On Not Writing

Those who have read my blog in the past may note that this post follows a quite extensive period of time during which I did not share any writing. Here, I break the spell, but only to muse on what I have learned during this time.

For quite awhile I believed writing was an essential part of who I am as a person. To separate myself from the pursuit of writing even temporarily, it seemed, was to separate myself from my own essence. Like many individuals who find that they are seemingly unable to express themselves artistically or verbally in the way they used to (or quite as prolifically in the way they used to), I felt that I had wavered in my own worth. To not be able to do the thing that is my very heart and passion, that must be a shortcoming or something over which to worry. But this, I have learned, is simply not true. For I am, at the end of the day, more than the words I write. I, and everyone else who lives, is also someone who is occupied with complexities of existence, curiosity towards people and surroundings, striving for that which lies ahead and reflecting on that which rests in our past. We are metaphysical and material; we are tension and dogged certainty.

To speak to and understand others, to walk outside by the moonlight, to read about ideas, to think without having to express, to lay down and dream, to have a crowded or empty mind, these are all endeavors equally important to that of writing. They develop something different within us and make us certain of the other pieces of our life.

I have learned, am learning, the toughest lesson of all: that I was not intended to experience only the one certain thing of my life, but rather many that I do not yet know.

My Thoughts on Writing (So Far, That Is)

Image from http://celebriot.com/william-styron-quotes/quote-9357

Listless, fickle, uncertain: I have often described myself this way. As I grew up, each year would stretch out before me, the bearer of new pursuits. But I would shudder after realizing once again that this or that preoccupation wasn’t my calling, for it didn’t end with a pounding in my head or the inexplicable need to go further. Thus I would leave without giving the matter too much thought.

Writing was different. I tried to leave it behind; I couldn’t.

In the middle of walking away towards something else, I’d become enamored with blank pages in front of me and the tremendous way they seduced me into telling my secrets, learning once again what I knew, and searching earnestly for what I had yet to learn.

Even still, there are occasional (perhaps more frequent than I care to admit) stretches of time when I think about leaving, about putting down the pen. But these hardly last. I feel their bitterness and recognize their temporal nature before allowing them to deceive me too significantly. These weeks are merely lapses, for I soon remember that while great loves may be veiled from us for a period of time, they are rarely, if ever, diminished.

Indeed, I have wondered before whether "the writer" is writing's star-crossed lover, for writing is and perhaps alway will be a terrible and unforgiving undertaking for them. In the end, though, it will also be incessantly their own. Thus the writer may be afflicted and morose at times; that can be granted. But they are also the happiest person to walk the earth. When words come well, bliss is found, and the frustrations inevitably subside as they are melded into the halfway-remembered, rose-tinged history of the archetypal romanticized process.

And so I, and many others I am certain, find a pen once more in spite of all else and succumb to the lure of words.

For Emily

The beginning...

On the eve of yet more miles between us, I ponder this matter: that not all are so lucky to have a friend who will love them in spite of every flaw, listen to them as if they have just spoken the finest words the world has heard, and most importantly, remind them in the midst of difficulty that there is still good in the world, for you, my friend, are the unfailing good.

How funny it is to think about, that we have now been known to one another for more than eighteen years. My whole life, you have been the person who I have looked to for enduring understanding, patience, and compassion. Your intellect and curiosity have brought me to crave and seek the unknown, and your inherent goodness has proven to be both my refuge and a never ending lesson, the ultimate lesson that is, one which has demonstrated that though we can be many things in this world, perhaps most important is to be someone who cares for all others.

Alas, your adventure awaits you, and more days, more years, will soon come and go. But for my part, I will always be here to lend an ear and all my care. Finally, my dear friend, thank you for showing me what it means for two souls to exist in such harmony. 

The world awaits you as it always has, and more than anything, please remember what I know to be true: that you will continue to change the world for the better, simply by living in accordance with your matchless nature.

"Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams." ~Henry David Thoreau

... and there is no end.

On Passion

From http://inspirably.com/quotes/by-jazley-faith/lack-of-passion-is-fatal

I used to dream of greatness, and among my several longings was the wish for my words to be remembered.

Then, as I began to write more regularly and came to live for the thrill words fed me, I came to understand that greatness did not satisfy the heart of what I was after, for greatness may not last, and it is up to others to attribute any confused measure of "the esteemed" to our work. Even more, I resolved that the shifting tides of the world's fads and now-and-then-fascinations could not truly fulfill what I knew I craved, for it was not the recognition that I truly hoped, but the fervor of the written.

