Out of the Well

Rediscovered By Writing

I want to write more than I want to talk, and that is "saying" a lot, because historically I am known as a talker. 

One time, I told someone to stop interrupting me, and they said "I have to," implying it was the only way to get a word in with me.

 Now, it feels less like I have a need to storm the room with my voice, my additions or bombardments to conversations, and more like  deeper truths that I can’t or won’t say outloud. 

Not that I would be able to come up with the same ideas or ways to express them by speaking, anyway. There’s something better that I don’t have voice for yet.

It must be written, then maybe later can be read aloud or reshared in some spoken way, woven into a conversation somewhere at some time. But not now.

This happens often. So many words, ideas, creations under the surface of what I look or sound like on the outside. I am more, and what I have to share is more. It remains unseen until it appears on page, even for me. 

I get to know characters and worlds as I write them. I think and imagine and write and flow with it all at once, like a raft on a river. 

Sometimes the water is soft and still and slow. Sometimes I ride out wild, fast, even manic rapids, barely able to keep up with the poetic wind that blows through. 

 I wake up with hunger, yes, to find out what to write, but also to get to know who I really am. 

In my mind, I stare down to the bottom of an ancient well and see just a hint of myself. How long have I been down there?

I wonder what colors I’m really wearing, what I'm trying to yell up to the top, to those who might hear as they pass by. I’m not conversing, I’m reciting an original writing.Perhaps they’ll be moved to help. 

 I see readers as potential rope-throwers, who may hear enough of my little words floating up to them that they deem me worth pulling all the way out.

"That’s good!” 

“I want to hear more. I want to hear you better. I want to see you up close.”

“Here! Here’s a rope. Hold on tight!” 

 They pull me up a little and more readers come behind them and join the pull. Maybe I finally climb all the way out and collapse on the high ground.

 I lower a rope and bucket to the bottom of the well. It scrapes into it poems and songs and stories enclaved into the side-walls.

 All the things I’d written in the dark or forgot about or didn't have enough room to finish. Papers tucked into cracks and bricklines. Notes sticking to the under-bucket by way of mud. I won’t leave without them.  

The long-held sunlight hits the words just right. They finally have their day. So do I.

And I don’t have to say a word about it.

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.... I don't know what I think until I write it down.”

-Joan Didion