Paul's rash

A few months ago, I got an email from my friend Paul. I’ve known Paul since graduate school—about nine years now. We sat next to each other on the first day of orientation, and I noticed that we had on the same pair of sandals—the type made from thick straps of leather. The ones that my brother derisively called my “Jesus sandles.”

So I turned to this guy next to me and said, “Nice sandals.”

He laughed and we started talking and were pretty tight since. We’ve floated in and out of each other’s lives, he was in NYC a few years we were there, but now lives in Austin. What can I say of Paul but that if you were to measure a person by the type of people he has around him, Paul is a real class act. He’s responsible for bringing a lot of good people into my life, people that I have come to know as friends.

Since we were in writing classes together, when we email it is perfunctory that one asks the other how the writing is going.

Not long ago, I stopped writing this blog and opted instead to just put up photos. Why did I stop writing? I don’t know. I do know, though. I mean, it was several reasons, but none of which were really enough to make me stop the blog altogether. I’ve done this many times throughout my writing life, where I take a month off, or a few months, or in this case, seven months. I’ve never really understood it, and in many ways, it has bothered me, when the muse just gets up and leaves the room and I’m left feeling torn about not writing, equal parts relieved and lacking.

So when he wrote me this email a few months ago, he summed up, as a talented writer would, what writing is to some writers, many writers:

“You writing any these days? Maybe we should exchange stuff sometime? I rarely have time to update my blog, unfortunately. But this summer I plan to write like a madman.The rash comes and goes. You know how it is.”

This email was a revelation to me, and somehow allowed me to exit this in-between stage and to forgive myself for whatever reason I wasn’t writing. To begin to think creatively again. And then, like he said, it comes.

The rash is back.