Clickety clack clickety clack.
The sound is a familiar one.
The sound of a brain and heart attempting to engage the world around her.
The sound of trying.
She stops.
“What are you doing?”
That cold and tired voice begins,
“Why are you still trying?
You have no credentials.
You keep writing in a passive voice.
You have never had anything published, really.
Maybe you never will
Why do you keep doing this to yourself?”
She continues, used to ignoring the voice by now.
Clack clickity clack click.
She stops again. Stares out the window.
She knows outside it is arid, nearly impossible to breathe. No fresh air in the summer in Texas.
She knows she’ll have to make her own air, live in the cool mountains of her mind.
Clickety clack.
Treetops can be seen beyond sand colored apartment buildings, a little bit of green, a tiny speck of nature.
She knows she is going to have to make her own scenery.
CLICK.
The air is still in the morning, any noise from neighbors or traffic drowned out by the hum of a large air condition unit. It’s Thursday, and by all facts and schedules, an ordinary day. Today she will shower, play with her puppy, get dressed, go to work.
Do simple, often menial yet enjoyable tasks to keep house and take care of people who aren’t quite able to take care of themselves. Today she will feel like part mom, part tutor, part house-keeper, part nanny, part-job coach.
Usually, someone will make her laugh.
Usually, she will get asked about ten thousand questions.
Usually, she will try to form her speech in such a way where she can be understood, simple, concrete.
Usually, she will force herself to stop and smile at the lowest functioning resident, a 21-year-old male with the capabilities of a Six- month old. She will look at him after she puts him in his giant crib, turns on the Pandora lullaby stations, and feeds him medicine to help him sleep in a spoonful of vanilla pudding. She will look into his green eyes and wonder what his reality is. What he sees when his legally blind eyes are open, sparkling, deep. When he laughs and babbles to himself.
She will wonder.
Clack. She stops typing to briefly read over what she typed.
Now, the reality of her day has words to it, concrete words.
After being jumbled, abstract thoughts, the words feel real and alive.
Final, but ever changing.
This is her existence.
This is why.
Clickety clack click clack…..
“That, I suppose, is the final mystery as well as final power of words: that not even great distance between time and space do they ever lose their capacity for becoming incarnate.”-Frederick Buechner
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