Writing about writing holds an extra pressure. It feels unwillingly performative, and I don’t want to perform. I want to express, I want to whisper in the firelight about gods, emperors, and shattered glass; I want some of you to walk away bored and confused because you’re not who these whispers were meant for. The rest of you, I want you casually enraptured, unexpectedly spellbound. Not like you’ve come to the theater to be entertained, but like you were doing errands downtown and stumbled on a busker who makes you simmer with melancholy laughter.
I’m not explaining this clearly.
Good.
There is a magic that can only be diffuse, nearly invisible. A magic like a faint smell on the eddies of forest air, like a melody you can’t remember why you’re humming. You can’t point at it. You can’t quote it. You can’t turn it into a punchy tweet and make a mission statement of it. You won’t get investors for it.
All you can do is hum the melody, crush pine needles and inhale the blood memory of their odor. All you can do is learn the names of the gods and write them on the passing wind. All you can do feel the Current and gently encourage its flow hither, obscure its flow thither.
The other kind of magic, magic that sets thousands of people screaming in a stadium, magic that leaps and howls, magic that persuades you to set your soul to work for The Righteous Cause; it’s more pointed, more direct. It has beckoning fingers — and claws. It’s intoxicating, but it has a hangover built in. It’s a magic that explodes city blocks, that crushes bodies and psyches between lines of force.
I’ve been writing a lot lately. I have no idea if it’s good or not. But it’s the best writing I’ve done in a decade. I’m not using clear outlines or section headings, I’m sketching constellation lines with graphite and a light touch, no ink.
The worst writing I’ve ever done may have been some of the clearest.
I mean something precise by writing, something more than just putting words on a page. I mean something very precise and I’m not sure what it is.
I’m not quite writing right now. I’m close, but it’s not happening — it’s like a sneeze that won’t quite come; I’m inviting it, I’m opening to it, I’m staring into the light and trying to intensify the itch so it will all charge out in a golden rush and roar. But no, I’m not quite writing. I’m just putting words on the page; just staring into the light, mouth agape.
I’ve been writing a lot lately, and pine needles leave no hangover.
The candle lit.
The altar built.
Eyes fixed
upon the empty page.
Space made sacred.
Self stripped naked.
Burn me to ashes,
Great Catabolism,
Let a son be the sun,
for a moment, Oh
Radiant Anabolism,
of the bodyless body.
The flicker of the candle whispers:
“Make the self sacred,
you will be salt in
a glass of water.”
“Now drink from the cup,
taste the waveless ocean.”
“Let its winds exhale
through your lungs
And the sacred,
be breathed
into the world
of men,
once more.”
That which can be clearly explained…can be kind of boring! 😉 love these meanderings through the forest.