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Before I begin on the actual entry: I now officially have to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Chocolat, and Cast Away. I've been meaning to see all of the forever, but now I'm determined, thanks to the three-hour waste of broadcasting time that I always watch (masochist that I am) every year.

Also, a Gratuitous Marital Happiness Moment™, just to annoy those of you who hate hearing about how blissfully wonderful my relationship is: I wear a freesia perfume that Bill really likes, and today I showed him some real freesia in my mom's garden. He took a looooong sniff, and then sighed, and said "These flowers smell like a Boo-Bug!" Isn't that just so cute you could pewk? I love this man. Oh, and yeah...he does call me "Boo-Bug". It's an old childhood pet name, and he thinks it's cute. I think it's cute. You're pewking, aren't you?

Anyway, enough meaningless babble. Here's the actual entry.

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Have you ever been walking or driving alone somewhere, and seen something beautiful, or amazing, or unusual? Maybe it was all three. Did you point, and say "Look at that!" and only then realize that there's no one else to see, that you are the sole witness to this apparition? Did you then feel a little hollow place inside you, was your experience of whatever it was bittersweet because there was no one to share it with? If you did, I know exactly how you felt. 

Every moment when my attention is not occupied, my imagination goes into overdrive. It must be a reflex, because I used to sit for hours during car rides or boring classes, actively trying to think of as much entertaining material as I could. I would think up whole grand sagas for myself, keeping my mind occupied when otherwise it would have been bored to death. At the time, I thought it was a great and handy thing, this imagination of mine, full to bursting as it was with a never-ending flow of ideas and concepts, characters and worlds. 

I have come to learn that it is a mixed blessing. I am an extrovert, which means that I am constantly expressing myself. I'm always trying to share, even if nobody particularly wants to be shared with at the moment. But I can't share the stories and images that my brain makes up for me...there's no way I can get people to just sit still and listen while I explain them out loud, and I am neither artist nor author at this time. 

I tried for a long time to become an artist, and for a while I maintained the illusion that I would one day become a professional one. But the sorry truth is that I lack the gift. I am like the main character in Lloyd Alexander's Taran Wanderer, when he tries to train as a potter. He can do everything right, all the theory is there...but whatever he makes is just a pot or a bowl or a vase. He can't work magic on the clay, like the Master Potter, and create something that is more than just a vessel, but a work of art. That's how my paintings inevitably turned out: there was technically nothing dreadfully wrong with them...they just weren't works of art. They were theory and paint applied to a canvas, and they came out in shapes that everyone could recognize, and that none marveled at. 

My writing is a different matter. I still cherish the hope that with the proper training, I might one day become a good author. You see I don't want to be a decent author any more than I wanted to be a decent painter. I want to be a good author. I won't presume to strive for great...but I demand good or nothing at all. As it is now, I just can't get very far without deciding that I don't like what I'm making. I always find something to criticize, and that leads to more and more things until the whole story seems to me a ruin of mistakes and fallacies. Eventually, I cannot bear the thought of it at all, and I end up junking whatever I've written, and hating the story. Trying to write down one of my stories is like signing its death warrant, for if once I try to document it, and I inevitably begin to hate it, I'll never revisit it again, in my mind or on paper. 

So my ideas...my stories and images...stay bottled up in my little brain, where they take up too much room, just like too many .jpg files on a small hard drive. They crowd into spaces reserved for other things entirely, and make it hard to remember things like movie times, appointment dates, and how to properly knot the lead rope when tying Noah to a fence. They distract me while I'm doing things like tapping threads for screws or trying to sleep. They're especially bad at night, when all the other parts of my mind are quite. Of the few parts that I can't silence, they are the worst, and they clamor for attention when I'm trying to get my rest, keeping me awake just so I can think about them some more, and make myself even more miserable because I can't share them with anyone.

I told Bill once that "It's like walking along somewhere, and looking up to see a tiger just sitting there by the side of the road, with..." I cast about for something appropriately unusual "...I don't know...birds sitting on his head, or something, and not being able to show anyone, because you can't shout, or point, and no one else sees him." But even that doesn't quite cover it.

It's like being stranded on an uncharted island where no one will ever find you, and discovering something truly amazing. Like the ruins and artifacts of an ancient, undiscovered civilization that had paintings and manuscripts and histories and organized religion. Or unicorns that dance intricate dances under the stars and heal any wound or sickness with just the slightest brush of a clear, spiral horn. Or a totally new kind of species that is neither plant nor animal, and that travels on vine-like appendages, and hunts squirrels while soaking up sunlight with its big, red leaves, and blossoming all over with huge, purple flowers. Or a cave full of super-intelligent minerals that grow in huge, prismatic formations and can solve any problem you give then from the common cold and acne to war and world hunger.

See? See what my brain is capable of? That kind of stuff just floats around in there all the time, pestering me. Just imagine being there on that island, with one of those things. Or even better all of those things. There's no one to tell, and after you die, there won't be a soul on earth who is even aware of its existence.

That's my island. I can't get off, and you can't get on. And there's nothing I can do to fix it. Now do you understand?