The Gift

The Gift - a reading (on YouTube)

I believe that everyone receives a gift, a talent or a passion they enjoy far more than anything they attempt. For the luckiest, it becomes their profession. For the rest, an avocation or maybe just a dream.

For me, my words are my gift. I'm not saying they are literary or masterful; the wall of rejections behind me says the best I can hope to be is competent or adequate.

Writing is an addiction that I can't stop myself from relapsing into. Thoughts and phrases echo through my mind until I jot them down. The compositions haunt me. They possess me in ordinary moments, walking, driving, watching television, showering. They stalk me into sleep and wake me in the night.

Some messages begin with a reflection that strikes me as significant, or an encounter from my memory that I'm still trying to sort out. It's not that I think my life is unique or even particularly special; it's just the only one I have to reflect on and discuss.

Other messages ignite my imagination with a spark that burns until all its fuel is spent. I record them like a court stenographer then read them back to myself, adjusting and readjusting each word and phrase until my mind is content. Sometimes that takes hours, sometimes days.

A few I play with like a child building sandcastles out of words just to see how they might sound piled one atop of the other. In some I am trying to capture scenes of light and shadow, the beauty that pierces my eye like an ice pick on the days when colors ache and make me want to cry. They emerge in migraine-muddled complexity with strange, almost Lovecraftian references, religious and mythological, the natural symbols that form the currents of my thoughts. Capturing them is almost meditative though I'm sure few people understand their meaning. They are an expression more than a communication.

Then there are the stories, the worlds I become immersed in as I allow myself to explore them. I drown in the character's experiences like an overdose of narcotics. I know their dreams and motivations better than I know my friends. I remember their histories and can feel the events that interrupt their lives. While I'm typing, I can see the places they travel through in vivid detail. When I listen, I can hear their conversation deep inside my head.

But many days, writing is like thinking through cold molasses. A headache pounds or doubts and distractions pile up until each thought becomes an exhausting weight and all I want to do is sleep. On such days, I am lucky to stay positive, lucky to keep shambling forward in something resembling progress. On such days, I have to embrace simple pleasures like remembering to breathe. I have to remind myself that each day is its own gift, its own experience added to the stockpile we call memory with no guarantee that another one will follow.

When I was fifteen, I learned to rappel. That summer, my Boy Scout troop was camped in the mountains of North Carolina. One day, our adult leaders took us over the ridge to the top of a sheer cliff face, maybe sixty feet up.

There, instructors taught us what we needed to know step by step: how to tie our own harness, how to attach the karabiner, how to grasp the rope with one hand and loop it behind our back, how to pull it tight across one hip as a brake, how to set our feet against the rock face. All very simple and exciting to fearless adolescents. After one instructor descended to the bottom in three or four quick leaps, the other asked, "Who's next?"

Like any group of boys, we stood around and shuffled our feet. All of us wanted the opportunity, but none of us want to be the first to make a mistake or look foolish. Since I was the senior juvenile leader at the time, I figured it was my responsibility to step forward. So I did.

The instructor checked my harness and hand positions then sent me to the edge. As with any new experience, the first step was the hardest, the one where you lean backwards over empty air then push off, trusting that everything you've learned is right. After a few tentative hops away from the wall, I jumped out farther and farther, leading to longer and longer drops. All too soon I was at the bottom staring back up, wanting to scramble up the path and take another turn.

But there wouldn't be time. My example was all it took for the line to form at the top of the cliff. Now everyone wanted to try.

While I was waiting for the next of my friends to arrive, I glanced down at my harness. The extra six inches of webbing feeding into the knot had shrunk to between one half and one quarter inch. One good pull and it looked like the knot would come undone completely. In fact it did when I gave it another strong tug. My blood still freezes when I think how close I came that day to a quick, unplanned descent onto the rocky platform where I stood.

I believe that everyone receives a gift. Remember to enjoy the gift today brings, whatever it may be, however hard you have to struggle to embrace it. You never know when the knot might come untied and all your plans will change.

© 2009 Edward P. Morgan III