The Empty Spaces

As one who works with words, I'm acutely conscious of everything that happens in between the words we speak, write, or think.

Others may romanticize words, and writing, but as a writer myself, my main insight is not what words can do but what they cannot do.

And here's what they cannot do. They cannot fill the empty spaces.

For many years, I had a fantasy.

It went something like this.

I (the writer) would sit up in my small office, high above the fields where our family grew crops of one sort or another. In my brilliance, I would write.

When I was done, I would go back down to the family compound, where my wife and children and I would share meals and games and the other things families share.

Friends would come over. We would have good times.

Based on the success of my writings, we would be rich enough to sustain this fantasy. Everyone would be happy, or at least happy enough to keep coming to dinner.

But, alas, none of this fantasy has come true. Apparently, I am neither a good enough writer, nor a good enough marketer of whatever talent I may possess, to achieve even a fraction of my fantasy.

Instead I sit here alone, in a flat in the poorer end of town, contemplating silence.

The very sound of silence.

The sounds of silence include the laughter that never reaches your ears. It also includes the gatherings that never happen. Ultimately, it includes the stories never written.

Without the sustaining strength of others around you, the writer's voice withers, much like an artichoke plant, relocated, without enough sun.

That is a sad fate. Obviously, I wish to avoid it; otherwise I would never write such a sad story. If my ultimate fantasy is unrealistic, I would at least like to find some sort of way to keep the silences deafening me at bay, and return to offering words that might give others comfort, whatever challenges they may face.

I know this much. I am not an artichoke, but a man. And, until my money runs out, I won't be relocated. But time is limited, and there are many problems to solve.

I'll keep supplying words until I go silent.

But who will fill the silence?

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