Carnival Storytellers

I am not one for regret.

When I think of my life: Its loves, its friendships, its decisions, its paths- I've never been able to think of anything I have "regretted" as they say. Maybe this comes later in life.  Maybe it never comes at all. It may just have to do with a particular perspective that I have that is, well, admittedly different. Not better, but just different in all of the other ways I feel different: Having no interest in getting married, no interest in having a dog and dressing it up as things, no interest in having children and dressing them up as things...and the like.

But the other day, I did realize that there are two things that are as close to regret as I can imagine.

They are silly, but they are true.

The two things I regret are not overcoming my shyness or uncertainty enough to write a letter to two particular people I admire before they died.

They aren't even people I knew 'in real life' so to speak.

They were writers who changed my life.

One impacted me for reasons that have to do with description, precise language, and the ability to imagine the unimaginable and/or the inevitable.

The other for reasons of connection, of story telling, and of the documentation/amplification of voices that white supremacist capitalist la la land historically and always wants to smother.

They stay with me. When I'm writing. When I'm living.  When I'm interacting with the people around me.

To this day I have no clue what I would have written.  If given the chance, I still don't know what I would say.

Maybe just what I have written.

Thank you to Ray Bradbury and Studs Terkel, for the gears they have turned within me, and the lessons of accessibility, voice, and compassion they have taught me. Not a day goes by that their ways, perhaps more than their ultimate words, don't brush themselves against the back of my mind.



be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Joseph Webb via Untrustyou Tumblr)