How does one know when one is having an affair? I don't mean precisely in the conventional human-to-human sort of way, but. . .what exactly are the signs? Seeing that other on the side, allowing them to invade your thoughts at the most inopportune moments, perhaps doodling in your three-ring binder?
I think I might have a problem. I often find myself tracing words onto any object that won't scuttle away, I leave eraser tracks swirled into phraseology on almost any desk that I sit at; whenever I clean out my book bag (now don't scoff, it does happen occasionally), scraps of paper covered in random phrases will undoubtedly float to the floor, the remnants of some half-assed wanna-be-masterpiece.
I think it's about time that I just come out and say it. It's hard, but, undeniable.
I think that I am having a clandestine affair. . .with words--with language, with anything resembling the ability to put some words in a row. I covet the talent in others (lacking it in myself), and consistently annoy my friends with scraps of song lyrics that I mull over until they're gibberish. My other passion (so I guess it's sort of a complicated affair), music, draws me in mostly with hooks and clever turns of a phrase, little quips and comments said in such a manner as to make one squirm.
It's not an art, it's a compulsion. I spend a lot of time driving, and the greater majority of the approximately 15-20 hours a week that I spend in my car is spent concentrating not on the road before me, but on the way words fit together, and can be rotated about a common theme to mean something completely different. I'm in love with metaphors, and am constantly bombarded with the oddest (really lame) ones:
I crave passion; I want someone to thirst for me so disastrously that I must pour my heart into a teacup in order to satiate him.
My seemingly innermost thoughts, those of someone who yearns for ardor with every fiber her being, yet pushes it away with both indifferent hands as only a true cynic can do, evolve into these perverse little metaphors that bounce around in my consciousness until I finally submit and spit them onto a scrap of paper (or the computer screen).
When I'm not being inundated with these pearls of meaningless language-artifact, I devour everything written around me. There are four books on my nightstand, none finished, but most at least ¾ of the way through. My latest is a book called "A Good Dog", a quaint little memoir about a man and his dog that my dad swears is worth every one of the twenty-three dollars he paid for it. I also ventured into the music magazine section (a fate worse than torture at times), and actually spent my hard-earned money on a copy of Rolling Stone and the bird-cage lining known as Spin, merely because they had two of my favorite bands within them; this was followed by a moment of panic during which I was convinced that someone had covertly stolen the middle two pages of my FOB article, argued with my dad, referencing the scraps of paper lining the staples at the back-bone of the magazine (which later turned out to have been pushed through when said staples were inserted), and was ready to go back to Books-a-million in order to get my entire 8 page article. It's okay, take a deep breath; there were no missing pages, I'm just paranoid when it comes to the possible defamation of literature concerning my favorite band.
So, at last, I'm coming to the conclusion that it must be some sort of love affair--the type that is more coercion than a conscious decision.
But, we can still be friends, right?
