real.

For dinner tonight, I put my entire face into a mixing bowl and licked out brownie batter. I mean, my entire face was in the bowl. There was also a pot of soup growing cold on the stove. But after putting my face into the brownie batter bowl, I wasn't hungry for the soup. I think the soup was good and I meant to eat it for dinner. But then I ate brownie batter.

Real life is not perfect. It isn't always beautiful either. My brownie batter face was not beautiful. But I'm an independent lady and sometimes that's how we eat dinner.

I have a few things I want to write about tonight and I'm not going to write about any of them. I have typed a sentence here, in this very spot, and erased it. I've done that a dozen times in a row. A different sentence each time. A different thought each time. When this happens, when I get the edit trigger that I can't stop, then I know it's too late. I need to forget about it and just tell the honest stuff.

I want to write my thoughts on the ways we trick ourselves into writing.

I want to write about the goals we set and accomplish.

I want to write about why some things are easy and some things are hard.

I want to write about the man who gets off the bus at Powderhouse Square to open the laundromat at 8am every morning.

But the reality of this night and this moment is that there is a snowstorm outside and I am sitting at home putting my face into a bowl of brownie batter. You might think that isn't worth knowing, but I think it is. Sometimes it's good to take the very base and gritty details of our lives - the absurd and mundane and ridiculous details - and love them. Too much? Too bad.

Sometimes there's no larger purpose. I might need to tell a story without a moral, without a point. I might just tell you that I licked an entire bowl clean and no one was here to see it. Natalie Goldberg always says to give witness to the real details of life, because just that witness gives them larger meaning. I like it. Sometimes there's nothing else to say. Real doesn't have to be perfect or beautiful. It just has to be real.