the dialogues begin

last night she was telling me

quit running after those who won't budge.  bother yourself with things that move.  it's time you skipped over these puddles that make you stumble at night.  you've always been one who caved in on her own anxieties. don't you think sometimes it's almost self-willed that you find yourself picking and scratching it like a scabbed wound never rejuvenating back into fresh skin?  

i've watched you fall like a victim and rise like a hero.  let go of those knitting needles you keep holding in the dark.

i watch her walk around my room while i restlessly lay in bed waiting for the distraught that blocked the flow from last night's pen and she holds up this mirror at me and talks to me like myself. 

i fix things.  that's what i do.  i mend them whole.  i fill them like a dentist fills up a tooth's cavity.  but there is something about always having to feel like something needs fixing.  it always feels like you have to run a bit faster than the length of your feet because you have to be two steps ahead everybody else.  and your hands without catcher's gloves reaches out to catch breaking glass everytime.  

sometimes i ask myself, what if i just let everything fall apart like a deck of cards in a game of "build a lean tower"?  if i'd run that by my mother she'd hold me in contempt and think i've gone mad.  but really, what if i just let everything fall apart?  

doesn't grace exist in places wherein i let go of control?  i don't always have to "seize peace by force" as ettie would say.  it is still not clear to me so i flipped through the pages of letters she left for me to read and found, 

there are moments in which it is suddenly brought home to me why creative artists take to drink, become dissipated, lose their way, etc.  the artist really needs a very strong character if he is not to go to pieces morally, not to lose his bearings.  after each creative act one has to be sustained by one's strength of character, by a moral sense, by i don't know what, lest one tumble, God knows how far.  and pushed by what dark impulse?  i sense it inside me; even in my most fruitful and most creative inner moments, there are raging demons and self-destructive forces.  still, i feel that i am learning to control myself, even in those moments.  that is when i suddenly have the urge to kneel down in some quiet corner, to rein myself in and make sure that my energies are not wildly dissipated. 

she's always had it figured out but how?  i let myself drown in the truth of her words and it got me to stop struggling against having to hold the reins of others.  there is something about learning how to hold my own reins first.  

she stops and faces me with this knowing look and i fell asleep.