A place of unfamiliar words

Finding writers I disagree with on how the English language *should* be used.

Discovering that in a sleep-deprived haze, I can churn out nonsense like "ask questions with questioning wonder".

And type "molecular" when I mean "molecule".

Struggling to find narrative arcs that once curved effortless as.. and what is an effortless curve? A rainbow, a moonbeam, the flight of a bird, the throw of a ball? How do I quantify what makes for great effort?

Stopping mid-sentence because I have forgotten what I wanted to say.

How did I get here, to this place of unfamiliar words? A space where bad writers tell me I am 'finally writing well', a place where I gravitate towards words that I can use to cover up a lack of substance. Where it is better that ten words are used to describe one and we like to line our sentences up in pretty matched bullet pointed columns.

"I don't write for you to read. My writing isn't meant to be a communication from me to you. It isn't meant to idealize anything or stand for anything or maybe even mean very much. It is but a fragment of a moment that changed me."

I wrote those words over fifteen years ago, and I am trying hard to fall back to them. To a place where words led me to greater insight, clarity and conviction. When I did not write by the rule of three. Or even if I did, did not cringe at the words in neat triplets. I like to think I can find my way back- to a point where I did not care who read, or who liked, or who did much of anything else with my words, without Twitter followers or blog-readers or the pressure of creating an online persona that people might like. It is a little disturbing to think that my insecure fifteen year old self had more confidence and conviction and a sense of how to use words well than the so-called adult writer who finds words unfamiliar and sometimes unpleasant.

Perhaps this is only a literary growing up, where I find not all words play well in the sandbox and learn to cross the street if I meet the nasty ones on a dark street.
And once more I leave this dangling unfinished story, an unfamiliar string of incompleteness.

Purpose

The events of the past only fall into perfect patterns when I look at them through the lens of what I want in the future. This perception is a choice. I could equally easily consider the past a random walk unconnected to the present or future.

I could consider it random and conclude there is little purpose to dreams for the future, which is going to be just as probabilistic as the past.

I could consider it random and try and identify parameters to control for the future. From personal experience, I doubt this could ever work perfectly.

And so I prefer seeing these patterns that support where I would like to go. The road ahead is long enough and hard enough without my concocting monsters or simply ignoring what has already happened. Given the odds, I might as well squeeze strength and optimism from wherever I can get it.