Darling remember from when you come to me
that I’m the pretender,
I’m not what I’m supposed to be
but who could know, lf I’m a traitor?
time’s the revelator, revelator.

          –Gillian Welch, Revelator

I wish I had an mp3 of that song so I could put it up for you to hear, it’s beautiful. I only have a m4p version I got from the itunes store and they’re not sharable. I’d bitch about that but (looks at paycheck) it’s not in my best interest to do so.

Better, I wish I could put up an mp3 of my friend Ken’s version of it. Welch’s is pretty, but Ken’s, with backup by Heather Courtney and (hell, I guess her name is Lyndie Way, but I’m not sure about that). Ken’s is intense and passionate. A case where the song writer and the cover artist combine to make something wonderful that the songwriter alone doesn’t deliver.

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Today marks two years of blogging for yours truly. And as with last year, I feel I should be saying something about it. I failed last year. But I have very very strong feelings about anniversaries, commemorations of dates and events. I remember these things, have marked them on myself with tattoos. I’m the one who says “You know, one year ago today, we met”. I already mentioned that this year marks 30 years since my first piercing. So these things matter to me.

In so many ways Welch’s lyrics, above, say more about my feelings here than anything I can come up with. I’m the pretender, I’m not what I’m supposed to be.

My long-time readers (um. both of them) know I started this to talk about writing, because I couldn’t think of anything else to blog about at the time. I had hoped, after writing Wanton earlier that year, to use this blog to help me hone my writing skill and harness my creativity.

Best Laid Plans and all that. In fact this blog has been something completely other than that. An ego monument, a place to express myself, an anchor around my neck, a listening ear in both good ways and bad. It’s gotten me some good friends, though in fact many of them came via orkut, or other sites like the erotica forum where I posted my novella. It’s in many ways helped me be more open about my feelings. It’s taught me some new technical skills, but it’s also given me a huge distraction and time suck.

I don’t know, in the end, if this is good for me, or bad. I flip-flop on that weekly, and as I’ve said, three or four times I’ve given it up and torn my blog down and said fuck blogging, it’s all over. I’ve written almost nothing since Wanton, only put up two stories (a silly piece about santa and a sex-dream story inspired by a long-ago celebrity crush). I spend more time in a state of writer’s block than I spend writing.

It’s been an intense two years. I’ve learned more about love and hurt the last two years than I think I ever knew in my life up ’til that point. In many ways these last two years have encompassed some of my highest highs and lowest lows, and the shock waves from all that will not dissipate for a long while yet. In many ways I found myself these last two years, or let myself be myself, stopped being what other people expected of me.

Maybe the pretender is the shell on the ground behind me. Or maybe I’m fooling myself again and what I’m doing is simply killing time and not doing anything.

In either case, this marks two years in my life where everything changed and yet everything is the same, and I’m the worse for the wear, with new scars inside and out, only some of them self-inflicted.

I feel like I should be proud or angry. Yet all I can manage is sad.

Time’s the revelator.