Tag Archives: editor

Itchy and Scratchy

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THE EDITOR

Even when it’s right, it’s not quite.

To prod and pull and stretch and twist.

Make something out of nothing, and nothing out of less.

It’s early morning on the drill line.

No tolerance or time to spare.

You think you’re safe in solemn silence.

But the life that you keep and the way that you struggle,

Is beyond comprehension and beyond your control.

Waiting for some rescue boat in the form of clever happenstance.

Eating time with hopes and promise, days turn into years.

You teach the ones who follow, and practice what you preach.

But it’s merely substitution, and the core persists, unchanged.

Fate has been both kind and cruel.

Faith has come and morphed and left.

There’s a comfort in your chaos, in the head that just won’t sleep.

But there’s a stopwatch for every system,

And they all count down to nil.  —original poem, c. 2010

Everything must sit neatly in a distinct mode, layout, structure, etc., to feel right, comfortable, or acceptable. I wiggle and edit and shake and switch until the puzzle pieces align. Like a scratchy wool sweater, I yank at the sleeves and twist the collar until the seams fall into place.

It all starts simple and harmless enough: exchanging shoes because the insole slightly rubs a toe the wrong way; remaking a bed three times because the sheets aren’t equidistant from the edge of the frame; returning five different pairs of glasses until finally finding arms that can rest on the ears in a particular angle as to not disturb headphones; endlessly researching the origins of every product, ingredient, chemical, additive, or cleverly hidden component to ensure it’s nontoxic, vegan, cruelty-free, natural, sustainable, and organic.

Then things start to get REAL specific. The systems, habits, and unbreakable routines function like a panic-inducing, swiftly falling Tetris line. One ill-conceived, hasty move or simple incautious step, and life tumbles in on itself like a Jenga tower.

The upside is ultimately arriving at precisely the energy, mood, temperature, lighting, music, feel, meal, time, position, or product I’ve painstakingly targeted.

The downside is a kind of constant manic discomfort and inability to settle or rest.

So, yeah…it’s not great.

Adolescence Interrupted

The Compounding Effects of Failure

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Brick by brick, inch by inch, and year by year…the weight of missteps buried beneath a wall of wrong turns becomes unsustainable and impossible to maintain. Cracks begin to crumble under the stress of compounded, mislaid materials. Weeds grow in the moisture pits of poorly sealed perpends. Stained stretchers and broken beds tell the tale of what transpires when marks are missed and goals are gone.

But the best bricklayers know that no wall is impossible to correct. Viewed from even a slightly different perspective, the crooked can straighten and the slanted can slide back to center. No mortar is impermeable with enough gusto behind the grip. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and the tools needed for the task are hanging at the hip, armed and ready.

Defeat is found in the repetition of bad decisions written on the lines of poor planning. Every blueprint needs an editor and a second set of eyes. Misjudgments often come from a place of sincerity and hope. It’s not blame-worthy to feel your feet find an uneven edge of the sidewalk. It’s simply a matter of summoning the confidence to pretend you intentionally tripped.

If your wall is disproportionately weighted with a seemingly static past, muster the courage to start again, brick by brick, level by level…until you can be proud of the clean lines and fresh overlay you’ve created.

Walls should be built for safety, not suffocation.

Adolescence Interrupted

The Fixer

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I spend the majority of my time tucked behind computer screens, scrutinizing every comma, semicolon, and em dash, in an endless effort to peel back the layers of literary smokescreens in hopes of revealing an author’s genuine intent. After years of tapping squarely-lettered keys, I can resolutely stand behind one indisputable discovery. There is almost always more meaning in the mistakes.

It is my job to bend language by squeegeeing sentences to wipe away the dirty ambiguity born from a writer’s internal monologue. We are all guilty of celebrating the dizziness achieved from riding the carousel of private broken records. It’s not our fault. Revelations routinely sound sweeter when they’re produced between our own ears.

But consistently revising these misappropriated intentions makes me wonder how much real-world editing we do on a daily basis. How many conversations are buffered to limit impact? How often do we feign interest in the details of other people’s lives to pretend we still share a connection? What does truth look like…unabridged?

I am beyond lucky to live in this pretty plastic city, surrounded by a core group of friends who shun pretense and smoke-blowing so adamantly, we barely even notice the permeating artificiality waiting with disinterested fangs at every corner. We’ve miraculously been able to avoid the bite by floating above the nonsense and holding firmly to our East Coast roots while baking our skin in the California sun.

But on a macrocosmic level, the question remains. Are we editing ourselves so severely that even the notion of veracity will someday sit beside 1950s table manners in a dusty museum of relics?

Truth isn’t necessarily the most popular concept to hang a hat on these days, but its extinction will undoubtedly leave some craters no clever repartee can fill. We might be wise to lay the eraser down for a little while and speak from the heart. What’s the worst that could happen? Honesty?

Adolescence Interrupted