New Demons

"There's so much I need to say to you,
So many reasons why;
You're the only one who really knew me at all" - Phil Collins


Some days were meant for solitude. The chill in the fall air, and the sparse precipitation issuing a fine misty spray from the powdery grey clouds. Once again I walk alone with the pilloried playground I call my mind. The world is a precarious little thing. A bug on the cosmic windshield. The whims of the people festering on this flying rock are of even less concern in the grand scheme of things. The fact that nothing really matters can be either a great solace or a grave consideration to the general populous.

Actually, the general populous is too busy watching "The Golden Girls" to weigh in on such meta-physical meandering. But tonight I sit with a frank stare across a dull blue-grey room. An operatic hum fills the room, arias reaching into the dense night sky. They do not move me. The most basic concept of a smile eludes me. My face is frozen and contorted into a melancholic frown. The truth surrounds me. Thoughts left half undone in my mind sit on the ballast as I try and steer this ship back to sea."We are all ships looking for a harbour"- Me, to Comrade Chicken Oct. 2004

How can I be so content, so happy, and yet so sad, all at the same time? What causes this caustic conflagration of comical calamity to incite such a multiplicity of emotion? Why do I have to feel all of it? Can I just not be swayed by one predominant set of reactions? Something to cloud my judgment and objectivity? Why can't I just be like everyone else I know? It is open to debate, but I seem to have lost my ability to be angry. In my effort to become more understanding, a curious side effect is the obliteration of anger. The path of logic leads to understanding. Knowledge feeds itself in a vigorous pursuit of discovery.

Back to square one.

Sometimes things make sense in the fog.

Words Are Very Unnecessary

I play with words. I trip the light fantastic with symbols and sylabic structures, and I bend the will of language to serve my whims. In this realm I put concepts into a fragrant bouquet of punctuation. I dance around the deep recesses of my brain, waltzing with the constant hum of my cortex. Writers know this feeling well. This power to create a literal landscape and draw the utterings of an imagination.

Ayn Rand is a writer. Sotting through Atlas Shrugged, I am agog with her abilities to paint the physical and emotional nuances of the terrain and characters in her book. Creating the images and logic behind a story is one thing. Being proficient enough in your craft to spin these stillbound words into a working, living novel is another thing all together.

I've been thinking about my writing. Does it torture me to do something that makes me happy, while pursuing a career in Sales and Corporate Relations? No, it does not. I am okay with writing as a hobby in the same way I looked to oenology and comic book collecting. But in those cases my pursuit of the hobby created some net gain. My 13 boxes of comics are worth thousands of dollars if I wanted to part with them. I have invested in wines and held them for five to ten years while they matured. This allowed me to drink wines that would have cost four or five times the amount I paid at their initial release.

So, what to do with this collection of words I have amassed? With three years of Livejournaling (which produced very little of substance anyway), years of poetry written during my University years, and a raft of private stories and conceptions, can I spin any of this into an income producing activity?

I am not going to stop writing if the answer above is "no". The labour of love which I set forth to every few weeks or so will continue anon. This question is a result of trying to measure the productivity of my day. Perhaps creativity cannot be measured any more than noting its abscence.

So, why do you write?