seconds

here i am, waiting to write for my "at least an hour a day." filling a quota, a goal i set for myself, and now i'm scared to climb into my head and go fishing. it's a dark pool, turgid and cyclical and cold, and i am clinging to the rungs, afraid to let go. but perhaps i should face this fear, it's just in my head, after all. i'm not really going to get sucked into that whirlpool and never come out. and there are shiny things at the bottom, i just know. i want to get to those, to feel them glisten smooth and cool in my wet fingers.

i can do it. i can put on "funeral" and let its transcendence and perfection be a new wave to ride into this storm with. it's my own blog, i can ramble here. why do i worry what it's going to sound like before i even get it down? because i know too many writers, who are better at writing than i am, in such a seemingly effortless way that even trying seems silly and pathetic. i don't have metaphors good enough to shine a light on, i don't have casually clever enough bits and pieces. i have to stop reading jonathan's stuff before i start writing my own, because then i just feel kind of like, oh, a small pencil sketch after seeing starry night.

maybe i should set a new goal. no "i" anywhere in the rest of this post. and this is where it ends and "publish post" is clicked, just so it's something achieved. but i already know i can't do it. not tonight, anyway.

i was almost in a really bad car accident this morning, on the freeway. there was some idiot in a teal 4-door (i don't remember what kind of car it was, normally i would notice that detail, but i was thinking of other things, or drowning out thoughts with music, i can't remember) who was crossing over all three lanes. she did this 4 times, and then cut right in front of me, and tried to cut over to my left, but there was a car there, so she crushes his back right bumper and then slams on her brakes and flips around, luckily there was no one in the lane to my right, so i laid on my horn and swerved over. i was like 2 feet away from hitting her. it would have been awful, the front left corner of her car would have smashed right into the middle of the front of mine, but the thing was, i didn't panic. and for a split second, i almost didn't swerve, but i remembered that rear-ending someone means you're automatically responsible, and we'd just gotten this car a month ago and dad had nothing else to drive to work - i thought all of that in the split second, and then, because it would affect more people than just me, i swerved.

i spent a lot of time today, thinking about that moment, that second. about how i reasoned it out in my mind just that quick, and opted out of the selfish gruesome accident. and then i wondered what was wrong with me that i have such a hard time reasoning and swerving when dealing with everything else in my life.

bah. i didn't want to write this, i didn't want to write this kind of garbage, the same old self-process. i wanted to write something beautiful, and meaningful.

i should have written a poem. none of this would have come out. maybe i'll just post this, and then start over.