There is nothing quite like writing a newspaper column. The pressure to be profound on a weekly basis is tremendous. Finding a topic that you can corral in 600-850 words becomes close to impossible as deadlines near. It is far easier to let fleeting and inconsequential opinions on a variety of topics breeze through my brain, as in the course of a conversation --"the concert was great ... the food was good ... my shoes are covered with mud...."
For this reason alone, occasionally I long to break free of the journalistic restraints that bind me. I am overcome with the need to talk about many topics at once, perhaps briefly, perhaps in a nonsensical way. I yearn to be incautious, inattentive to grammar and syntax, blind to sequence and structure. In a word, I feel the need to babble.
Most of the time, I resist this devilish longing. I know it is merely the product of stress, the flu, a lack of snow or life in general. But sometimes, no matter how I resist the urges of my ID, no matter how I reinforce the dike and try to lower the water pressure, the dam breaks and my brain becomes saturated. Then, like overcooked spaghetti, my cerebral cortex becomes soft, pliable, easily mushed.
Random thoughts float into my head. Ideas collide. Images move slowly or way too fast to be comprehended, some twirling to Tchaikovsky, some kaleidoscoping to Tommy. I begin to think about things that I normally wouldn't. Worse yet, I often feel compelled to share these thoughts, the by-products of a stewed skull, with my readership.
Joseph Conrad (at least I think it was he) said that in the darkest recesses of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning. Does this mean that when I stay up until 3 a.m., I am in congress with the chaos of my mind? Should, then, I only write at noon, in the safe light of day? Does my soul need to be lit like a stage to mind its manners? Will it only behave when it cannot hide?
Sometimes my thoughts are clear and natural, like dew on leaves. Sometimes they have the simplicity of childhood discovery (this thought excavated from under a rock, that one secreted safely in a nest). And sometimes it was just a mistake even to write them down.
There aren't many feelings that surpass the pride of seeing your writing, your opinions, in print. But a worse feeling I don't know, than that of seeing words, your own words, published and realizing that you should have kept your thoughts to yourself. When this happens to me, I generally spend the entire day regarding the world, suspiciously, over the top of my 40's-style sunglasses. Like a paranoid spy, I wonder who saw, who read, who knows that I am the author of drivel.
So when you see me -- sneaking from pillar to pillar at Collis, skulking on the Green, lying low in the Hop or just sitting in Food Court with my head on the table -- if I glance at you strangely, peeking around the edges of my lenses, just pat me on the back, comfortingly, and say, "Rachel, don't sweat it, I missed today's D."
