Some Days I Ponder
By Sandra E. Webber

So here I sit, hair piled wet onto my head, dripping dots of chestnut brown liquid onto my worst jeans.  I’m drinking a glass of cranberry juice and pondering over a pile of motivational tapes stacked nearby that I plan to sell on e-Bay.  Here is where the stench of dead and dying rats has found its way through the air vents in my home office, the result of a small but steady leak in my roof, undeterred by the lavender incense boiling on top of the bookcase.

Does it matter that I sit here with what I believe is much to say, yet find myself unable to put the string of words together in a way that I think can ever get close to qualifying as worthy of a reader’s time, or of a publisher’s money?  The reader has free will to read or not to, to criticize or compliment, I remind myself, while forgetting to note that I have that same will to shut out the inner critic.  The voice is telling me I must ponder these things incessantly rather than express the art of my life experience for the world to hear. I turn up the volume on the salsa music playing on the boom box on the floor.

The so-called experts say not to worry about these things.  That to write is to write badly, at least in the beginning.  There is time, they say, for the re-writes, the edits, even the crumpling of paper or deleting of entire files of computed efforts, in our struggles to produce something “good.”  So, why is it when the words come tumbling out, do I find my mind wandering to all the subjects, every incidence of possible significance that I might ever write about?  

My life of loves, and near loves, failures, follies, and fiascoes wash over me, and it’s as if to choose one might keep me from the other.  Silly, isn’t it, to worry that there might not be enough time?  And of course, the voice, in stereo no doubt, clearly whispering, the “what’s the use, the purpose?” The pure usefulness of that one I don’t doubt, though I’ve stalled at the answer.  The voice has a litany of mantras: “you’re no good, you’re no writer, who do you think you are?” I’ve heard that one through the years, too.  I hear it even in my dreams.

But then, the one that asks of my purpose, well, I’ve decided to ponder his inquisition.  I imagine how strange it might feel that anything I could ever put down in strings of words and paragraphs could ever cause others to feel as if it were worth their time or their money.  Maybe the value is not in time or money, but in an immeasurable sense of having been affected in a way that enriches one’s experience; maybe it’s a seed planted left to grow on its own. And I remind myself that I am not to judge what others might find “worthy.”  I know that many have come and gone before me and written and had others value their words and stories.  Who is to say that experience is out of my reach?  Maybe only me.

And that is as far as I get some days. Trying to find the worth, the reason, that purpose we all are supposedly born with.  After all, what real satisfaction is there from having the answers neatly before us?  Some days I wait for it to reveal itself in quiet contemplation, other days I frantically search through the books and words of others, the musings of actors on a television or movie screen.  When I feel strong, I ponder uneasily with the significant others in my life.  And so at day’s end, when the screen goes dark, and the clicking of the white plastic keys stops, I crawl into the blackness of my dreams and search again, flying through the air effortlessly on a journey with no end.  

Sandra Webber is a freelance writer living near the sunny beaches of Florida’s west coast.  She’s an honors graduate of the poison ivy league college, Jacksonville State University in her home state of Alabama.  Her column “For What It’s Worth” has been published and distributed nationally, and is now looking for a new home. She’s been published in the “St. Petersburg Times” (Florida) and “The Anniston Star” (Alabama), and in many other less widely known publications. Her upcoming book, “Mama Followed Me to Florida” is coming along nicely too, and she thanks ya’ll for asking about it.  A smidgen of her work is available on her website: www.sandraewebber.com.  
 

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