Go ahead and say it

I could ask you to be more careful. I could ask you to choose lovelier words. Take a pause. More poetry, less logic. See me in three dimensions. See me, period.

I'm not going to do that.

Say what you want.

You said some words. I wanted to brush them off, but unfortunately they stuck, like lint.

Here's what happened next.

Every color on the street looked brighter. The skies opened up and I captured what I could, me as photographer, me as artist, leaving the rest for next time. There will be a next time.

The sadder I got about what you said, and I did get sadder and sadder, the better the palette, the bare, brave branches, the hero plants in the cracked sidewalk. This went on for a while.

I rode the subway and nobody's talking to me and we sat together in convivial silence, the strangers and me. It was glorious.

I borrowed the words of Henry David Thoreau to help my child, via text and I will save that exchange forever.

Then I employed my own imperfect, true words, crafting them this way and that, writing prose and poetry, waking up in the middle of the night to get it down, then deleting it and writing something better in the morning.

There was quite the prolific 24 hours that followed. It might not be over yet. I didn't plan it that way, but that's what happened.

It's as though something inside me needed to prove you wrong.

But alas, something else happened. You were right after all. I wish it were different, but wishing doesn't make it so.

And really, what does it mean that there were crystalline moments inside this brain of mine? It means when something bad happens I make good art. That's it.

Say what you want. Most of what you say is kind. Nobody listens better than you. Is there room for improvement? I don't know. I don't need you to be a saint.

When you say something that sounds like air being let out of a balloon or falls with a thud, know this.

It's okay. It will work out. After a time, I'll want to talk with you again. If you hadn't said what you did, I would have never written this. It wouldn't exist without you and your crappy words.


From the archives:
Yes, Please
Radio Silence
The other than