Purpose

I write. I've always been a writer. I played with a typewriter as a small child, I wrote my first book in preschool, I wrote my first newspaper column in the fifth grade and I ran my own newspaper in the seventh grade. You probably know where it went from there if you've been reading this blog for long.

I have firmly believed from some time now that God made writing, and especially writing the truth, my reason for existence. Photography is nice. Pottery is fun. But writing is why I am here.

But writing is not simply an ability to compose words so they work together for a reader. A writer must first understand the subject before choosing a single word, but then a writer must also know how to convey that understanding on to others. Writers find truth, and then they share it. They enlighten. They inspire. They incite.

Writing is a big part of journalism. We journalists go out into the world and find truth, then bring it back and let others have it. There are other parts, such as curiousity, disrespect for authority and concern for the public's well-being, but they all are much less important than writing. Well, writing and witnessing.

I've seen some interesting things in my time, what is likely to be one quarter of my life's span. Back as far as I can remember, I've carried with me a feeling that I should remember the things I saw and heard and smelled and tasted and touched. There was this thought bouncing around in my head, that I was to witness what was happening about me. That one day, I'd have to remember it all because no one else would, and if I let it be forgotten, then it would be as if it had never existed.

So I remember things that others do not.

I remember always rushing with my friends and little brother to get the seats over the entrances to the Ritz Theater in Council Grove because we thought they were the best seats in the house. I remember the strange multi-colored house lights they had there that looked like Bomb Pops, the weird arrangement of the facilities in the mens' bathroom and the old pictures on the wall. I remember buying a box of cheap popcorn just to coat its contents with a deluge of salt just so I could offer a friend some and then laugh as the harsh flavor made him wince.

I remember the old shelter-shed at the slab of concrete next to where the old elementary school was torn down, one block from my home. I remember how it was supposed to provide a cover from rain and snow for us kids as we waited for the bus each morning, but we never did because there were 20 of us but only room for four. I remember the giant bush that kids would climb into to hide, then jump out to scare others.

I remember crying at the funeral for Casey Mullenoux's mother after she died from cancer, and how lousy and lonely I felt after his father, his brother and him moved away. I remember when he and Jake King started a fire in his Kasey's dad's garage (or was it Jake?) and getting in mountains of trouble. And I remember how jealous I was that he could tell you how late it was just by looking at the sun, and I never could.

I remember the old jail that used to be in Durland Park, the one made out of giant blocks of wood the size of railroad ties. I remember it getting a bit too old, and being taken down with saws. I remember reading later that someone had been mistaken in saying chainsaws were used. They cut it apart with reciprocating saws, and I suppose that made a big difference.

I remember the great wide open space that used to be between my church, St. Rose of Lima, and the parish hall. I remember playing out there on hot summer afternoons until they built the new St. Rose of Lima there between them, leaving a great hole in the ground until they finished pouring the basement where we could find big seashells (kansas was an ocean once, you know). I remember playing hookey from Sunday School while the new St. Rose was under construction, going up and down the stairs while they were still lumber floors and 2x4 walls, standing near the edge of the balcony before the workers had put up the guardrail and walking around where the altor would go one day, looking at the church-in-progress with such awe. I remember when the plaster in the old St. Rose, now our chapel, wasn't so cracked and how much old, dusty stuff was horded away in its back rooms.

I remember a kid named Tyler who would jump off the top of one of the slides on our playground and land oh-so-easily. I remember he was a tough sprite with long hair. I remember him dying when we were in the third grade by drowning in a drain pipe during a storm. At least that's what my teacher said, I think. The whole class just seemed to act as if he never existed.

I remember grade school, middle school, high school. I remember Boy Scouts and mass. I remember teachers, mentors, friends, cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents, babysitters, enemies, priests, bullies, heroes, girls, boys, men, women, angels and monsters.

I remember so many little things from my life, and I seem to always be bringing them back to today to think over again. Things that aren't around anymore, people who are long gone. I carry them with me, so many of them in such random order.

I wonder if it all reveals more about my purpose in life, to see and record all these things. First, I witness. Then, I report.

But to whom?