At a crossroads

There is something so poetic in the image of a crossroads, out in the dusty countryside, with nothing but fields of corn, and a guitar strapped to your back. Time to sell your soul to the devil and never come back.

Sure, the romanticism is a product of a cinematographic education, steeped in solitary soul-searching images. I watched Walk the line about the life of Johnny Cash the other night, there was a similar image of the lone figure walking out into nothing. There was a cruel father, a better sibling that died, a lifetime worth of pain. There was redemption, too. I spent half of the film surreptitiously wiping the hot tears that sprung from my eyes off my cheeks, and the other half trying to contain myself from rhythmic chair dancing. There is nothing like a person in the next seat that you don't know to force decorum, I say, but then wiggle around a little just the same, pumping my thigh and tapping my heel to the cut-time.

A crossroads. I haven't felt much like writing these days. Not at all, and not because of anything but an ennui that has settled in over me. It is raining and grey out my window. There is a small person painting with her new paints in the other room. And still I have all sorts of wild hopes for the year 2006.

Stop writing, says the voice, give it up. The other says, no, there are people that count on you to keep writing. Not so. I choose to revert to the none-of-the-above category. Sink or swim? Write or erase. Become. Become. Become.

It is that, it is the becoming, it is the possibility of a new year, unmarred by future unhappiness, or even of past. Dancing in the livingroom with Kirsten, as the other neighbors look on, we dance around one another, the children are playing with puppets, they are watching movies, they are splitting their lips on each other's heads, but it is all fine, and the Cure somehow seems so happy as Smith's voice wobbles, "boys... don't... cry." And we listen to George Michael's Faith and Aretha Franklin, and Gloria Gaynor and PFunk, Stevie Wonder, Neil Young, Bonnie Raitt. It is all danceable, it doesn't matter, with several glasses of champagne under our belts and several more to come. Write or give up? Stand strong of cave? Become or just be?

I don't want to stop writing, I don't, I don't. I don't think I can, I can tell you all not to be bothered, I am a phantom, disappeared because of something that I looked for and found. But never stop writing, never again. How to sum up a year of tragedy? With hope?

I didn't know what to write about, I said to J. "I can't think of a single thing that happened last year of which to be proud."
"You wrote a novel!" J. points out. Oh yeah. That hardly counts, I reply, because it was just something I did to keep from my life totally exploding, I really don't deserve any credit for it at all and after all, it undoubtedly sucks eggs in terms of any sort of quality. That said. I suppose it is at least something that I can make the notch on the belt with, as I prepare to tighten it in the coming famine... Everything else from last year, mostly including my own behavior, has been decidedly shameful. So this shall not be a recap of the year in culminatory swells of glory. 2005 was an ingnominious sort of year for me. I guess it is ok to recognize that some years will be that way, and not get hung up on it.

So, to move forward. There are already several promises for 2006 that offer to shed some light onto this blackened catfish of a soul that I have been toting around strapped to my back. Will I sell my soul to the devil to learn to play? Or will I wave to him, blow him a kiss as I lift my chin up and just keep walking. Walking, walking. It will all be ok.