To the Reader

I don't really know who all reads this little journal of mine. Most of you, I am not acquainted with. There are a few, however, whom I do know, and it is to these folks that I would like to make a few comments about how a writer writes -- or at least how I write. 

Some things are fairly straightforward stories of actual events. Perhaps a name has been changed, or a detail added, or a detail omitted, but they are presented as occurrences that interested me, or that I found amusing. Slices of life. 

There are other things, little impressionistic paragraphs, that come almost as if they had been dictated. I write these paragraphs very quickly, hardly thinking at all. Or let us say that the thoughts simply come through the movements of my fingers. These may be melancholy or morose or pensive. They may be joyful. They may be a product of praise or prayer. Each shines a little light, for a passing moment, on something in particular. And that is what I want to convey: that they are passing thoughts, particular pieces of something, and not in any sense the whole of the thing. 

Life is complicated, and gives itself over to multiple narratives; and the writer, in particular, is open to multiple voices. He is moody, sometimes melodramatic, sometimes harsh, sometimes generous. He writes both what should be written and should not be written, and oftentimes does not know the difference between the two. He talks to himself, and the words talk back to him, and he tends to forget that anyone other than he is aware of the words. 

One writes because he has to write. He cannot not write. Through writing, he seeks to understand his own story. He turns it this way and that, such that one side reflects the light and another is necessarily in darkness. 

The writer tends to be given over to drama, for the heart is a dramatic organ. It feels, it leaps, it despairs, it wants, it regrets, it rejoices -- and it looks for words. 

But they are, don't forget, only words.