If You Want to Know Why

 

1/17/12

I write because words go round inside my head and I want to mold them like a potter does clay.

I write and like the way the words feel on my tongue and the way my eye follows them on the page and the way the voice inside my head speaks them.

I write when the words spill down the page and there is nothing to stop the flow. No damming it up or sandbagging the words that like to slip through the cracks.

I write and am okay with messy because sometimes the best things come out of the abyss that is on paper.

I write to share my way of seeing all sides, my roundabout point of view that should be expressed so others will not be so narrow.

I write because it gives me hope and discipline and it expands my capacity to feel and to touch.

I write because what I want to say I cannot say by speaking. I am quicker writing with my hands than I am speaking on my feet.

I write because writing 1000 words of something good is better than finishing a 1000 piece puzzle. Each word has its place and they all fit together tightly and if there is a word missing, it is incomplete.

I write because I am pegged to do so. Others draw, or run, or count, or sing, or quilt. I write.

I write because there are cloud shapes that others cannot see and the touch of a prickly pear that others will not feel and the sound of spring runoff in a mountain creek that others will not hear and the taste of my mother’s mashed potatoes that others will not taste. Unless I write about those things.

I write and find myself in times and places that I will not otherwise experience.

I write when it feels like my brain is a walnut and the words are stuck inside and it will take a quick and strong twist of a nutcracker to pry open the goods.

I write to recall how I felt when someone long ago read to me and I first knew words and stories can be symphonic.

I write to collect my thoughts in one place and to put them out into the universe before I forget what I was thinking.

I write and find myself spiraling backward, to reexamine what happened long ago, going round and round like I am following the rings of a snail’s shell to see what I can see.

I write to get the long view of mankind, to find the common denominators I share with people who live half a world away or down the street, and to understand that we are more alike than not.

I write because there are times when it is the best medicine I can take.

 

 

Thank you for your words of encouragement and concern after my last post. My mother is at her home in Kansas and now in the good care of her doctors.