laptop confessional

Let's see, things I could talk about.
- Five days with a sick child, something viral with a temp and a bad cough. Father and I dodged the bullet, cold comfort that.
- A friend's unbelievably stormy, variegated love life; one week, new love, next week horrible break-up, always a train wreck in progress. Why? Why? He's such a good person.
- My disappointment at not being able to steal the car and drive it without a license, now that there's snow on the ground and car #2 is parked in the garage (with not much gas.) (I've never had a license, by the way.)

Or I could talk about the sail.

Specifically, about feeling like a sail; or a bubble, or a blank sheet of paper; meaningless unless filled and impelled by outside forces.

There are a number of people who like to talk to me about their lives, and their troubles. They assume, I've noticed, that I in turn share with them the bulk of my troubles, my sorrows, my intimate vitae. Truly though, that's not the case. I know no one who knows absolutely everything; one person comes close, and no one else knows about that really, including the individual in question. It's safe to say that if I give an example from my own life of some dubious behavior, there's a better (if more damning) example that I haven't given. If I seem wise, it's because I give the impression of having learned from my mistakes, of having things in my own life under control. HA HA. Not true. And you'll never hear me say "You're the only one who knows." Or if you do, I'm probably ... fibbing. Unless you're that one person who knows pretty much everything worth knowing. But you don't know if it's you, so no harm there. You might think it's you; knowing you though, you don't think that at all. Which is why it's safe to tell you -- you will always assume there's more to me than meets the eye! So I'm never summed up, never a known quantity, never owned, never judged. That's the idea. That, and keeping out of trouble.

But what am I? If you don't tell me anything about your life, if I can't give you something worth having, what's the good of me? I am a fucking sail -- the Holy Spirit blows me from place to place and the people who bend toward my ear and ask for my time are islands in the current. If I didn't know you I wouldn't be worth knowing. Deal with it! The more I have my hand in, the emptier I become. My thrills are largely imaginary.

I'm the blanket around my kid's shoulders. I'm the shoulder my husband cries on. I'm not complaining.