Why Write?

As a writer, I have decided that I need to practice my art in many forms, and practice reading even more. Making the decision to re-create myself as a poet is more than an assertion that I need to write, but it is actually a declaration of my intent to learn to read and write all over again. I some ways I feel like the amnesiac who must re-learn all of the basics just to be able to live a normal life again.

Interestingly, it's not Pierre's death that has so crippled my writing and reading abilities, but rather long years of purposeless neglect. Looking back, I have to say that if I failed to write, it was not the sacrifice I thought it was going to be. The failure was not in devoting my waking life to my family and jobs, but that I should have used at least some more of that time to read and write and express tthose passions with my family. I did this intermittently, but now realize that I should have done more of it; for them, with them.

With Maddie leaving and Pierre gone forever, it seems I've missed my chance to tell them that I am a writer. For them, the many mere words I've mumbled over the years should/could have been much more than that. However, I still have hope. If I can now manage to get some of those words out, written down now rather than mumbled, they will begin to form a body of work, from which I may indeed find my voice, and use that voice to call out the words of love, pain and passion that have since forever rattled around in my brain.

So, all that to say that this journal is just a part of my new direction and one result of my effort to become the poet I know myself to be. I must also keep a daily journal, and now, I've come to realize that I must re-learn to write actual letters. Of course, I'll now forever be an e-child but there is something elemental about writing words on paper with a pen and ink, then sending same to someone who will not just read it, but may actually save it; re-read it and remember the author in the words held so close.

Writing, if I am to be serious about it, must be more than a hobby. It must become the object of my intellectual purpose and the best hope I have for actually contributing something to this tradition to which I aspire.