waiting, waiting….

by bam

all around me, everywhere i look, the springtime is unfolding, what’s welled inside is aching to burst forth. cold winds, unexpected plops of snow and other falling things, seem only to make it all, all the more unlikely. but still it doesn’t run away and hide. doesn’t pack up its tightly-wadded buds and tender leaves, return to whence it came.
i am out there, often these days, trying to learn the same.

not long ago i had a dream. it was something filled with hope. i believed it mattered. but over recent weeks and months, a year perhaps, it’s gotten rather dented.

i don’t know, not at all, if it will ever be. or if it’s worth the trying.

if these sound like gasping words, the words of someone wobbling, well then that would be the truth. and i always tell the truth, whole truth, not one word less than.

truth is: for one whole year i rose before the sun. i pulled up a chair and opened up my heart. i typed. i tried to tell fine stories. i tried to make it matter.

i believed.

all around me for a while, i heard the sound of chairs. some came to the table, and told me they were there. made this place quite holy, and filled with shining light. others never spoke a word, but i had to think they cared (sometimes they even whispered so, when no one else was listening). still others, some of whom i deeply love, never even came.

i thought at last i’d found the thing that i was meant to do: to write of holiness, to magnify the little stirrings, to make the homefront count.

but now i’m not so sure. no one it seems is in the market for a book of little stories, of the heart and soul of all these hours we so deeply do believe in. heck, the newspaper where i work all day has told me, twice now, no thanks, not interested, could not care less.

oh, well.

but that’s not all.

of late, that someone who i share a house with has left me in the dust–at least in this here blog department. on a slow day, he tells me, he racks up a mere 600 hits; bemoans it as a dud. i get 100 in a week, and i am rather pleased. in just a month, he’s passed 100,000. most days, he has thousands clicking in to hear his thoughts.
hmmm, hard not to feel a wee bit underwhelming.

i’ve been told you can’t compare the two. well, all right then, but where’d my wind go?

i can’t bear to give it up, this thing i held so dearly. but on the other hand, i think, perhaps my time is better spent merely tending to the ones i love, writing only for myself. telling tales the old-fashioned way, the way the paper likes it: he said, she said.

perhaps a year and nearly six whole months, is more than i should ever think out loud. perhaps you’ve heard too much.

maybe it’s just the lull of spring, when all the juice is pulsing at the branch’s distal tip, or stirring in the chill of underground. and the bloom, still working toward perfection, is not yet ready to reveal its uncompleted beauty.
maybe all i need is time to bask in sunlight, to feel the warming winds.

but today i am that bud above: furled tight. pulsing deep within. not yet knowing when i’ll open up.

waiting, waiting…

have you had dreams you loved, and nearly lost? what kept you believing? how did you weather all the forces that seemed hellbent on crushing you?