Message Gone Skyward

       I have a debatable self prescribed condition I have labeled as my own form of compulsive addictive personality. I find few things I am passionate about and that is where my focus remains fixated. I wish I could persuade this personality trait of mine to be passionate about house cleaning chores, but try as I have to convince my mind that would be a good thing, it's never gonna happen.

        Some of my compulsive addictions pass away with time, things like eating only cold cereal for 2 months straight or painting for days on end. But some of my addictions have grown deep roots, one being why I am here. Writing. 

       So if your someone like me, you write when you wake up. You write all day long. You wake up at 3:00 a.m. and reach for the emergency notebook on the nightstand. When your not writing, you're thinking about what you will write when you get a chance. You drive with pad of paper next to you and learn to write without taking your eye's off the road. (Unless you live in Idaho, don't worry your safe) An addict like moi never, ever leaves the home without her writing survival kit....pen...paper. Ever.

        So one of the things I've had to figure out with my compulsive writing, is where's a good place to bury it all. Sometimes throwing finished notebooks and journals up in the attic is adequate. When I die off, someone will discover enough random writing to keep them reading for months. But sometimes just letting my words sit in a musty attic is not enough.

       I am extremely lucky and have pen pals <although I'm still searching for a more meaningful label then pen pal> which welcome my snail mail words in great numbers. Frankly, I buy a lot of stamps and stationary. Truthfully, my handwritten mail is an addiction all on it's own, but I consider it a good one. I adore the fine art of writing a letter on wonderful stationary, slapping a decent stamp on it and sending my words off to be safely held elsewhere. But to explain the importance of this to me, would require an entry all on it's own.

       Next, I have this forum to catch random writing that doesn't want to be handwritten. I've been leaning on this arena for almost 2 years now and although I'm not entirely addicted <notice the lack of entries this year> I still find it's walls and community comforting and extremely interesting.

       Some things I write, I burn up. A ritual I personally adore, but it could constitute me as a crazy pyro, so forget I mentioned it. Some things I write, I place in an envelope and address it to one of my daughters who will hopefully read and understand them someday. I've written letters to my daughters since they were tiny little things. There's hundreds and hundreds of letters just waiting in trunks I call the memory keepers. The notion that someday I will gift them with hundreds of memories we had all forgotten about, advice I want to give, insight into who I am and what I am about etc...... Details do tend to smear with time..............

       Which finally brings me to the last thing I choose to do with my words. It's a bit quirky, even a teensy bit cliche, but until today I had always enjoyed the ritual of it. The whole 'message in a bottle' concept. Because I was born with the pen and paper affliction I have always searched words out. As a little girl I would comb beaches, river banks, any body of water that might possess the elusive message in a bottle I had heard about. Much to my dismay, I have never found one.

       Being the optimist in every situation, I decided since I couldn't find one, I would start sending them out. Which I have done, a lot of them. Nameless, faceless messages I send merrily down any body of water I happen to be near. There's some lessons to be learned when attempting this type of activity. One, being that wine bottles, although pretty, are not the best vessel. Being a recreational water person, I know tossing anything glass into water is not smart. So, a while ago I found cheap plastic wine bottle impersonators to substitute as my bottle. I can seal them up with wax and feel confident they won't sink like the Titanic on their journey.

       This morning I had my fake bottle, sealed up, full of random writings I was willing to part with and took it to the river. I took the familiar steps down the riverbank. I sat by the water watching for a while as I always do, did some more writing. Finally ready, I heaved it out into the middle of water to watch it's disappearance around the bend. All good right? Wrong.

       My message in a bottle was pirated. An unprovoked attack of the bird nature. My smile dissipated as a large seagull came swooping out of the sky, dived down on my innocent bottle, plucked it out of the water and flew away with it. Robbed. Stripped of my ritual by the claws of a scavenger.

       I couldn't believe my own eye's. Can a person not even do a simple thing like littering the river with my idealist notions anymore? I felt completely and totally robbed. Visions of that bird taking my words into the sky wasn't my idea of a meaningful morning. Doesn't that pirate know how long it takes to successfully wax up an opening let alone write a few pages of handwritten word?

       Then my mind began to wander, has all my bottles been plucked out of the sweet cradle of water by scavengers? Has any bottle even made it a mile down the river in the past? I'm afraid witnessing this crime has tarnished my message in a bottle visions. Then again, this may explain why I have never found one~~