All The Things

I looked. I searched. I wondered and I delved deep.  I tried, really, I tried.  There is so much that I have to say and so much that I have to feel, but the words are flitting around like fireflies –no, more like gnats– and I am left with no alternative but to write about the writing.  And the writing is coming, but so are the other thoughts.  The things that I avoid, and I don’t avoid much, but now I am avoiding.  Because the things are big.  And the things are a little scary.  And the things are present.  It’s not like writing about my dad, whose death can still bring me to my knees, weeping and searching for the remnants of air that I know exists, but somehow can’t find my lungs.  It’s not like writing about my job and the teaching and the learning and all the bits in between.  And it’s not even like writing about the world at large, with the wars and the destruction and the falling ice shelves and the empty grocery shelves and the skyrocketing gas prices and milk prices and house prices and the growing poverty and the shrinking patience and the continuously protected racism and the persistent patriarchy and the stubbornly resistant awareness.  Or maybe it is. Maybe it is all of that surrounding something smaller, something that is all mine.