Friday, October 2, 2009
Graf #9
After writing the five graf essay piece I felt I had done myself, and the reader, an injustice. I only hint at what needs to be said. Water lilies truly are what the entire essay states they are. As I wrote it, though, I found myself trying to write about the real issue, the real theme underlying the one I was attempting. The essay was difficult because I was restricting the authentic subject. The whole thing is backwards. I do not love water lilies because of what Arsalan showed me through them. I love Arsalan because of what he taught me in my early life, water lilies being the methodology of his teaching. It all comes down to that old fear. The reason why I have never published what I feel will only be a stack of rotting trash if I never do. Fear of exposure, fear of intimacy with strangers, fear that whatever I write and however good it is, one day I will sit down and nothing will come at all. I should have written about Arsalan and all the causes of why I love him. Why, after fourteen years, those water lilies still bring tears to my eyes and make my heart ache.
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I'll comment on the essay when I'm awake and alert--but you certainly don't need to fear or doubt my reaction.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, this comment of yours from the inside out cuts deeper than anything I could possibly understand about the piece.
I do know some things about writers and their fears and doubts, however, and yours seem par for the course. The fear of self-exposure always co-exists with the intense need to expose oneself--why the hell else would one sit at a keyboard!
The fear of intimacy is soothed by locking oneself up alone in a room hour after hour, the basic condition of a writer's life, but mitigated by the idea that the intimacy that the writer eventually achieves with strangers will be safe because on her terms.
(And, of course, there is nothing like being besieged by hordes of Borders customers, eager for a signed copy of '1000 Intros,' to assuage that lingering fear of strangers....)
And finally the fear of the block and even worse the permanently dry well. Both have certainly famously happened. And perhaps as bad is the slow decline of powers, which though not inevitable is still very common. I have nothing reassuring to say about any of that except nothing ventured, nothing gained. The writer must risk and write.
I suppose that for the writer who confuses his words with his life, who has mistaken his power and talent and genius for everything else happening in the world--for that writer, there is a special horror in coming up dry. But those writers are too solipsistic for me to understand.
Writing is something I do. I am often proud of what I can do. I feel like a writing warrior, refusing to give up on an assignment, always conquering, mastering any tactic necessary. But writing isn't, you know, me.
Of course, I never claimed to be a poet....