In search of a writers guide to perfect happiness
The point
Why do writers write? Why do we do it. Probably for the same reason that cats paint. You realize what the success of that book says about us humans. We believe that cats could never paint, cats as animals could never, would never, paint. But our cats, what we make of them out of our imaginations as pets , our cats would paint. Of course they would. They’d paint better than we do.
We think creativity belong to us.
It does not belong to us. Has it never occurred to anyone that perhaps crop circles are made by the crops themselves, or the earth they grow out of. We think the universe needs us. So is that why we write? Because somewhere deep inside we know that it does not need us. Our very lives do not really belong to us. They happen to us. So perhaps it is out of a desire for control that we write about ourselves, alter the tense of everything, try to see ourselves as we would be, in the third person or as many people with different voices and faces. Of course everything we think that we create has already been done. We cannot step outside ourselves. When you read a book you are reading only what was given to the consciousness of the writer to write. You are reading them and yourself and neither of you are really your own creation.
Or are are we. Perhaps we all create this universe together. Then of course animals do create. They create their lives in the same ways we do. Together we have been created by each other and as we move through time, we create. But cats don’t seem to feel the need to paint. Why is it then that we feel the need to write? Our self conscious awareness of ourselves perhaps. Then it would be a burden and not a joy, but it is a joy. As much as we moan and gnash our teeth, these are the finest and sweetest moments, the times we place words, words that have been used millions of times, billions of times, by other people, we take these common groupings of letters and place them an order, that is special, unique and personal, something that could only come from us. Yet if only our egos wrote books no one would read them. More than that, their would be no joy. Do the animals miss the joy? If you look in the eyes of a deer, if you really look, you can see, they are missing nothing. Listen to the frogs as they creep across the windows eating small bugs at night. You can see the joy. But then whose joy am I seeing, I cannot step outside myself either.
Who can know another’s life, animal, vegetable, mineral or person. The universe is created anew each time we open our eyes. Words keep telling us that, words in books and words in emails and words on websites, everywhere. Over and over, I am told how wonderful life is, once a week at least, by chain emails sent me by my sisters, emails who threaten me if I do not return them or make them multiply.
Why do we write? To communicate? To spread something great like jam or peanut butter on the plain and everyday thoughts. Yes of course. To gussy up those things we never think to say to actual people, to write them down, to be proud of them. Always and forever. But also it is to have something we can leave behind, to have some bit of ourselves that we can point to, something of ourselves to show other people so that we can say, see that, that is me. Why is it is so painful then, when those precious parts of us, those sacred words are read.
Why do we write? If we do not want such words to be read by other people, why do we write. To express ourselves?
But if no one is going to read the words, there is no point. And so then perhaps, the point is, there is, no point.
Typing this I realize that it is very probable that no one will ever read these words; if they do I will never know about it. So this then is a message in a bottle and I will launch it, tossing it out to float upon the sea of words that is humanity’s creative universe; and eventually the bottle will break and the message will dissolve into letters, vowels and consonants; punctuation floating freely.
I J. K.
Lm, N.
Op, Q r;
.stuv.
W.
X,
Y………..
– Z