What I Know

Just thoughts

Mama tells me to write what I know. I try to tell her about my idea for a novel, the story of a mountain man who has lost his beloved wife. He clings to the earth as his lover, gardening and hunting with a sense of respect and modesty, not posing with his kill for everyone to see. But mama says, I think you should write what you know. There are stories you know that you should be writing. I know that I always do what people expect, or require. I fear the thoughts of others, though I fully understand they have no consequence on my being. My thoughts of others do not change them, just as theirs don’t change me. I know that there is a mystery mountain man who fails to exist outside of my mind. He is ideal and unfailing. He is a figment of my imagination. A distraction from the actual men of Mitchell county, I rely on him to keep me alive. If I didn’t create some being in my mind, someone I could control, who would I have? I mean I’m not crazy, I know there isn’t actually this man following me around, supporting me. He is just a thought, just a place to turn when everyone else lets me down. I just imagine myself in this man’s arms and it makes me forget the real world. Which eventually I have to deal with, but thinking about him, knowing I can come back to him, it makes me able to get through the day. Cause this man, there is no way he exists in this world, these people I surround myself with, they are from a whole other era than he is from. I don’t know who he is or when he lived, if ever, but I think if he ever did live, or is living, maybe he feels this weird connection too. I know what it feels like to have an image in your head, a hope or an expectation, only to be stabbed by reality. I know how it feels to be led on, to be let down, and to be forced to move on. Even though, why is it I still have some tiny seed, buried deep inside of me that no one knows about, this tiny seed of hope for the impossible, for the future. I know there are countless stories all around me, Charlie, Harv, Dean and Ed, every person that comes into the store has as story for me to dream up, to write down. I know I have no mode of transportation to write these stores. They are in me, they are all packed away in boxes, waiting to be organized and told. But how to get them from inside of me, onto paper, I will never know. What parts go together, what belongs where? Who needs to be left out and who should I focus mainly on. I know I have the strongest desires for so many things, but no motivation, no drive, no transport. Get me out of this town, away from these people. I wouldn’t even know where to start. Get me from here to there, I don’t care how, as long as it happens. Why can’t skip the in between and just wake up in these places that are trapped in my head? I want to fall asleep here and wake up in the that small musty bar in Oklahoma or the Dakotas, and stay there for ten years, then fall asleep and wake up by the ocean in New Zealand. I know I want these things more than life, but I don’t know how to achieve them . I know in times like this, when the real world is flat and hard and unchanging, there is my mind to turn to. I can keep things there that I treasure, it is a place of beauty, of people who love and inspire me. I can always shut the door on the real world, and go into that room where Jane Eyre and Felicity Porter are waiting for me with a cup of warm tea and fire blazing. Then, after encouragement, love, and laughs, I can excuse myself and walk into the next room where mystery man is waiting for me on a grassy hillside, overlooking the green hills in deep summer of North Carolina. We sit side by side and look at everything. We are silent and calm and peaceful. When the sun goes down, I can crawl into bed next to him and sleep to the sound of his deep steady strong breathing. I must remember these things, these inspirations and loves, these must become my real world, in place of this ugly bitter disappointment of reality.