Last night was the third rehersal of my play. Well, it's really not my play, but I feel as if it is. Everything is so marvelous. At times it's very awkward when we're figuring out the precise blocking of the thing, and especially when I'm supposed to get a bit carried away with my theatrical love interest to whom I was introduced only last night in reality. But when it's over, and even while it's happening, I feel completely and utterly happy. Full to overflowing, nearly intoxicated with happiness over it. I am in a play! my thoughts sing over and over, forever finding new melodies for the dear, charming little phrase. When people ask me about it, I begin to laugh and gush, and then feel bad about being so exhilerated. It's like being in love, I think (I don't really know, but it must be something like it). Oh dear. Can I ever go back to normal life after this?

Okay, this is the very weird, honest-to-God truth. Friday night I had a dream in which a girl whom I haven't seen for months, cut her long curly hair. Today I saw her, and her hair, which has been long and curly for the entirety of our acquaintance, had been cut in nearly exactly the style as in my dream. And when I asked her, she said she'd had it done on Friday.

I overheard a conversation. But you must not think ill of me, for it took place not five feet from where I was sitting in a coffee house. The fellow behind the counter was being most amiable to a woman for whom he was making a drink, and saying "And everything I write I don't necessarily like." Being a writer myself, I quite agreed.
"Sometimes I just have to get something out and off my back. Some of what I write is really..." - he left it hanging darkly and went on - "and I'm glad to get it out, but I don't like what I've written... Yeah, how I deal with writers block is I make myself write for at least ten minutes every day. I just got a computor with a Word program and all kinds of hookups, but it's just not the same as getting it down on paper with a pen. So now I have a thousand dollar Solitaire game." He laughed at the irony, as I have countless times at the technology developed for those who are writers by those who are not. I wanted to say "I know exactly what you mean. I love that you love the pen as well as I, and even though our writing styles are entirely different, let's talk about inspiration and beauty and darkness. Let's compare notes on waking up out of a dream with a poem or a line that steadily gnaws at your mind until you simply must grope in the dark for pen and paper, or at least a pen to scribble it down on your arm. Let's discuss the exhileration of knowing what you've created is good, even if no one will ever know, or the disgust you feel when all you've written is something sappy and typical; The solemnity of writing the very first words in a blank notebook of thick creamy pages, and wondering 'what thought of mine is worthy to be first recorded here?'; The poetry which must sufficiently absorb into your soul before you show it to anyone. Let's talk, because we are both writers, and if there is nothing else we have in common, that is enough to warrant a friendship."
But it would have sounded as sappy and typical as it looks here, so I said nothing, but smiled quietly into my coffee because there were two of us in the room.

The Night has fallen
Gracefully
Silently
Ushered by a Sunset in mad array of color.
But not the Night; no

She tiptoes softly
now waiting
now listening
now gliding across the window pane.

Nodding to her daughter the Moon
She darkens.
A gown of deepest black she dons
A circlet of stars about her throat and
Glistening in her hair.
She gathers to her inky skirts
the World in all it's slumber.

Caressing it now carefully
now violently
now laughingly
Stories of her dangerous charms are
carried by the winds.

And children see the Night and fear her.
Mothers feel the Night and greet her.
Lovers hear the Night and trust her,
Spilling to her silent heart
the secrets of their deep delights.

And when her time is come
She fades,
Turns her midnight dress to a robe of misty grey.
And gently, oh so gently

She tiptoes softly
now waiting
now listening
now gliding past the window pane
And leaves the waking World at the mercy
of the Day.

~ C. Nelson

If I walk along a library shelf, I can point out every single book I've ever read there. I remember them all, and little incidences from the stories or places I read them bobble around like bright marbles in my memory bag. The emotions connected with each book return, and I alternately remember a little fear, laughter, the beginnings of philosophical thought, frustration, delight. These are a little of who I am, just tiny pieces of my past, insignifigant, but important. Sometimes though, I see a title, and the memory isn't just another bit. It's like a hot color seeped into me and stained, and how I used to think and feel about things was altered. The way I imagined things at night, my convictions about history, what I found to be humorous was changed. My self was different, a bit older, more afraid or thoughtful. I wouldn't have realized it at the time, but now I do, and wonder if nobody ever wrote and read anything profound, what kind of little world we would have.