Words have always fascinated me--the way they give body to all of our experiences--spoken or written, sung, mimed or danced, it is words that communicate in our minds, everything that is.

Those words form stories, and those stories form the story of our life.so often, I hear people pedantically saying "life isn't like a novel or a movie"; but really, life is the humble chunk of stone used to craft a novel--our lives, our experiences are the raw material of all art.

And still, the anecdotes of life, the real-life stories of beauty, of romance--they happen, in my story, to people I know--just not necessarily to me, all the time.

Honestly, right now I'm in the middle of my novel life--the stay-at-home evenings, the feelings of anguish hushed, the processing of emotions, the waiting, the working it out. In a book, this would be a section break. In a film, this would flash in and out of my progress for about 20 seconds with really motivating and cool music playing.

But this isn't the novel of my life, even if the story is pretty good (even if I say so myself). O don't get to skip this part, though, at times, I'd certainly like to. I can
t just show a few clips to affect the reader, I can't just skip to the end. No. I have to feel it, every painful emotion. I have to live the time, live it processing, struggling, striving... I have to be here, not dreaming of the future, not reminiscing and ruing the past--I have to live here, experience here.

If anyone ever makes my story a film or a novel, a I hope they capture the depth of emotion, the subtlety of the transitions, the endurance, the perseverance, the perspicacity of my life... these chunks of life, these pieces of stone which will be hewn off, are still terribly poignant, even if they will be recognized in the final draft, only by their absence.