shaking violently at the bars: part one

I filled in the last page of my old journal a couple days ago and bought a new one. This is the very first entry:

Ah. So we meet again. Myself and this certain hope: a whole book of blank pages. So many possibilities. Where will it take me? What will I read when I come back here in a week, a month, a year? Will I find that I am in a much different place then? Or will I still be bound? Bound by the hope of the many opportunities in words left unsaid? Bound by thoughts that seem to be shaking violently at the bars that keep them where they are like the innocent wrongfully sentenced and resigned to a life of silence and contemplation behind bars?

I long for words and thoughts to come forth from me in the form of new life. To finally have them out the way a new mother waits through the gestation period, and as 9 months draws close she is anxious, nervous and excited, to have her baby mature enough to survive on his or her own, apart from her. And, I suppose, yes, much the same way as someone long imprisoned finally reaches the day of his or her freedom. But isn't it true that once outside those walls those imprisoned a very long time suffer a dichotomy: excitement for the first taste of freedom and still fear that they won't be able to survive separate from the only thing they've known for so many years? I've heard that a lot of times, once one is released they do anything to be able to go back; back to their friends, their certain routine, the familiar, their life. And isn't it also true that once a mother has raised her child and encouraged him or her on to live independent of her that she wants her child to just come home?

Yes, I want these words to be set free from inside of me. But here I sit. Afraid. My mind a little foggy from the noise in the room around me now; the many thoughts that swim in the lake of my mind, stirring up the mud and muck from the bottom and clouding the superficially clear waters; and my frustration at the man beside me in the coffeeshop who's ignoring his daughter's constant plea for attention from the only man who needs to give it most, and the number of endless consequences that could come by way of his persistence in not giving it to her.

All these things and probably more keep me from a clear enough train of thoguht to begin this labor of love and ultimately birth. But then I think Are these not mere excuses? Something I've invented to keep me from that which I know I need to do or to say? Where would I start if I were to do so?

(to be continued)