Yes, it was passion, immense passion that cannot be tempered. Passion that comes from our soul and is unconcerned with the judgment of others. Passion that exists not so others can analyze or scrutinize it, but rather because it demands to exist. It exists naturally. Indeed, the writer often does not choose to articulate; they are instead drawn to do so by a strange and familiar compulsion with which they live.

Finally, I realized, “Ah, this is it. All this time, passion is what I truly have sought.” And when I realized this, the greatness for which I used to long, in all its temporality and feigned grandiosity, subsided at once.

For I finally knew there are greater things of which to dream.

Pondering: Lessons from the Great Blue Heron

Photo from http://www.freeclipartnow.com/animals/birds/herons/Great-Blue-Heron.jpg.html

The great blue heron embodied my every longing.

Unconcerned by that which engulfed him, he swept quickly and with ease over the water, readying himself to land wherever he felt so drawn. As I marveled over nature’s artistry and the beauty of his feathers, I felt the sudden urge to memorize everything about this creature with whose presence I’d been graced. But alas, I could only watch with awe and wish so acutely that time would stand still, even if only for this one limited eternity in my ever more feverish life, with him the teacher, and me the student.

Indeed, the great blue heron embodied my every longing, and though the moment passed by as all moments do, I find myself sitting now and thinking, so resoundingly, “The world does have wonder after all.”

Daily Pondering

“Animals do speak, but very few people know how to listen.”

A calf raised for veal (Image from https://www.flickr.com/photos/sandi1214/2131871828)

I write here about this statement because it is perhaps the very essence of the conflict between humans and animals. It seems even revelatory when initially read due to our longstanding acceptance that a lack of speech can be equated with a lack of ability to express one’s nuanced thoughts, feelings, and experiences. The statement however, upon further consideration, is not particularly surprising or groundbreaking insofar as it only acknowledges what we must admit to be true, namely that animal exploiters are largely anthropocentric, and thus prone to such misconceptions as the common one contending that animals cannot communicate with us. But how faulty this is. In eyes, in whimpers, in growls, in stares, in touch, in silence, animals tell us all that we need to know. Will we listen? The answer to that question, it can be guaranteed, will partially determine whether we are benevolent, or whether we have chosen the side of ill dispositions.

The haunting reality that is veal farms (Image from https://rantingsfromavirtualsoapbox.wordpress.com/2014/07/30/veal-crates-and-plastic-hutches/)

On Explanations

We must continue to hope that one day our animal friends may know what it means to be free.

As I packed my final boxes one Monday afternoon, preparing for my move from a summer in Brooklyn back to college in the Berkshires, a friend and I conversed over the matter of the determination of advocates and activists. How is it that one person feels the urgency of a cause so deeply, and is thus compelled to live their life in pursuit of the rectification of that one single wrong, while another person turns away and cares little to naught about the very same evil?

Stephen King once wrote that, “the battle between good and evil is endlessly fascinating because we are participants every day.” This, I believe, does also beg the question at hand: What ultimately destines us to one or the other side in this epic battle? Is it a cosmic force, chance, a deliberate choice, a compulsion, or something altogether distinct from any of these?

Who truly knows the answer to this question? I have searched in vain for quite awhile now. Tired of the absence of any substantive, satisfying, or at all convincing answer, we began musing on the array of possibilities that nevertheless must exist. That’s when it came to me.

Perhaps those who speak for animals, when so many others remain silent among the animals’ harrowing reality, perhaps these individuals speak because they know. Maybe it could be that there is a memory in their soul from a life they used to know, a life of their past. Maybe those who speak were once the siblings and friends of the myriad animals who are subjugated on farms, in laboratories, in rings, in tanks and cages, on stages, in concrete and grass, in planes and cars and boxes and bags, in any and all conceivable places. Because they once knew and experienced, they understand and speak out for all of the wrongs to be amended, to be remedied how they can.

Let this proposed idea be called unlikely, naïve, idealistic, fallacious. Let it be mocked. Let it be disproven. But when you are conscious of a world of suffering made to be irrelevant, we begin to "tell ourselves stories in order to live" as Joan Didion once phrased it.

For the world to cease to commit animal cruelty in its many fashions and learn the happiness and peace that is unconditional compassion… that is my greatest wish.