It's that fine line between trying too hard and giving up

There's a difference.  There's always a difference.  Inexplicably I strive daily to be what I'm not, and inevitably crash back to earth with the feeling that I'm settling for what I am.  Why can't I get comfortable in a suit?  Why do I squirm discussing the law with colleagues?  Why do I secretly roll my eyes gossiping with other women?  When will I stop SCREAMING ON THE INSIDE when family insists on talking politics as if it touches them, friends insist on talking fashion as if it moves them, media insists on talking trash as if nobly pursuing its destiny.

I can't help but sense the difference.  When I listen to NPR or read the Post, I let the news of the world wash over me like a current.  Particles of sediment stick in my hair and graze my cheek.  I shake my head and they're gone.  I feel little more than a temporary high at being connected to the world for a brief moment in some small way.  A tinge of pride knowing I'll have something to say at the water cooler tomorrow.  Knowing I'll feel like I fit in, if just for a little while.  That Facebook IPO was certainly a disappointment, it's really too bad about those Nasdaq glitches, huh?  Sure.  Kind of a nail-biter waiting for that jury in the Edwards trial, no?  Alright.  (What an ass.)  Yes, but the labor market's a lagging indicator of economic growth, so...  WHAT?  Right, those anti-NATO protests in Chicago, what a mess...

There's a difference.  When I read fiction, when I read poetry, it seeps into me.  The words carve grooves into my organs and lodge themselves there until I don't remember where I end and where they begin.  I gather words, phrases, sentiments and store them in my figurative knapsack because they feed me, nourish me, sustain me.  When good writing enters my consciousness through eyes and ears, I feel changed.  I feel more myself.  I feel hopeful, validated, energized.  I think, Yes, there is a purpose, and this is it.  Here is the reason for being.  This matters, and therefore, I matter.  I often wonder what would be the point, in its absence.  In art's absence.  To live, for what?  To make money, but why?  To what source would I turn for pleasure, for fulfillment, for meaning?

I enter Tolkein's world and my heart skips a beat.  Far over the misty mountains cold / To dungeons deep and caverns old / We must away ere break of day / To seek the pale enchanted gold.  Song, beautiful song!  Tolkein's genius courses through my veins and I'm weightless, taking flight.  As they sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and a jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves.  Translation: I am home.

Dave Eggers' open wounds and aching honesty are like a one-two punch to the gut.  But there was intelligence in that breathing, and passion in that breathing, everything there, we could take that breathing and hold its hand, sit on its lap while watching TV, the breaths were quicker and shorter and quicker and shorter and then shallow, shallow and that's when I loved her as much as any other time, when I knew her as I thought I knew her . . . .  It's close, I can feel it.  If I reach out I can touch his heart, feel it beating, pulsing in my palm.

Stephen Elliott floors me every single time.  He sends me reeling, spinning, staggering for balance, gasping for air.  He plucks each word from the sulci of my brain and lays them carefully out in immaculate order on the page, as innocently as if he had written them himself.  He did write them, though.  That's the stunning, heart-stopping, breathtaking truth.  I felt dizzy and I told [her] that when you're an artist you're trading on that sliver of intellect that allows a slightly different lens onto the problems of humanity, or even something less. I couldn't quite describe it properly but I could see what it looked like. It's a thin membrane, I said. I was talking about insight, kind of, and imagined a bar graph with different colored zones and this one particular fragile spike in your chart. I wasn't talking about beautiful sentences; you can learn, over time, to write good sentences. I was talking about that other thing that disappears when you don't get enough sleep, or when you're sick, or when you wear out and cease engaging with the world, or when you fall back on your own cliches.

Did I think that first, or did he?  I wonder this as I gaze at my reflection in the mirror.  I look tired.  My shirt is wrinkled and there are bags under my eyes.  I think to myself that I should eat better, I should go for a run.  I should make a trip to the grocery store and buy the ingredients for that mushroom risotto I've been meaning to try.  I should blend myself a fruit smoothie and watch the news.  Perhaps I'll learn something, and I can walk into work tomorrow with my head held high instead of slinking past the water cooler and ducking into my office.  I should.  I should.  I should.

I sigh, and walk slowly and resignedly to my room.  I crawl into bed and fluff the covers up around me.  I stare at the cover of my new book like an eight-year-old with a brightly-colored package on Christmas morning.  I open to the first page, smoothing the paper and gently creasing the spine.  I sigh deeply, and begin.  No road offers more mystery than that first one you mount from the town you were born to, the first time you mount it of your own volition, on a trip funded by your own coffee tin of wrinkled up dollars--bills you've saved and scrounged for, worked the all-night switchboard for, missed the Rolling Stones for, sold fragrant pot with smashed flowers going brown inside twist-tie plastic baggies for.  It's Mary Karr, a memoir.  I can't help it.  I'm already head over heels in love.