Thursday, September 14, 2006

WHY


Why do I write? Narrower, why MUST I write? Oh, this examination will hardly illuminate; nay, it might inflame, for my reasons are not charitable, nor within them found any measure of redemption. Yet I lay this before you. Take it as ye will.

I have lived a life, and studied others, breathed, eaten, fornicated, and loved. I have labored in many fashions, and found nothing of value beyond the pittance I earned for the time wasted. Yes, wasted. So much of our endeavors, our experiences, mere waste. That my efforts furthered something to the benefit of others, I do not pine. That a mere one, and only one, might have smiled for my visage, ah, to some a trifle, to me a joy of some magnitude. That one loved me, despite me, heaven holds no compare. Yet, I seek respite from this place, this plane I share with idiocy, with spite, with warfare and greed, with hatred, intolerance, illogic, and ignorance, and I flee into this place in my mind, onto this page, intwined with the ink, the font, the feeling I bleed upon it, and beg it be considered. I know full well these words will rest upon the eye of a select few, and perhaps even to enter within and find a resting place in memory, but it will go no further. It will not change a life, change a view, convert even one steadfast in their thinking. It will not be uttered again, passed around, discussed or promoted as something of brilliance, of wisdom, or value, promulgated to the masses for their consumption like some commodity that survives the ages like some Iliad or Odyssey. It may illicit a chuckle, an eyebrow raised, perhaps even an ire, but it will pass over like some gentle tickle of a breeze, forgotten for ever having been felt, so common the sensation. But it will have been noted, and even in it's death throes as it finds it's way inexorably into some trash heap, like the butterfly whose wings birthed a mighty storm halfway around the world, I will move some mountain, somewhere, perhaps only a centimeter. Archemedes can have his lever, I have my words.

I congratulate you, gallant reader, that remained intent to this point, and hoped for some point to be made. You amaze me, the one, that having done so, was content with the point that you realized upon completion of this tiring tirade. We have much in common, you and I. We look back upon our strife, our supposed triumphs, the mountaintop we attained and sat upon and then pissed upon having realized we conquered nothing. What WAS it all for? We know, yet we don't know, and we are the few that know there is little difference. We stopped looking for the answers once we realized there are no answers in three pitiful dimensions, and we somehow have found the bravery to yearn to sense the fourth, the fifth, and however many directions we can look into once we are freed from the sadness and limitations of these mere three. And knowing that, without even knowing how or why, we find our contentment, no matter how rancid the rewards of our efforts, our abilities, our circumstance, or even how sweet we imagined it to be once we attained it. Salute, my brothers! We write, because it is the one thing left to us in this world. The one true thing.

6 comments:

Buffalo said...

The happy, the sad, hard times, good times, truth, lies, mundane, trivial, trite, exciting, dramatic, adrenaline inducing, love, hate, war, peace, strife, lonely, depressed - all pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that makes up our life.

We are, indeed, the sum and total of our experiences - and we write.

Alex Pendragon said...

Horny, Buf, you forgot horny......

darlingina said...

To be surprised, to wonder... is to begin to understand. You've truely been given a gift Sir Michael, and it sparkles and shines through your writing. The wisdom i've gained through your writing will never be forgotten. Thank You.
Love & Peace, ~gina~

Alex Pendragon said...

Gina, thank you. Such sentiments make writing such a joy.

Paul said...

Why? I've asked that of myself but without framing a decent answer. Keep writing.

anna said...

I'm not buying that whole "my words have no impact" crap. I'm going to quote Gloria Steinam for backup:

"Many of us can understand that the flap of a butterfly wing here can affect the weather hundreds of miles away. We need to realize that we are all butterflies; our actions do make a difference.”

I hope I got that quote right. In any case, you get the idea.