Sunday, November 13, 2016

Why Write in a Time of Such Madness?


(To the good thing in each life that evil would love you to stop doing,
to find futile, to see no point in, so take heart...)

The bewilderment lingers and bursts forth without warning and recedes once more....

At a time like this I can't remember why I write.
It feels useless and pointless in the face of such hatred & fear & evil....

But I'll never remember why I write by thinking about how I should be writing. Just as I can't enjoy getting the blood going by thinking about the treadmill....

Unplug Mr. TV, open that file, and get back to work, son.
The work that by miracle soothes the terror and transforms the absurd
into a kind of insane serenity. The work that will allow me later today
to be a human being with other human beings who are suffering through this much more than I am....

If I want to vanquish the haters, if I want to restore justice
to the country and the cosmos, open that file and write, friend,
write as if your life depended on it, though I write about something
as seemingly inconsequential as an angry girl going into Trader Joe's
for a smoothie, because I know my life, in the deepest sense, in the most
spiritual sense, the sense of joy, does depend upon it.

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