April 18, 2008...5:31 am
Tomb and womb summarizes all writing
Tonight for the first time I read my writing to an audience. I picked one of my short-shorts partially because it was one of my favorites recommended by a professor and partially because I am a firm believer that the best things come in small packages. So tonight I read and the feeling was one both familiar and ethereal. I was reminded of the old high I could only find at the end of a finish line. It’s an odd thing to go searching for a feeling and to only find it in an unlikely place; in the front of a crowd reading something you’ve read aloud to yourself almost a hundred times. I love that feeling and experiencing it tonight was just another reminder of why I’m treading this path, becoming a writer.
That’s another thing I’ve been thinking about lately, the innumerable accidents that brought me to this point in which my fate is sealed by ink and paper. Had life happened differently would I still have been slated with the fate of a writer? Do we all simply become writers through a web of accidents and miscalculations? Or am I foolish for even deeming my own fate? I have no idea. All I really know is that when I write I feel alive and as though life has some deeper meaning that has yet to reveal itself.
I spent six years of my life running. I ran for the feeling, for an escape, and even at one point for greatness. Now I’ve stopped running. Now I write. I write for pleasure, for release, for comfort, and for a hopeful reassurance that somewhere hidden behind these words there lies something greater than myself. I write because I have a story and because once, a long time ago, someone told me I could create magic with words. I didn’t believe them then, but I do believe them now. All it took was for this seafaring woman to open up her eyes and look around at the murky waters that occupy the space in her head.
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