Why I Write: A Window Into The Soul — Or Just The Mind?

Why I Write

Why I Write

An excerpt from a journal entry written on the 12th July 2017

“A sense of injustice”.

Is it that simple, that easy? To quantify, to explain, to pontificate upon — away? The vanity. The shame. As if words were weapons; yet words are weapons, of a sort. They have a power of their own. They are — or can be — strong.

The body is as weak as its maker, but this doesn’t matter: fuck font, structure, superficialities — this is about content. And I want to make you feel. That is power, in my mind; yet you give it, freely. Or relinquish it, rather. Power over, or power to? It makes no difference. Power corrupts. I want nothing to do with it, yet I need it, at some level; without it, I have nothing. Without it, I am hollow. Power is as intrinsic a component as it is a composition in its own right. Power may not be, but it enables, some semblance of freedom. The Golden Country. A no-man’s-land. Lustrous. Voluptuous. We are seduced, effortlessly. Desperate, stupid, greedy.

Human; armed with, undermined by, our humanity. ‘Soft, to my mother’ — a gender, if not role, of frailty. I write not because it makes me think but because it makes me feel. Helps me, rather. If I just put the words in the right order they make sense to me, they flow nicely, and with that comes not pride but acceptance — perhaps the most important thing. Through words, I do not express my voice, but find it; on paper, I can take up space. On paper, I always have done. In life, I am learning to do the same. A work in progress, ellipsis, the turning of the page. Blank space is not emptiness but possibility, fingers tap-tapping, nib scratch-scratching to “let loose” — to just be. Whatever being means: it is not “just” feeling. “Just” — reductionism. Injustice implicit. Screaming. For what? For something, for nothing, for everything I will never feel, have never said, can never understand; as if mere absence were loss. As if I should be more just because I could. The theory of a pipe dream; the actuality of disappointment, ringing in my ears, resonating. I can never accept if I expect; yet I can’t stop wanting.

There is, and can be, no justice in this world — at least not in its entirety. Justice is conceptual, and thus idealistic; a pretty little self-construct, provider of some arbitrary parameter to contain, constrain, and beat us with. For all its good intentions, we debase our own integrity. There is a sadness to its futility. The temptation of nihilism. Is its pursuit pointless, too? Should we not even dare to dream?

There I, you, we go again — circle/delete interchangeably — for without dreams, who are we?

Who do I, you, we want to be?

I want to be somebody of meaning. Someone whose value eclipses her personhood, whose tangibility extolls from the outside-in. I want the world to be different, a better place; and I want to be part of that difference, to celebrate [in] that better place, its “saving grace” my own, so I can say that ‘this is why I held on’. I am not selfless: sometimes it is that simple.