garden

in

In my more morose moments, I wonder why I bother posting here - or, hell, even why I continue to write; in my more lucid ones, I can tell you that, having given up the ambition of ever having a "writing career" and leaving behind the attendant trappings that either bored me or drove me insane (read: the performative cesspit of social media), I feel more free than ever to follow and process my interests and curiosities wherever they may lead and share the results of that processing - or, sometimes, the process of that processing, weeds and all - in this, my tiny little patch of internet garden. This is my home.

"must i write?"

in

Current fear: that I used up and exorcised all of my stores of anger and rage and things unsaid in LAST CHRISTMAS and that I needed that anger and rage to fuel and fill the well of what passes for my writing practice. Maybe that's true, maybe not. My wife said to me last night, as she sought to calm my frayed hyperventilations, "but you love writing,” to which I said:

"No, I don't."

It's the first time I've ever said it (aloud) and I know I'm at least somewhat correct. To love an inextricable – for better or for worse – part of myself is a fool's errand: there are days when it's my breath and there are days when it's nothing more than another chronic, incurable autoimmune disorder that I'll have with me until the day I die: I'm not sure that you can love something that's such a part of you that it's become another limb, another part of you that makes you you.

To quote Tina Turner, "What's love got to do with it?"

Thinking this morning of Rilke's first letter in LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET:

"You are directing your thoughts outwards, and that above all is what you should not do at present. No one can advise and help you. No one. There is only one way. Withdraw into yourself... ask yourself in the stillest hour of the night, 'Must I write?' Dig deep into yourself for an answer. And if this answer should be in the affirmative, if you can meet this solemn question with a simple strong 'I must,' then build up your life according to this necessity. Your life right down to its most indifferent and unimportant hour must be a token and a witness to this compulsion."

I must.