I learned something today. Actually, a few things.

Or at least, I sort of learned a few things today. It was also part realization.

Anyway.

You call yourselves writers.
Which, I suppose, is true in the sense that you use words. But not in the sense that it gives a decent description of the type of wordsmithing that occurs around here.

So, some of you resort to calling yourselves artists.
Which, I suppose, is true in the sense that you create.
But you do so much more.

Really, you are alchemists and you are craftsmen. You dip in to the swirling abstract, the powerful ocean of intangibility, pull it in to yourself, and build something real, something firm, something here, now.

You gain skill at doing so. Mastery and personal touch.

You are magicians, and I will always see this as the reason why pens and pencils look so much like wands.

Also, I realized that I will always trust artists more than I trust psychiatrists. I would trust my sanity and my well being with any one of you long before I would trust it with any one of the “experts”.

This is because I think that people who tend to think they can use chemicals to make people better tend to think of people in chemical terms, and I learned today that a person, if they were to be melted down into their separate, individual chemicals, would be worth less than five dollars.

I have a tendency to believe that life is priceless, and that there is more to the story than the story’s parts. You alchemists, you creators have a tendency to as well.

For this, I thank you.

I dreamed about my mom last night. My mom died at the end of last October, and my dad & I were with her while she lay there, totally unresponsive and struggling to breathe for over five hours before she finally gave up. Ever since then I have dreamed about her, and every time she is back with us at home, but always with the sense that we don't know how long for because somehow I know that she is dead.

Last night I dreamed I was sitting on our sofa talking to her, still knowing she was dead. My dad mentioned how a friend of the family had come to our house earlier, so I asked my mom if she had been around when he came and she said no. "He would have got quite a shock if you had," I joked, thinking how funny it would be for someone to see her even though she has been dead for months. Then my mom told me she couldn't keep doing this, she couldn't keep coming back. "I've got to go," she said. I had always known it was only temporary, but as soon as she said she had to go I straight away felt exactly as I did in the hosptital room that afternoon when she stopped breathing, when we sat and waited while her heart slowed down and finally stopped while I silently begged her to take another breath. "Don't go," I said, crying just like I did then. "Don't leave, mama."

I don't know if that meant something, maybe that I won't dream about her again. I guess I'll find that out over time, but when I woke up this morning I couldn't stop crying because it felt like I had lost her all over again.

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