From: Reformedtilde

Before I came out with it, this problem arose. Little Julip came running in, “Daddy,” she asked, and I replied, “Just a second, hold on.” Then it happened. Interruptions had always set me back. Even the sweetest ones. But when I saw my daughter’s eyes water and cheeks turn pink, my frustrations needed to be evaluated. I’ve been a writer for about three years. Forgive the awkward misspellings and lack of preordinating. But I have tried harder and been too hard on myself. I’ve lost my wife and am about to loose my daughter. She’s now sitting with her dolly just on the other side of the desk: where I can hear, but not see her. My time is spent researching, archiving, chronologizing, and finally typesetting. The littlest disorder in configuration shocks me, throwing harmony up out of reach. I need harmony. Sometimes I call it balance, symmetry, dogma. All this attention to order, enables me to detect the slightest dis-order. You’d be surprised how much there is, I think. “Daddy, can I bring Barbie and Ken,” Julip just asked. She mustn’t understand where I am at or what I am doing. She’s so young. Perhaps naïve. But this room reminds me of the situation I’m in. The walls are bright white, a couch, bookshelf, some flowers and one indoor plant, are this room in respective ways, but they get too much attention, seriously. There needs more color, shine, and liveliness. I’m thinking of my daughters orange outfit with her squiggly shoe-laces and her bonnet cap. I still can’t see her though, so I take this description to be the same from the last time I saw her as accurate. That’s it. Because I study I can see the colors plainer, and simpler. My daughter forced the problem. She set me back. And I’m writing it out. My letters will shorten. My thoughts will condense. The atmosphere cloudy. I’ll be taken from work. Placed obliquely. Hanging out with my fears. “Haha,” I laughed to myself. I had to step back and reread those lines, I can’t believe it either. But I can’t sustain that outlook on life forever, but for my child I will and without another word about it. “Daddy, can we sit with crayons at the table?” I got up and looked down into Julip’s lap, she had the couple in a convertible car, so I said to her, yes, now lets go.

I am the editor of this wordksheet. I have begun to travel about, and on my way people like Ettiq, the loose socked backpack traveler, or Strawson, the rounded café retiree, have initiated unforgettable conversations, in places forgettable without them. I asked if they would like to keep in touch. Each in their own way declined, saying the air may be grim, but is healthier in the faces of others and not in distance. Being such, I respected and let their gentle declinations stand. I gave them my card, each time a new napkin with information we use to give out. Like home address, etc.. But they didn’t need to catch me, for soon I was back traveling their way. It was an idea, that took me back to the significant and insignificant of places I had traveled. In search of the one guarantee that would give my life purpose. So I conversed with people like Etiq and Strawson over again, and again. And ever since this second arrival we have kept close account of our goings, which everyone I met once before was keen to do after I explained my reasons for returning. I cannot tell what it was we talked about. Nor can I explain now what my reasons were. But continue, and I think the politics of performance will settle. Perhaps closest to a never ending bottom, a story that can’t settle. And if you take each word as a part of the journey, and move yourself into the relationships of friendships, of politics, you’ll be the reader, I’ve never expected, “Daddy, Mommy said everything was going to be alright.”