Juggling, Part II

I.

It started with a question:

“What do you want to do with your life?”

“I want to be a writer.”

“What are you doing about it?”

Silence.

I didn’t like the question, but after years of avoiding its impenetrable gaze, it was staring me right in the face. I didn’t like my response either. Even the non-words, stacked atop each other in what I had hoped would be a formidable silent barricade, could not withstand the searing truth.

In the aftermath of this conversation, I began thinking about probable responses in the way I labored over formulating the perfect retort to a caustic remark; it consumed me.

My excuses, once so convincing, had lost their appeal. It’s a lonely place to be, really, when you’re out of excuses. The masses have gotten tired of hearing them and have slowly abandoned you to listen to the sound of your own voice. I imagined myself as being left behind by the circus, standing in the middle of an empty field littered with stale, damp popcorn, tattered fliers, and trash. Forgotten stakes, a few cigarette butts, and the shriveled corpses of popped balloons are the only remnants of the bustling show that turned the nothingness into a wonderland.

Alone, I began thinking about the juggler.

I thought of him juggling in the park, an easy smile across his face. I thought of him juggling staplers and hole-punchers in the stairwell of an anonymous corporate building, white paper dots flying everywhere. I thought of him brushing those paper dots out of his hair while putting the staplers and hole-puncher back in their usual place on his desk. I thought of him sitting down in his chair with a small sigh, barely audible over the click-clacking of synchronized keyboards, before contributing to the din.

II.

It has taken me weeks to find a response to the initial question. My fingertips have been poised over the keys, hesitant, waiting. I have watched the cursor blink against the blank page countless times, an unbiased metronome controlling the rhythm of the non-words in my mind. On the eighth day, a break through: write.

III.

The juggler doesn’t talk about juggling—he throws things in the air. A writer doesn’t talk about writing, shouldn’t write solely about not-writing because it’s safe—a writer writes.

IV.

And so, I write.