Knowing His Father

I think sometimes when I read the next morning what you wrote the night before... She looked over at him with a sad look in her eyes, but she didn't finish her sentence.

You think what? he asked her.

I think that I should be there when you write those things that sound like you are gazing lonely out the window. I think that you want someone to talk with when you are up writing, but I am long asleep.

No, he said without really even thinking about it. It's not so much that those are thoughts I need to talk about. When I sit and gaze I don't really think them, but when I sit down to write, the words come together on their own.

She didn't seem to understand. Neither, really, did he. But she nodded her head and seemed to feel better. And he gazed off into space.

And he reflected on how his thoughts only coalesce into words when he actually starts to type them or write them (more often type than write, these days). He thought how otherwise the words never form in the first place. It occurred to him how much of his thinking is really more like wandering in a formless void. Not until he opens his mouth or lifts his pen or types at the keyboard does the mist lift.

And in thinking that, he pictured a man from years ago sitting in the yellow glow of an incandescent lamp in the corner of a living room. A man staring out the picture window, sitting still except for a sometime wiggling toe. Staring into the void.

And he thought perhaps he knew his father better now than he did before.

11:00:05 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []