To Side with Daedalus

Where exactly does the weight of this writing moment, or rather, moment writing, lie? (Not in the hand like a gold coin—like a weight on your eye.)

This is what I thought, watching my daughter playing, hearing my son counting, hoping it was my wife not my son scrabbling in the kitchen drawer, standing in the shower thinking, waiting to get out without forgetting what I just been thinking I might write in time to husband it into life.

Originally I wrote “significance”—or rather, spoke it sotto voce all’interno del cranio—but “weight” better captures the way the desire to write bears down upon you, as you wait for the moment to arrive.

It’s not so different a weight from the father weight.

Time is not money; money is time. The adage “money buys you time” is false: it allows you to avoid spending time doing something; it allows you to not have to wait for something. That you must spend time writing as you wait for it to arrive is a truth of writing—or rather, this is one way writing is true. But writing also lies because it erases the time you invested in it.

Fatherhood does not.