WHY DO YOU WRITE?

We tumble from womb to tomb ...

    from one blackness towards another,

        remembering little of the one and 

            knowing nothing of the other,

              except through faith.

Life distracts us, with happiness or struggle, 

    from seeing the tides that are drawing us towards 

        those clusters of events called 

Crossroads.

More tragically 

for our being blind 

to them.

The star, the wheel, the butterfly ...

    all are in an unseen state of turmoil,

        waiting for some signal that 
               the time has come.

Then, the star explodes,

The wheel of Fate turns, 

making a poor man rich,

The butterfly mates and dies.

STORY can say all that is unsayable in the world ...

    How can we resist attempting that?

Life has a way of bruising us 

    until we long for some passage out of ourselves.

That's what STORY does ...

    for a few precious moments

        it takes us out of ourselves

            to become someone other than who we are.

Each of us is a myth within our minds.

    We make it up. 

    It is the STORY of ourselves 

         we steer our actions by.

        It is not the truth of our life.  

           We could not bear to look at that.

It is the illusion which helps us 

keep on going in life.

Man alone

    tells STORIES to understand his world.

I believe that there is one STORY 

in the all world, and only one,

 that has frightened and inspired us.

 Humans are caught,

in their lives, in their thoughts, 

in their hungers and ambitions,

 in their avarice and cruelty, 

and 
in their kindness and generosity

 in a net of good and evil. 

 Do they struggle towards the light 

or embrace the darkness?

There is no other STORY.

 A soul, 

having emerged 

from the cocoon of this life, 

will have left 

only the hard, clean questions: 

Did I make my time good or evil? 

Was my life worth

the pain of my birth?

WHAT IS THE PARTICULAR

MAGIC OF WRITING

THAT KEEPS YOU DOING IT?