The writing is a sickness
The writing is a sickness. Keeps me in my head thinking of words.
My meditation tells me I’m having a thought. It’s just a thought. I don’t have to follow it. I can let it go.
But my writer’s mind tells me I have to hold onto the thought. Evaluate, chase, and see where it leads.
So insofar as we say not thinking is what solves the mental illness. The mental illness being thinking too much. A writer must necessarily be mentally ill. Because the thoughts precede the words. So you have to hold onto the words in cases where it might be more mentally healthy to let them go. To just be. To let the experiences pass through you.
But maybe it’s worth it. Maybe not. To just be. To be happy. But then you don’t leave your mark. Why do we choose to leave our mark rather than just be happy?
For me it’s because I want to be loved and I’m afraid to die.
I think if I write well, then I am beautiful and brilliant, and therefore more worthy of love.
If I write well, it will be read for a long time even after I die, and so I will live on in some way.
This is why I say my progress on my spiritual journey can be measured by the decrease in my will to write.
Because I know vaguely that the world is love and we don’t die. That I can love myself unconditionally and invite others to share in this love, and then it flows in and back out and back in. That we are not our minds and our concepts of ego and identity are mind-made, and when we die, it’s really just molecules moving into a new form. The consciousness doesn’t die. Nothing really dies.
But I’m still a non-believer. I still think maybe you have to be beautiful and brilliant to be loved. That we really do die and this is our only chance. And when I think this way, I feel alone and afraid. I feel driven to the page. I press hard with my pen so the ink bleeds bold. I let my hands raise higher and fingers fall heavier on the keys.
On a bad day I get nothing good down.
On a good day I stumble on long enough and get lucky enough with the inspiring goodness of brilliant words said in conversations at the cafe, beautiful people and scenes around me. That it gets through me and onto the page and I read it and smile and exhale and feel that I might find a lover who really loves me and I might not die.
And that feeling lasts for a few hours, sometimes a day or two.
Then I start to think again that I have to be beautiful and brilliant to be loved. That we really do die and this is our only chance.
And when I think this way, I feel alone and afraid.
And I am driven back to the page.
To try to save myself again.
For a few hours, sometimes a day or two.
