this queer empty feeling

Do you ever get this feeling after you finish reading a book or watching a movie, of being absolutely aimless? I get it a lot, and I can't say that I particularly enjoy it. I went to see The Hobbit last weekend (lordy, it's already been a week), and I had that feeling for several days.

Still do, actually.

Shh.

It's not that my life isn't a nice one. It isn't that I'm particularly unsatisfied with the way my life is. It's simply that works of art like Tolkien's stories speak to me on some deep, primal level that even I can't access at will. And that is sort of amazing. Art--music, the written word, paintings--can speak to a person's soul far beyond anything else.

And that just makes me feel sort of awesome about being a writer. So I relish that queer, empty feeling deep inside. Because it means I have the oh-so-human ability to be moved by something beautiful, and makes me feel that perhaps, someday, I could move someone else in the same way.

- Kyla Denae