People Are So Interesting - Part Three. Passion in written expression

When you watch a speaker, you can see muscles in the face contort. Listening, you hear the voice raise, lower … listen to not only the tone of the voice, but also to the fluctuations in that tone, emphasizing any number of subtle subtexts. If you favor the speaker, it’s easy to be caught up in the moment.

In writing, you have words. Period. Just words. I’m a writer, so I’ve naturally been more than impressed when those same strong emotions are evoked within me by something I’ve read.

Following are two examples of what I’m talking about. Written by truly gifted people, these two commentaries have nothing in common – not in author, subject, style, not even in purpose. Yet they reached me with the same degree of passion, at totally opposite ends of the spectrum. And it’s this ability to go from one extreme to the other, often with no apparent effort whatsoever, that makes people so interesting.


JOY

I come to these golden... endless fields because I find myself abundantly free here. The
silence in this place - it's unchanging. .The stillness eases the restlessness of the world out of me.

This quiet has the tendency to soak into every fiber. There are broken valleys in this heart of mine, where quiet and stillness are strangers to me. I've been too busy listening to noise and distraction in one form or another. If I wait long enough here, then I'll know a secret - a secret that lasts and surprises. A secret that will reveal itself in the form of a gentle whisper, that graces my ear like the sound of the ocean in a seashell. Be still and Know that I am God. That comforting wave crashes into me and sustains, but only when I am so still I can sense the trees growing. My heart, it's beating like an Indian drummer inside this hollow chest. I wonder - do you hear Him here ... now? I wonder - do you sense him here ... now? He's close ... so close. If you listen beyond the silence, you'd understand what I'm trying to tell you. Did you know the sun - it follows me whenever I come. The sunlight rises up over my shoulders. The warmth upon my back makes me understand how frail and human I am, but it also over joys my spirit, too. Sometimes I come in the middle of the night and the moon - it's as bright as a streetlight. There is something important about the light and the counting of my steps to this sacred ground. And it's only sacred because something profound is about to take place. It's in the silence surrounded by the simple pleasures of grass and sky and sun that my heart feels ready. Ready for what you wonder? To start the eternal conversation. To start what was from the beginning and what is now, already beginning, and what will be beginning. The conversation really is another secret because it never ends. You see...God is always listening. My heart, it's undone and naked in these fields and I begin...I begin to Worship. Hallelujah's pour past my lips. And there is nothing but You are worthy, You are worthy, you are worthy.


SORROW

It's 4 weeks since he left. Not a word. He conveniently managed to avoid my birthday, Christmas, Boxing Day (our traditional party) and New Years. "and a Big Yellow Taxi took away my old man"...sing it Joni. You know. When Joni sings "I wish I had a river I could skate away on" I can relate. Very Canadian, that. A river to skate away on. But something so appealing, just glide away, cold air in my face, a subtle "woosh" from the skates...on and on until there is no one around, no one left, not even me.So cliche, but "I can't believe it's been 4 weeks!" I have been dutifully practicing the D's---denial, dissociation, drinking (not so much, just a bit). I only cry when it attacks me, grabs me by the throat and explodes through my eyes and diaphragm. And I don't know why I cry, and it scares me, and the cats. Peaches comes over all concerned and mows and sniffs my face. And then it is gone and I go back to D1 (denial) for a bit. I hate myself, I hate this body. I wish I were one of those alien creatures who only inhabits a corpse to move around in, and when it is destroyed, they just climb out and move on to something else (I'm sure I saw it in a movie once...one of those science fiction ones I never wanted to watch but did because he loves science fiction and I would do Anything to spend time with him and make him happy). I would crawl out of this fat, ugly body and inhabit Posh Spice or Keira Knightley. I'm not angry at him. I think that might be why I am passively, indirectly killing myself.