"
we also write to heighten our own awareness of life."--Anais Nin
In the last few weeks i have had seven-ish poems sent back to me because they aren't quite right: which is quite fine.
I could rewrite them--everything can be improved (or disproved, for that matter)--put a more conscious effort into them than the late night spewing of my emotional self sans editing or giving a fuck about how they are received. You see, i write for me.
Selfish.
And i read for me too.
Selfisher.
Not a word. Don't give a fuck.
Words are like Love: they mean something different to every individual and do not require justification or explanation--only willing, receptive ears to hear them, eyes to read them, for the uniquely intimate offering they are.
You see, your eyes are not the gateway to your soul as romantically detailed, they're more like that funny little peeping hole on apartment doors that fishbowls your perception and shares only a limited guessing game of truth--our words are that soul link. Our words are our spirits trying to connect to, embrace even, the world around us.
When i get at my pen and paper, or these keys here, that is a large part of what i am seeking to do: to connect to the world--yet i do not expect anyone to read…my connection to the world around me through writing is that i am writing, as the gorgeously poetic, voracious writer Anais Nin is quoted at the start of this post, to heighten my awareness of my own life. I write to understand. To understand my feelings, my reactions, human nature, and individual experience, and it is how i give myself up to that experience; writing, for me, is simply an expression of self.
i write to express when i feel alone, or so moved by togetherness; i write when my heart aches for wanting and for living. i write when I've been rejected and when i have been encouraged. i write what i know in this moment and what i want to know in the next. i write to deal with fear. i write to show up. i write with lower case 'i's and particular punctuation, with an aversion to alliteration and a misuse of the English language. I do not write to be right about anything, but rather to siphon through details and perspectives and come to land in my very human interpretations. Writing humanizes me, in the same way that reading someone else's writing does: feelings can be shared, relationships can be created on the symbiosis of experience, the oneness of everything. By translating my thoughts into readable words i am, in a way, validating my perspective….i write as if to believe myself.
And again, i read to do the same. When someone else's words resonate, stream through your eyes to your mind to get whispered aloud by your lips and your heart ends up unnerved, you believe in their truth. Not just the truth of the words themselves, but the authors offering of them. I fall madly in love with writers whose words read as if you are speaking to them, whose poignant choice of language represents, significantly, exactly how they are feeling/thinking/being. Not a word is wasted. Alexa Torontow writes like this: succinct, clear, immediate--in the moment yet heartfelt and contemplative.
i on the other hand write as if you know me, somewhat vague, riddled with words i happen to like such as
potent or
harmonized,
wildly, and particularly emphatic monosyllabic words that land like an anchor in the soft sand in deep seas: heavy, final, carved in to your soft heart. My writing is based on craving as much as it is understanding--truthfully it is more seeking to understand than confidently knowing. Sometimes i will reread my own words and feel satiated, or even at the best of times blown away by where i was/am/what insight i had on my own curious thoughts and feels. Most of the time though i can step outside of myself and my words and see the process there: the process of digestion and healing. Of taking account and creating space. Of acknowledging that i only have come to understand that moment and should it come again the story would read oh so differently.
Trust. One of those one syllable one- of- a- kind words that settles into your deepest parts.
Trust. i learn to trust myself through writing: that what i have to say is worth something (even when rejected for publication, even when hyper-emotional, even if so subjective you would have to know the nakedness of me to understand the vagueness of my words). And if i can have anything at all to say write now (that was a pun, not a spelling mistake, so clever) it is that you ought to trust yourself to do the same. Fuck being a "writer"-- you are a human, with a voice; use it to sing, chant, protest, proclaim, argue, laugh unabashedly, ask questions, give answers, tell stories, tell the greatest truths, be intimate with your words, oh so intimate, for we write and speak to preserve ourselves: to be known and make known and give give give to the world as it is with us in it for all that it can be. You have a voice connected to your heart and your mind-heart and your soul depends on you using it. Be seen by being heard.
Write your shit down.
