I am sitting at the Station, my favorite diner and coffee shop. Not another soul is here other than a waitress and the cook. It is cold outside and the cold bright sun is coming through the windows. An odd mix of soft jazz and bluegrass inspired guitar music is playing. My coffee, the third cup, is cold.

I have been writing for almost three hours. A poem. A piece of marketing material for a Chinese client. A reminiscing of David Bowie. This.  

There is an otherworldly feel to it all. Like somehow I have been dropped in a vintage movie, the lone diner writing silently in the corner. There is color, but it feels black and white. Out of time. Out of place. I could be twenty again. I could be ninety. I could be a struggling writer working on the great American novel, the news reporter spitting out a scoop, the dilettante poet. The madman or the lover.

It is a spiritual thing, to lose myself in writing for a few hours. I do many things I love, but to be able to sit and write, not caring what comes of it, just letting my mind flow and sift and come out of my fingertips… It’s as close to finding my essence as anything I do.  Next to the time spent with the woman I love, there is nothing better. 

And yet, it is utterly indescribable. I have never been able to completely capture the emotions of timelessness and being lost in the process of writing. Nothing I ever say, nothing I ever write comes close to the experience.  

And yet, I keep trying. That, I suppose is part of why I write. I have things to say, to share that I never quite capture, never quite get fully right.  But I keep trying, hoping that somehow, when people read me long enough, when I read myself long enough, that the mosaic of words will somehow create a picture, a film that will be more true than any single scene. 

And so I sit. Lost in the place, the music, the grief and joy and confusion that is my world. Unable to share. Yet hungry to share. 

Be well. Travel wisely. 

Tom