on where I've been and where I want to go

Until I was about 20 1/2 or so, I was convinced I was going to run off to New York and be a writer. (in between that and wanting to be a renegade climber, I was certain I would join the Peace Corps after graduation) Tonight I happened across my folder from poetry class freshman year of college...

I want to write with that kind of abandon again, at least once in a while. I felt like I couldn't breathe unless I was writing. I would wake from a dead sleep in my dorm room because the words I had to get out were JUST THAT pressing. I had to write. Now, I can go back and read these reviews and these comments my poetry professor (who almost convinced me to switch to English as a major and I probably would have if I thought I could keep up with the reading when I would much rather have been doing my own--I'm an incorrigible bibliophile) wrote, and for the first time, they make better sense than they ever did before.

This was my very first class poem (my first and only attempt at sonnet writing for that matter), printed on 2/2/05 for our "sonnet" class:

Upon the death of some fantastic storm
the soft'ning of a strong and angry rain
the clearing of the clouds which long had borne
a rhythmic and a passionate refrain,

the Sun appears and shows his glowing face
against the background of a milky blue.
The crisp air will sky's rosy cheeks embrace
as what was frail at once begins anew.

A landscape that had long been steeped in dust
is washed clean and the view is something strange
to eyes that had forgotten that it's what
is seen behind the storm that highlights change.

So much like when the skies pour down their pain
is crying as the storm of mortal strain.

I WANT TO BE ABLE TO WRITE LIKE THIS AGAIN!!!
So, I think I would be content with a happy medium. I'd like the urgency to come back, the recklessness...but tempered with the reality of experience that I'd venture to say I'm slowly acquiring. I want more than ever to write music again, to write songs and get back in the groove with my guitar and actually play those shows and open mics I swore I'd do.

It's going to happen.