This is the longest I have gone without dropping a note from my Mast. I feel guilty about it, as if I have broken a promise. One to you, and one to myself. November is when I started writing here so it feels like I missed a celebration. I was supposed to be somewhere but I could not make it.

I have written. I think I have three or four essays. Messes. I cannot hit send on any of it. Not even as a collection of drafts. The words are cluttered and won’t sit nice. I cannot make myself clear. It rambles and unwinds and I get lost inside my own work.

Really, I worry it is not honest enough. I worry I cannot say what I am meant to and so I try again, but it just won’t take the right shape. Maybe the truth doesn’t have a shape I like. Maybe I am not struggling with my work so much as I am struggling with myself.

I used to reference nature a lot in my writing, but I can’t seem to tie the earth back into my work. Lately my metaphors and connections have been about alleyways, buildings of concrete and glass, bent windows with reflections like funhouse mirrors. But my walls wobble and the structure falls. It doesn’t feel like me, or sound like me… and yet it does.

I think I have changed again.

Photography by Corelens form Canva

Do we know how many times we undo ourselves?
Do we know how to tell if we get it (ourself) right?
Are we always just trying to get back to the earth?

I have been thinking a lot about my book— and writing very little of it. I think if I can make myself get it all out that I could put a lot to rest. I think I also like dragging it out. I don’t want it to be done because I won’t know what to write if I finish this. I won’t know what to dwell on, and I think I might like dwelling. It is what I know. It is comfortable to me. I fear I still won’t know who I am when it is finished.

Maybe that is the truth I cannot write, that I may never know who I am meant to be.

Andrea Thomas is a queer American writer. Her essays, poems and creative nonfiction speak of being a late bloomer, a new traveler and testing everyone’s cultural norms. You can find some of her writing at Bird on a Mast on Substack where she sorts out her mid-life crisis origin story and on Instagram where she posts her proof of life.

One of the essays I worked on this month was about as close to being sent as it gets without going out. I had edited it, added in photographs with all attributes and all the little details I add to the back of house, but I just couldn’t push it out the door.

I had also included a song with that work. This song here. I am stuck on it. So much so I share it (slightly) out of context here, along with the notes I had added with it. Maybe you can glean some meaning from it. See a bit of where I have been, I am nothing of a builder, but here I dreamt I was an architect.

The Decemberists
Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect, 2002

The Mast playlist is a living breathing thing, songs may come and go.
I just added this one.

This is the kind of architect I am— unparalleled.

I love the video. I love the melody, I love the lyrics. I listened to it three times yesterday while driving. (Does anyone else do this?)

I also wish it was December already. Let winter just sit on me. There I would dream a lot of things.

Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect
The Decemberists, 2002

And here I dreamt I was a soldier
And I marched the streets of Birkenau
And I recall in spring
The perfume that the air would bring
To the indolent town
Where the barkers call the moon down
The carnival was ringing loudly now
And just to lay with you
There’s nothing that I wouldn’t do
Save lay my rifle down

And try one, and try two
I guess it always comes down to
Alright, it’s okay
Guess it’s better to turn this way

And I am nothing of a builder
But here I dreamt I was an architect
And I built this balustrade
To keep you home, to keep you safe
From the outside world
But the angles and the corners
Even though my work is unparalleled
They never seemed to meet
This structure fell about our feet
And we were free to go

And try one, and try two
Guess it always comes down to
Alright, okay
Guess it’s better to turn this way

And here in Spain I am a Spaniard
I will be buried with my marionettes
Countess and courtesan
Have fallen ‘neath my tender hand
When their husbands were not around
But you, my soiled teenage girlfriend
Oh, while you furrow like the lioness
And we are vagabonds
We travel without seat belts on
To live this close to death

And try one, and try two
I guess it always comes down to
Alright, it’s okay
Guess it’s better to turn this
But I won, so you lose
Guess it always comes down to
Alright, it’s okay
Guess it’s better to turn this way