delible ink

One of the great things about running with a close friend is the ground you cover.  Yes, the miles along the road or trail are valuable to your cardiovascular system and to races yet to be run, but equally important, globally, and certainly more important to your psyche, specifically, is the discursive ground covered – the miles of ideas sharing.  When I head out the door with a friend, as often as not I have a list of things I’m looking forward to discussing during our one, two, perhaps more, hours together.  With equal frequency I get to the end of those runs with boxes left unchecked on my list of material to cover.  Inevitably, one topic hits a number of forks in the trail and suddenly you’re lobbing conversational balls back and forth to each other along a route you couldn’t have foreseen when you took your first steps.

My birthday run with Michael last Friday was just such a run – we twisted, we turned, we were fortunate to make it back to where we started, conversationally or otherwise.  Along the way we fell upon the topic of writing. Michael, you see, had been neglecting his blog for the very good reasons of work pressures and family responsibilities.  Notwithstanding the reasonableness of those challenges, as we cruised through the trails I did my best to encourage him to get back to it as soon as possible.  Selfishly, I missed his updates, which typically focus on his running and through which I find a source of motivation and solidarity.  I suspected the rest of his readership felt the same way, but noted that ultimately his writing had to come from and be directed at himself.  That, for a writer to be self-sustaining in this mostly solitary pursuit, the value to others had to come (probably a close) second to the value to oneself.

We lingered on the topic of audiences as we snaked deeper through the crowds of trees.  Neither of us having a huge readership on our blogs, it was easier to accept and adopt the notion that we must focus our writing on our own ends.  But it would be a lie, we agreed, to not admit how much we value feedback on our posts and especially, more than simple acknowledgment or encouragement, the knowledge that we have reached someone on an emotional level or motivated some form of response or action.

As we ran and shared this acknowledgment of our perhaps needy desire for feedback on our writing, I knew, taking a mental inventory of my blog, that I had received probably two comments on this site in the entire week.  If I was reaching anyone, they certainly weren’t telling me about it.

And then something coincidental and rather magical happened.  I returned home from the run to find a comment on my Open Letter to the Alberta Ballet.  And then another.  And another.  First from an employee of the Company, then a member of the Board and then the partner of the ballet’s brilliant choreographer, Jean Grand-Maitre.  A handful of friends also weighed in, most kindly.  My internal response…as I lean back in my chair now, late at night, trying to describe it…was… enlightening.  In the sense that it lifted me up, made me dizzy, gave me perspective.  I felt, in the moments that those responses came in, the resonance I’ve felt myself when reading others’ writing, the places writing has taken me, the evocative memories, the catalysts for action.  I was – and remain – humbled and light-headed at the possibility that I might possibly be able to leave others, the readers of my writing, with a similar sense of resonance and satisfaction.

I sit and stare again, now, wondering what’s the point of this, it seems self-serving.  I aim for tidiness and would like to wrap this post in a narrative bow.  But the experience of last week’s ballet, my desire to reflect upon it through words, the contentment at being satisfied with what came out and then the unexpected, deeply appreciated response, has left be scattered, still up in the air, now somewhat buffeted.

Most important, the point I wanted to reach when I began writing this evening was to extend my deepest appreciation to each of you who commented on that post, shared your own stories with me, let me know that there was a smile on your face and appreciation in your heart as you did so.  I don’t have the faculty with language to tell you sufficiently how much it meant to me.   Because though ultimately delible ink is a digital notebook hidden away in the vast landscape of the internet’s content, a place for me to openly scribble my thoughts and attempt to hone a craft, for a moment last week it was more than fading ink scrawled on the back of a napkin.  You gave it a deeper value.

And made me feel like a writer.

With deepest thanks, again.