Power of Touch
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
If I ever lost feeling in my arms, along with the sensation would go my writing career. In those simple keystrokes or the pencil lead coursing between the notebook lines and the wrist pulling across the paper is the real release. I could see myself at the keyboard and my hands suddenly go dead. I shake them. I bend my hands back as far as they go. Nothing. My next vision is the talent flying out the window, whatever imagined ability there might be, and in this vision I stand from this leather-backed chair to slide the glass open and I wave goodbye to it as it flutters away on the wind with the same crisp paper sounds that newspapers and loose leafs make in the wind, only this is just an idea, my talent, nothing tangible, snagged in bushes and leaf piles, on stairs and basement stairwells in the night, still rippling but white – brilliant white – then another gust and it circles up and down the sidewalk under street lamps, blown out of sight.
I keep staring after it when I know it’s gone, the same way I do when I drop something. After a moment it processes, and then I lower the window and stare out as if the view through glass is going to bring back my muse.
Back to the chair – with a dead feeling in my arms – I speak the poems into a program that posts them as the words are said on my computer screen, but there’s no connection. I don’t feel anything being channeled. I don’t sense any electricity. My mouth can move as fast as my brain, faster, but there is no struggle to keep the pen moving to keep up with thoughts, to keep the keys depressed and capture the words before they fade away. I say what I’m thinking. My lips move. The words are on screen. Nothing channeled, just … talking.
Give me my arms back! Give me my talent! I’ put a book through the glass and the breaking causes me to lose interest. I realize I am a black page. That I need to start over and that each time I find my way back to the writing desk, the page is blank. Whether spoken or written, the words are mine – and they all come from the same place: experience. In the hanging glass shards, I inspect myself in the reflection and find a blemish on my left eyebrow.
