On Time, Mortality and Champagne

L’chaim!

Writing, to me, is a bottle of champagne.

An idea for an article will wake me up at night. Sometimes it’s a headline, sometimes a zinger one-liner and sometimes it’s just an uncontrollable draw to create and release.

If I don’t jump on it immediately, the idea starts gnawing at my stomach. It’s like a strange, masochistic pain.

Days, weeks, months pass and slowly a couple of glasses-worth pass their way through my stomach, neck, throat, finally (finally!) free to roam. They bubble beyond corked thoughts, tears and ideas that never made it to the surface.

But only enough for a couple of glasses.

The rest of the bubbles see the light; longing, lurching for oxygen. And only when they can touch it, taste it — their time comes to end. They sink back down my throat, neck and stomach. And they wait for another moment.

In these word-purge moments, I find myself here, tapping at metal letters.

It’s tragically beautiful, isn’t it? The power that we have to create and the power to muffle what yearns to be shared. Sometimes I wonder if our whole lives are the learning and unlearning of what we believe is worthy of being shared and met with approval.