Acquisition of...

I have been in the mood to read lately. Anything I could get my hands on, dissertations, novels, blogs, literally anything. I have also been really considering my future; in specific future professional aspirations. This morning I woke up and said, emphatically, I want to write. I once again, and for the first time, considered a book. How I might incorporate my writings into a body worthy of publication... I decided quickly on a title, The Twenty-Something waxless soul. It humored me to consider how easily the name came, as I often have such issue with assigning titles. Even with blogs, sometimes the name comes after. However, here the name came first and then with a careful consideration and a taste of each ingredient across my tongue, I knew it was right.

What would you have me do? Where would you have me go? What would you have me say? To whom? It struck me last week that it had been a long time since I'd asked these questions and waited for direction. Over the next few days following my inquisition, I noticed answers everywhere. A few nights ago I got what was perhaps my greatest call and that was to love, to intimately connect to another person. I'd forgotten how powerful a thing it can be and it awakened renewed faith in me. It is, perhaps, why I find myself starving at the altar of language.

In his collection of essays entitled On Love, Alain de Bottom writes, “The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.” I believe the same can be said of intimacy of any kind. When we lose ourselves in a book, we cannot describe with any exact articulation, what it is that resounds throughout our being. And yet, we are absolutely sure of it. I feel this way of many things I know intimately; and while I suppose we reserve the term lover for those with whom we make love, I argue that in any true intimate partnership--even those with inanimate objects such as books--love is made all the time, continuously by the simple act of connecting.

It humors me often to get halfway through a post and realize I am not at all writing about the thing I sat down to write about. My head always has such careful plans, yet my heart is the one who learned to type.