We Build, and Destroy

These words have been stuck in my head the past few days, although I don’t know why. I find myself at work, or at home, or half asleep, with a phrase lodged in my mind. We built these walls to block out the world. That’s all. It’s simple, I think. And extremely complex, I think. And when I say, I think, I mean I know, because I know there’s something far deeper to it, something I can’t quite grasp and will never understand. It’s just one of those group of words, for lack of better words, that join together form something far greater.

I often start stories, even novels, based off of a single sentence or just a few words.

My latest novel, Autumn’s Song, derived from two things. One of lesser importance: these words, which I couldn’t separate myself from—there came such soft rains. I was in bed one day, somewhat depressed and lost, as I so often am—in bed really, since I often write and edit in bed…not the depressed part!—just thinking, again, as I so often do. And it came into my mind. There came such soft rains. It was raining that day, I think. And this was awhile ago, while subbing for Griswold, after I read a Ray Bradbury short story—I think that’s who wrote it, about soft rains. So yeah, maybe I borrowed a bit, but Bradbury is one of the best, and all good authors borrow.

And so, we built these walls to block out the world. Again, I somewhat know where these thoughts derived from.

I build walls for myself, around myself, so I will not get hurt. I don’t like letting myself be vulnerable. I really don’t like letting other people truly know me, so I sort of put on a persona of sorts, another me, a good me I let the world see. Because it’s easy for me to let someone into who I truly am. When I have, or tried, I’ve been hurt, and in ways that are hard to describe, broken. So We built these walls to block out the world. There’s going to be a story from these words, eventually, when I put all the pieces together and build something from nothing.

But that’s all I have for now—the same words that have been stuck in my head for more than a week now, mostly at work where all I do is think, and think, and text my best friend, and text some more, and think some more, and that’s about it. And sometimes random words pop into my head. The ones I just described. And maybe because I work at a package store—Cheers, Darling. Cheers, Darling. Or maybe that’s from my favorite Damien Rice song. I don’t know. And maybe there will be a story from that, eventually.

Eventually.

We built these walls to block out the world, to separate ourselves from everything, from the outside, even from ourselves.