A Writing Boy

The writer is a solitary traveler through life. As a boy I loved to sit alone on the curb, staring into the gutter. I would watch the iridescent colors shifting on the oil and water and I figured out that the slop of the Seventeenth Street gutter was reflecting the sunlight overhead. A small boy, just sitting there, I had emotional feelings, very powerful, of gladness and mystery, and I wanted to say something, to tell someone, about that. But there was no one to whom I could speak. I knew my sister would laugh; I feared my father would scoff; and my mother, well, maybe my mother would simply walk away and continue her housework. Or, if I felt that odd constriction in my chest and told her, she would tell me that children do not feel odd constrictions in their chest. To the present day, when I write about what I call the light within, the sense I've always had of the mystery of joy in life, I get the same tightness in my chest and with it, the old sense of trepidation. I am sometimes afraid to go on. I always knew I had the talent. I wanted to write but I was afraid of that talent. I knew I would cut myself off from my parents and my sister; and yet, how could I hide it? Lose the joy? I was always afraid that if I allowed the fire to burn, I would die. If I allowed the fire to go out, I would die. So the talent was dangerous. If I used it, I would kill myself. To confront it head-on would be too much to bear; but how could I throw it away?