Birrthday coming up...

 

 Birthday. 65. Unknown blahs. Blow it out like a 5 year old. The hope of an older man. Wanting my parents to feel ok. At peace. My siblings. Not torn up like only an unsatisfied writer could be. I know the unconsummated love of writing. Looking inside for a horizon, I find not one. Looking inside for an outline, I find so many, they merge into the shadows. Shapes move at night now for me, as if a wind blows from many angles. But I know, this isn’t possible. A big wind only comes from one corner. At a time.
A good writer believes nothing of what they see. The essence of goodness lives not on surfaces, or smooth appearances. I should be writing the book my Grandfather Willard wanted to write, or its opposite. Since I live in another era, I’ll choose the opposite, the version that has flowed through the looking glass of the twentieth century.
Though Willard Wattles died nine years before I was born I was fascinated with him, or some essence of him when I was a youth. Just the name: Willard, was a reverie for some reason. And the reason hovered near me, above me and I considered it and wanted to be in it. I was distinctly driven to learn to type, I remember realizing, go slow. Return each finger to their base key, as if there was energy flowing there, knowledge there in each finger. And soon enough each finger knows what to do, all of its own, as I think. It brings to mind some  kids movie about magic where the wizards fight and words, magic spells, are in their minds and mouths and the energy flows from their fingers like lightning bolts. Zapping at each other across the stormy air.
And this is how we learned to write in kindergarten anyways, so typing is a recapitulation of that, but two handed. If writing by hand is a cyclops, then typing is seeing the world in three dimensions with two eyes. A bimodal vision. And perhaps its even harder to let go of a three dimensional world than the world of a cyclops.
Around the same time, my younger brother wore an eye patch. He wasn’t ever the baby of our family unit though he was the last of four. He never complained or whined for more or had temper tantrums on the floor. Though now, I wish that he had, because I never did learn to see the shape of his need or desire til I looked back, into the four dimensions of my past and he spoke to me. And saved me from myself.
This is what Grandfather Willard would have wanted, me to listen to my brother.