Analogies are like…

That’s it, end of quip.

I thought of it as i was considering what writing is like, and what this year has been like.
Writing is gazing back and forward at the same time.

The raw material of experience and imagination forms an idea… 
In shaping that idea for an audience, i’m looking ahead toward how the past-birthed notion might connect with the reader.
Even if i am its only reader, my future self usually takes something fresh from rereadings of past private expressions. 

Personal essay writers and bloggers perpetually distinguish between the “I” and the “we” to decide which of our thoughts to impart. 
Two kinds of intimate writing i bristle at…
Starting too many sentences with the phrase (or attitude), “We all…” 
Or starting too many sentences with “I” — if they end without drawing me in. 

The question is, What makes any one person’s thoughts of interest to another?

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Foggy roads and grieving hearts…

car on road in fog

Foggy roads and grieving hearts make it hard to grasp where you are.

Fans of the brilliant songwriter John Prine will recognize an echo there with a line of his. I borrowed its framing as a tribute.
(“Broken hearts and dirty windows make life difficult to see,” from Souvenirs.)

When we look back on this time at some far future point, we will each recall hallmarks large and small that most remind us of it. Events that moved us from an abstract sense of its singular seriousness to reality hitting home.

The manner in which we lost this songwriter is one such marker for me, given what he succumbed to after surviving so much else. 

It says something significant about the times we’re in that readers across the globe will instantly grasp what i mean by “the times we’re in.”

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