The other night I was driving home from work on Precinct Line Road and the moon just rose above me, like it was trying to startle me, and I saw it for a moment, saw its beauty and really took it in and for a second I felt like myself, like really, truly myself at my best, not the me hiding behind small talk and small thinking.
I feel like myself now, too, in the best way. Typing away with nothing to gain and nothing to prove, just writing for livings sake.
I feel this for a moment, then I start judging myself and the criticism flies at me, unavoidable.
Why do I write about writing so much?
Perhaps there is a lot of empty air surrounding anything resembling a creative muse, and so I write about writing instead of actual events or metaphors.
Even now, my addict brain is shouting, “Gimme, gimme, drown me out with facebook, with something, quick I need a fix.”
No. No, I won’t live like that. I won’t deny myself breath. I hate the lazy part of myself but I indulge it as well.
If I need poetry to live, I am not doing a very good job at living.
I need Your words.
But sometimes they seem just out of reach.
A voice in me asks,
“What does it feel like?”
So I attempt to answer:
An archer poised to hit a target across a sea
not knowing which way the wind is blowing
A crying newborn flailing his arms to touch love
while the one who bore him is in the other room
owning a treasure map to a land that doesn’t exist in this world
that place of waking sleep when the answer is clear and clean
then slips away as you regain consciousness
writing everyone one of these shitty lines and hating them violently
wanting them to bleed out and die in front of me
wanting to give up and do something that involves less of me
So I write about writing as if he were my lover and my enemy, my life, my own obsession, my light and my darkness.
Maybe he is.
(I know now why writers are crazy)
Maybe he’s the only thing I’ve had to make me feel like me,
To keep my sanity. (sort of)
To even begin to make sense of myself and the world around me.
All these emotions, whirring, violently thrashing against the inside of me.
My eyes are beginning to close but I keep typing because I still am not there.
There are a lot of layers, I buried these things deep, this real sense of being, of mattering, of doing.
There it is:
Small.
Glinting.
Rough edges still.
But shiny.
And priceless.
brookelouvier.com 
Hey, Brook. I love this–especially the addict brain and the metaphors. Sometimes I can look at other people, and they look so productive and so much like they WANT to work, and I can feel like I’m the only one not in love enough, too addicted to easy fixes. So thanks for being there with me.