The Spaces In Between

If you’ve been following along, I’m attempting to get past some “bloggers block”, where I have an assortment of stories I could be sharing, and I’m struggling to figure out how to parse them out into something reasonably coherent and semi-entertaining for y’all.

So I figure I’d start there. The fact that communicating can be so darned tricksy.

I’m no expert, but I’m going to take a leap and assume that there are always going to be gaps between the electric current of thought inside my head and the currents inside other people’s. Try though I might to bridge them, the bridge itself does not take the spaces away. The bridge is merely a possible path across, and often a rickety one at best.

In a way, this encapsulates all the various things that have pulled at my attention over the past several weeks, that I’ve been working on finding a way to write about.

Acknowledging the gaps. Attempting to bridge them.

Yep, that’s pretty much it.

Come to think of it, those used to be my watchwords: bridging the gap. I suppose they still are.

As someone who has consistently felt like an outsider even among my own insiders, and experienced many virtues and limitations of being in that position, I have clung to this concept of bridges like my eldest cat to my sweater. Like a mother to her 5 year-old on the first day of kindergarten. Like saran wrap clings to everything except the thing you’re trying to —

Anyway, you get the picture.

I love me some bridges.

That said, maybe I love them a touch too much. Or rather, maybe I have a tad too much trust in my ability to build them. That my bridge design and dev efforts will smoothly produce a beautiful metaphorical structure that connects what is hidden inside of me with what is hidden inside of the not-me, and there will be peace, love and understanding for all who are lucky enough to be in our wake.

Would you believe, that’s not always how it has gone down? Crazy, I know. It’s enough to make one question whether to abandon the bridge-building business entirely. And when I say “one”, I mean me. I questioned this, a lot, over the past few months.

I also answered it — sometimes more quickly than others, but always the same answer, given enough time, space, and sleep.

If I have a choice, I might as well choose to try.

I may as well keep working to find the paths that will link us.

I have chosen to hope.

And since hope is a thing with feathers, even if my bridges break down, I suppose I still have a fighting chance of making it across.

More soon.