Writing makes motion.
Write to doubt, to make mistakes, to search and experiment, to imagine the possibility of saying “no” to authority. Without writing, all is frozen.
No doubt, no making mistakes (or anything else), stagnated and repetitive, closed down to all thought, always “yes” downbeat, downtrodden, a slack rope.
(from bad texas, who is paraphrasing from Ignazio Silone on Lornadice)
I think there’s more than truth to that. Write to experiment, to create, to destroy, to live, to stay awake, alive.
Writing is a way to jostle yourself out of forgetting. Because forgetting is a state of frozen, where you are stuck in the present and cannot remember or posit.
Memory is a favorite subject of mine. Memory is that haunting thing that magically brings logic to the heavy, gray mishmash atop my shoulders, straddling my neck. It pervades my senses, spotty reminders of that one time, the first time, the almost time, when I remember the smell of the arcs made by their movements, the feel of the stare they gave me, the subtle impressions of the air.
Writing is masterful excess and a wonderful timepass. It is the clickety clackety, the notes of love and labor, the spinning of the mishmash in a way that forces structure and significance.
It is the process that makes me make sense.
