Is it possible to ever write without considering who you're writing for? The divulging of information, the lack of response cues; nothing is so far from a conversation. But is it honest to say I am writing to myself? For myself? Not completely, not when I'm publishing to the internet. Maybe the who will be realized along the way.
It's August 2005 and I'm going into my sophomore year of college. My mom is driving me back to school and throwing out the old cliche pep talk: what do I want to focus on this year? What are my goals? What do I want to accomplish? What am I looking forward? She's being half sarcastic and half serious. The sarcasm is just a way to get me to respond to the questions she knows I wouldn't otherwise entertain.
"There are three things I love, Mom." I respond "Shakespeare, English, and drinking." I spend the remainder of the drive trying to express to my mother how the passion and excitement I feel while reading the perfectly crafted iambic pantameter of The Bard is parallelled only by making 4 mixed drinks with 2 vodka shots each in them and then roaming around the campus swimming in fountains or trying to find secret towers long closed off in renovations or, as I liked to believe, waiting for those who tried hard enough to find them. She isn't thrilled about the excessive drinking, but she gets the point. "I gotta get more of those things, Mom."
That was my first declaration of unequivocal love. A mere babe of 19. Sprinkled through the years since, the topic has resurfaced. In 2006, I declared my gratitute at a Scottish Thanksgiving: "for pineapple, Shakespeare, and lefties" (quite naive and quite mistaken was I at 20. I do not have an unequivocal love for lefties).
Not all of my Great Loves have been easy. In 2007 - and I suppose, looking back, there were signs even before then - I realized my love of the dawn. Daybreak. Sunrise. Pre-day. 5 am, whatever you'd like to call it. This has probably been the most challenging to love, as there are few who share the understanding. But maybe that's all the more reason why it is mine.
The list has remained a short one. Some loves have been completely erased from the list, as I no longer have the passion for them that I once had. I look back on some and realize they never should have been added in the first place (it's loves illusions I recall...).
And once even, in 2010, one of the greatest was realized for me. Pointed out. To have someone who understands you well enough that he can look at you and say "this is what you love in the world" - that is to really be known.
It was dairy.
