Writing

Letters tumble into place from the keyboard, tap tap tapping; pen and pencil frantically scratch, lazily scrawl. Tumbling letters into tumbling words form setting, characters rising, story and plot unfolding. White pages become mottled with fact and fiction. The author brings life to the page.

Seven years as an observer have not harmed me. Recording daily events of murders, accidents, and elders celebrating their hundredth birthday--I've learned to live life from the outside in. Wide shot, medium shot, close up--lingo of a television news photographer. Every scene is reduced in linear fashion regardless of blood, happiness or hysteria.

Funny, considering how emotional I am as an individual and how deeply I feel things. At the funeral of Owen Hart, a local Calgarian wrestler, I could hardly concentrate on the crowd shots I was supposed to be getting as Martha, Owen's wife, eulogized in my earpiece.

"What can I say? I love you, I love you, I love you." Tearful pauses, quiet sniffling, as she talked of the love notes he often left her, the house they'd recently built--Owen not living the year out in it.

I don't recall the drive back to the station, but I remember calling my love and crying into the receiver, demanding reassurance he would always be with me and never leave. And yet he has. There is no more reassurance, no love notes, no eulogy in my ear--save my own haunting thoughts. Black and white on a page, outside instead of in. Forever the author.