Swing Shift GinJaElla's blog: "Random"

I've decided to write you in pencil, for from now on. #2 lead, like most things, isn't permanent. Unless it gets under your skin. I have a mark like that on the underside of my left arm, where Jennifers pencil tip punctured me in the 6th grade library. A forever reminder of a moment in time that when it was happening seemed to just pass by, as unimportant as the thousands before it. On paper, however, lead is as fleeting and fragile as the times we record with it. It softens and blurs with time, as do scars and painful memories. Pencil understands that what we say today, we may or may not mean next week. That's why it is so agreeable with erasing. I've countless letters to you, missives I shall never send scrawled on note paper, white paper, journal paper and scraps that fell readily to hand when I was moved to speak with you. It's much like I have landed in a cut rate Stephen King/ Nicholas Sparks mash up. Horrifying. All of these thoughts that I can never send were written in pen. They are fact, fit only for land fills or fire. Had I taken the time to sharpen a fresh point on one of my grubby old pencils, taken care to refresh that point as I told you my heart, our history could be rewritten as easily as I change mistakes in my daily crossword puzzles. Not that any of my pencils have that much eraser. I would need one of those big, messy, smelly art gum ersasers that are given to clumsy school children. The ones that make piles of grit and rip coarse paper with the vigor of their use. Still, I would have the power to change something. The power to alter a moment in time, even if only mine, and maybe rewrite the ending.

I used to only write in the boldest of pen. Detrmined scratches upon paper that made it very clear that I very well meant what I had said. Pencils were only ever good for etching softly over the paper I had left beneath, seemingly blank and fresh. The force of my scribbling pressed the words through so many pages that my meaning lasted through weeks of new writings. Age, or time, or life has perhaps taught me the meaning of caution. The flavor of regret. I get no further now than the date with my pens. The time that I wrote something is allowed to remain permanent. Then my pencils call to me, reminding me that only they will allow me to go back and edit my feeling, change what history has done to me.

There is a letter by my elbow, sealed and addressed. I remember exactly when I wrote it, and exactly how it ends. It's the body that escapes me. The words in between the date and my signature that cause me to pause. That won't allow me to drop it in the box, send it on its way to your eyes. 5 or so pages of I cannot recall what I said. Wistful wishing, I'll bet, and that's something I can't afford. Not with you, not with what's happened. The letter is nicely decorated, it seems such a shame not to send it. If I had known then, quite what I know know, I would have known to write the whole thing up in pencil. Leave myself space to reclaim my sentiments. I would have realized that erasure may be needed. That we were never permanent enough for pen.