These Ghosts Sing Bittersweet – Why Do You Write?

These Ghosts Sing Bittersweet

Why do you write?

Because of these things that I see. Visions and scenery that become kaleidoscopes of color and textures that run like movies in my mind.  Because I see the splendor of this world. The great heights of joy and the deepest darkness of despair. Because I see a world that moves and changes around me with such speed I wish to capture, to preserve just a single moment. And because I too watch alongside Frost and I too sigh where the two roads diverge in a wood.

Why do you write?

Because of these things that I feel. These invisible tendrils called love, that bind us to one another such that we do the most beautiful and horrible things. Our grandest moments of giving and sacrifice and our lowest desires of taking and hurting. All these things that feel like the rise of a  peaceful and destructive sea.  The embrace of the velvet arms of loyalty that hold the green scales of jealousy. Because often I feel nothing in the achievements of Men and feel everything in the eyes of a broken and battered animal. And because I feel both the happiness and the sadness in Carol’s withered wreath of childhood flowers.

Why do you write?

Because of these things I cannot understand. The paradox of an existence where the Divine dances with the Random. Where science can answer everything, but not the most important thing. Where gods love me and hate me. Where everything is my fault and I am forever faultless. Where my perception is reality and nothing is real. Where a parent can be the center of a child’s universe and their worst demon. Where good intentions matter because they make no difference at all.

Why do you write?

Because of these things that I must know.  To understand them, to delve into their depths and soar above them.  Their glory, their beauty, their horror, their sadness. To capture both the fantastic and the mundane. To examine each thing’s possibility and walk with them into impossible futures. To know this world as it is, as it might be, and as it never can be.  To hold these things in my mind for just one moment and then to release them upon the page, knowing they are not mine to keep.

Why do you write?

Because of these things I hear. These voices from the past. Shadows of sound that become words and words that build uncertain foundations.  The voices of dead things from days I can never return and that may never have existed. Because they call to me from where yesterday and tomorrow converge. They beckon me to their dance. Arms held out with the promise of their cold hateful and warm loving embrace. Voices without substance, mere reflections in the night’s mirror that I love and I loathe.  Memories that were always and never mine. The voices that are but ghosts – but these ghosts, they sing bittersweet.