run and run and run so that he can remember what it's like to be a horse instead of just an animal that's ridden in a big circle at breakneck speed. How do you make that change? How do you go from doing it out of pure delight to doing it because it's what you need to do? It's not fair that I have to cut myself so short, to spend all this effort on something that isn't really what I want to write. I don't want to validate myself, because that's me. Take me or leave me, this is what you get. Sometimes you get soap bubbles, sometimes you get Thoreau. See, right now I want to write about water, but instead I HAVE to do this because you asked me to. You're telling me this is my one shot to make it big, to show everyone else what I've got, but I can't do it my way. I have to do it their way. Well, I'm trying here, but it's not so easy to go back to what I've been trying so hard to get away from. I used to be just like everyone, having to prove myself in three paragraphs because it was the only shot you had at getting someone to pay attention. And now I don't care who pays attention, and all of a sudden I have to go back to those three or four desperate paragraphs? I won't lie, I AM desperate, and I have to go through this if I want to make something more of this freedom. I have to go back to go forward? Apparently I do. Apparently I have to remember what it was like tto have to impress people who have different standards - I know how to do what I do, but I don't know how to explain what I do to other people. I think I somehow swore to myself that with no editing came no regrets and no pressure - say what I want to say, how I want to say it, and whoever reads it can think what they may.

So there you are, Iris, hiding in a distant movie memory. So change your tactics. If there's one thing you haven't done, it's this. It's being part of the real world - unfortunately, out here not everyone's going to latch onto your theology. Sure, you can believe what you want, but they're only going to understand it if you explain it to them in a way they can understand. Maybe a ramble would do the trick, but what you really need is proof that you really are there. It's one thing for me to say it, but it's something completely different for you to say it. I'm giving you a couple of days. And yes, in the real world, there are deadlines. Do it for me, just this once - come back to what you excused yourself from, just once, and hopefully you'll never have to do it again.