were but transcripts of escapism . I was Houdini with magic ink and there was no shackle too tight that my pen could not pick it . Sleight of hand stories and poems to bewilder the audience , classic palm catharsis , invisible deck ideologies , a blind shuffle of the grand injustices of the world , the smoke and mirrors of shock value and the bicycle deck of pain ... oh the gimmicky , ghost count of sheer suffering . Pencil by pencil , page by page , by sheer sucker effect , I purged them all .
Then , the opposite . The wild dog inside struck down by the encroaching oncoming matters . I am not anguished by the years lost . It is like eating cake today while choosing to suffer longing for the cake you didn ’ t eat yesterday . What difference does yesterday make if today is particularly delicious ?
Now , I write , but at first , it confused me , I didn ’ t know how , because I could no longer write for the release of pain , for the great escape . Because I no longer wanted to escape . And the reason was because I finally understood that there is nothing to escape from . Only things to return to . I had to learn not to run away , but instead , to run to . traffic of “ real life ”. I laid there , lifeless , by the side of the road , and with no one to remember me , I no longer wrote at all . A decade of grocery lists and postcards but none fancier , the bottle shattered , the liquid drained . I let go my craft and therefore , myself . And for the longest time , I didn ’ t even realize I was gone .
But much I have seen and been since then and much I have learned , and fortunately , my craft did not lose me , however far I got . Because he is a good friend , an old friend , and he has all the time in the world for me ... and oh so many shelves of very full bottles .
Now , I write , because I understand that that is my thing . You have your thing and I have mine . I share it with many others , but I don ’ t do it like them and they don ’ t do it like me . We are the same and unique . That is part of the grand gloriousness of art and creation - everything the same and nothing the same . When I write , I am connected and that is the only thing I need to know , the only thing that
Now , I write because it is beautiful to write .
I write because it is my joy . I love that pen to paper , that thought to thing . I like the way the words drip heavy , like molasses , from my lips as I read them back to myself . I love it for its own sake and all that it brings . I love it because it ’ s one of my most favourite ways to create . Not of the words themselves , but their order , their flow , their interconnected meaning , both overt and hidden . The feeling of which is both uniquely unduplicatable and especially exquisite . I write because I am a writer . It is part of who I am , it is how I like to be .
I read all of your submissions . You send them to be read and so they are . They contain information about you - your stories , your histories , your lives , the things that haunt you , the things that inspire you , your losses , your successes , your fears , your dreams .