Her writing is so much better than mine, and more times than I care to divulge I've stared at the results and pondered why.
Don't get me wrong, many many people are better writers than I. I'm no Hemingway, and by that standard, "she" could be a zillion people. But she is one person in particular. One person that I study and ponder and am prone to draw comparison with.
And, I know, I know, all comparison leads to suffering.
But this isn't about that. It's about more. Much much more.
See, I find myself on the bus staring at these girls and pondering how they are so unbelievably beautiful. Not the ones who look like models or actresses. Not, necessarily, the ones endowed with long elegant legs and a bone structure even the worst taste couldn't damage. I mean the other ones. The ones like me. The average ones. Ones adorned with their personalities like flags, style to the moon and flair that borders sometimes on ridiculous. The tomboy in the corner with the smile. The amazing punk rock chick with the fucked up outfits that border on seriously dorky and wrong. I stare at these average yet amazing woman and breath in their beauty and compare and compare and compare. I see my own dull lifelessness and my own half choices and feel myself fade into the scenery. I wonder at this vibrancy, I guess how they became that color.
And really it's integrity, and courage. Those women who fucking know who they are or willing to take a gamble on it glow with a certain purity and vibrate in the clarity of their border and lines. Even, sometimes, you can see the wacked out logic and the insecurity and the imperfections, but a certain ownership of these flaws overshadows the mess.
I see the same thing in her writing. See, I know her and her flaws and mishaps and insecurities. I know she doubts as often as me. I know her life is embarrassing and wrong and silly and lame and beautiful. Just like mine. But the clarity at which she reveals this, in which she revels in this... the unabashed dash at truth at the expense of what might be safe or cool or smart, is what makes her words so much more powerful than mine. The ownership of her own world, beauty and drudgery alike, makes her words vivid.

So this is an ode to her and every typical woman whose truth renders her stunning. To the relief we must feel when the deadly dull facade of cookie cutter pride is abandoned for real dignity and expression. To courage in art and life and politics and something as incidental as what we put on in the morning or what we write in a blog only 5 people read. To inspiration I hope to internalize so that every day I might step a little further out of my own shadow.