In the world of writing, there are two types of people. There are people who write, and then there are writers.
Ok, that sounds derogatory. I don't mean it that way. I just have no other way to explain it. And it's not that one is better than the other. In fact, one person can be both at different times. It's a matter of inspiration.
A person who writes is someone who has a vague idea about something he or she would like to write and says to him/herself, "I would like to write a book one day" or something similar. This is basically what I do for work. People ask for things, and I think about the best way to make that happen for them, and then I put it on paper so that I can get paid. It pays the bills--sometimes--so I'm certainly not going to disparage it.
But then there are writers. Writers don't think of their own ideas. They don't tell themselves, "Oh, maybe one day when I have some time, I'll write this novel/short story/essay/poem/whatever."
Writers are tormented by stories in their heads. They didn't consciously think this shit up. The Universe planted these stories in their heads, and the Universe will torture them until they get it down on paper. They are not people who write, people who can think of ideas at their leisure, people who can take their time on their manuscript, people who can completely forget about whatever it was they thought they wanted to do. It sounds insane, but this is quite literally the sanest way I can put it: Writers are tools. They are conduits through which the Universe communicates with...Itself? Us? Writers are the physical bodies that do the physical work to communicate whatever higher truths the Universe feels the world should know.
And I, goddammit, am a writer. At least lately.
I'm still a person who writes when I do work shit for other people. But as for the rest? The fucking Universe has its claws in me now, and it will torture me until it's said everything it's got to say. I'm just along for the ride, and I've got no choice in the matter.
I've had some nebulous thoughts in my head for awhile, but I've been having them forced out of me at an alarming rate over the last couple of weeks. But what comes out is never quite what I envisioned in my head. It takes on a form, a shape, a life of its own. It runs away with me, but what comes out is so much better than I could've done alone.
At this point, I'm just the Universe's typist.
*Shrug* But what do you do?
For the record, I'm on my meds and absolutely no more ill than I usually am this time of year. Mildly depressed because of a lack of sunlight--although this SAD light I got for my birthday helps tremendously with that--but nothing out of the ordinary. I say this only because I'm fully aware of how batshit this sounds. But believe me when I say that I have been psychotic, and that's not what this is.
In some Eastern countries, the Hindu and, to some extent, the Buddhist ones in particular, when people grow older, when they have "lived their lives," so to speak, they often become renunciates (to varying degrees). They've done what they wanted or needed to do, and now they're rejecting the material world and focusing on something greater, something higher. Clearly, I've simplified this a lot, but I'm too lazy to explain it in-depth. And besides, this blog's pretty much for my eyes only, and I already know what I'm trying to say.
I feel like a renunciate.
I'm 30 years old. (God help me. And I will never admit to it, ever again. As far as the world knows, I am now perpetually 25.) It's not pathos or attention-seeking or self-pity when I say that I likely won't live to be an old person. I'm too fucked up, physically and mentally. I have lived my life. It sucked, and I'm more or less done with it. My remaining years are going to be dedicated to my one true love, the one thing that has never forsaken me, never given up on me, and never bailed on me, no matter how crazy I became--writing.
That's not to say I'm going to be a hermit or an ascetic. I have an (insane) family that I can't get out of dealing with semi-regularly and friends I would do anything for. I also have bills to pay and a terrible job to peck away at. But those things are not what I'm here for. My eyes are set on something higher. I asked the Universe to show me what the truth was, and this is what I got. So here I am, like it or not, for better or worse.
I've written two more poems since the last one I linked to. I've also got the outline for the next chapter in my other project. I just haven't put that to paper yet, but I expect to in the next few days, now that I've finally got my work shit caught up.
I started writing this one, Hurricane Gustav, first. It was meant to be an ode (I suppose) to a walk on the beach the night before a hurricane made landfall. But, as has everything lately, this one didn't turn out to be anything like I thought it would be in my head. Midway through the poem, Lucifer popped his head in and wouldn't leave. No, really. Lucifer marched in, flopped down in the middle of my poem, and refused to leave. I had zero control over it.
I finished it, but I'm not satisfied with the result. I expect that sometime in the future, I will end up breaking the poem off into two separate poems, one about the hurricane and one about Lucifer. But since Lucifer seems to be so intent to insinuate himself into my work, I'm going to wait until I've got a definite direction to go with here. Obviously, he wants his story told, so I'm going to do it right when I do it. But I went ahead and posted it, anyway, to get some feedback from some friends. They, too, agree that it takes a turn into left field mid-text and that I should probably break it into two separate works when I figure out exactly how to do it.
But the other one...oh, God, the other one. I've had a vague idea along these lines for about a year, but the night I tried to break the hurricane/Lucifer poem into two separate poems, this happened: Power Station 296.
I did not write that poem. It was wrung out of me, squeezed drop by drop from my veins. Word by word, syllable by syllable, letter by fucking letter, I bled onto the page for about 3 hours. The structure changed multiple times in the course of trying to write it, and it ended up being nothing like what I had initially imagined. When I finished it, I was completely drained and trembling with exhaustion. I had to edit and proofread over the course of the next couple of days because I honestly did not have it in me to clean it up once I finally finished it that night.
I know it still needs work. I know that the symbolism gets heavy-handed, particularly toward the end. I know it's hardly anything to write home about, but I think it's the best work I've ever done. I was truly afraid to put it out there because, while I've left a little piece of my heart in every other creative work I've ever done, I left a fairly large chunk of my soul in that one. I can't even put into words what that was like. Luckily, the friends I've had look over it either actually loved it or were kind enough to lie to me.
I will be entirely honest: I hope nothing like that ever happens to me again because it was hell. Unfortunately, I expect it to happen pretty often because I'm already being tormented with other ideas already. The Universe is going to wring everything it possibly can out of me.
But you know what? It's all right. I was clearly not made for a "regular" life. Other people are much better suited for that than I am. This is what I'm here for, to bleed all over the page, to leave pieces of my soul for other people to gaze at and critique and, hopefully, enjoy.
I will never be normal. I will never have a normal life. But I'm at peace with it. I will bleed for the Universe as long as it'll let me. I will serve my one true love and dedicate the rest of my life to it. Maybe I can be a decent enough tool that I can reveal pieces of the Universe's truth to others who are lucky enough not to have to be bloodied and broken in this manner to learn them. And if the Universe tortures me to death, so be it. I wasn't meant for anything else, and I was stupid to think otherwise. I think I've always known it but just didn't want it to be true, like so many other things in my life.
And so I leave today with a quote by Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451 (among other things), a book that disturbed and moved me very deeply:
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