How does one figure out if they are a great writer, or if they are simply someone completely seduced by the fantasy that they are, but can't stop writing anyway?
Is the endless attempt to pour the entrails inside our head onto a page the spark of greatness or insanity, both, or neither? Or is the question simply ours to ask but only for others to answer?
The endless diary of bad decisions is written by the fool who followed his own words down a rabbit hole so deep, that he lost sight of everything and everyone who mattered, and died alone in the coffin of his unread scribbles, with a pencil through the heart.
The written word is like breath on a window pain, lingering after the breathing is over.
From a future grave with each word we write, then, we grasp in vain for a permanence that will remind future generations of that salute from Whitmann, that we are ever there, in all the folly and the foolish wishes, in all the dread and despair, in all the hopes and fears that imbue each and every generation - I am with you.
Sunday, March 4, 2018
Two Thoughts & A Cudgel
There are only two thoughts that have ever had any real say about anything inside my head. One is
that I can do and be anything I want. The other is a gang of rabid
doubts that quickly rush in and bludgeon the first thought to death with
the cudgel of reality.
Even in writing this my mind works in fits and starts, alternating between slamming its foot on the gas and then slamming both feet on the brakes. Faith is locked in a duel to the death with doubt, fighting the epic battle where in all ideas, all dreams, all hopes, live or die.
In the beginning was the word, but in the end there's simply nothing to say and no one to listen. Life is slowly emptied of its magic, until there is simply a walking talking corpse where once life used to be. Welcome to the American dream, where window shopping is the height of aspiration, and a person's worth is determined exclusively by what they can buy.
Churches placate our suspicion that we are nothing but greedy consumers who are manipulated everywhere to spend more than we earn, not only because we are forced to project a greater image of success than we have achieved in order to ever achieve ever greater success, but because the wealth of the few only grows in proportion to the amount of debt that it can leverage upon the many.
But so what?
The point is that there is no escape from a reality that is slowly swallowing us all, into the pockets of those who would spend the lives of children with all the carefree folly of children casting pennies in a wishing well.
Even in writing this my mind works in fits and starts, alternating between slamming its foot on the gas and then slamming both feet on the brakes. Faith is locked in a duel to the death with doubt, fighting the epic battle where in all ideas, all dreams, all hopes, live or die.
In the beginning was the word, but in the end there's simply nothing to say and no one to listen. Life is slowly emptied of its magic, until there is simply a walking talking corpse where once life used to be. Welcome to the American dream, where window shopping is the height of aspiration, and a person's worth is determined exclusively by what they can buy.
Churches placate our suspicion that we are nothing but greedy consumers who are manipulated everywhere to spend more than we earn, not only because we are forced to project a greater image of success than we have achieved in order to ever achieve ever greater success, but because the wealth of the few only grows in proportion to the amount of debt that it can leverage upon the many.
But so what?
The point is that there is no escape from a reality that is slowly swallowing us all, into the pockets of those who would spend the lives of children with all the carefree folly of children casting pennies in a wishing well.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)