Monday, August 20, 2007

always borrowed,always blue

"charlie,there is no future in anything. i hope you agree. that is why i like it at war. every day and every night there is a strong possibility that you will get killed and not have to write. i have to write to be happy whether i get paid for it or not. but it is a hell of a disease to be born with. i like to do it. which is even worse. that makes it from a disease into a vice. then i want to do it better than anybody has ever done it which makes it into an obsession. an obsession is terrible. hope you haven't gotten any. thats the only one i have left". ernest hemingway in a letter to charles scribner.

nothing steals the magic from writing the way writing about it does.
but i can't help but have it spin through my head as i read "the old man and the sea" over and over again.
following two plane crashes in africa.
the old man is just an old man.
the fish are just fish.
and the sharks are just sharks.
even in this context i dream of it no less.
this maybe the closest to love that i ever get.
i hate grammar. i hate spell check.
they are tools and trades we focus on when the right words escape us.
while we can use them in a world that we write,where we make our own rules.
they can rob a piece of its life.
for me words are more of a compulsion.
it is involuntary.
it falls in the catagory of breathing and the beating of the heart.
sometimes i want to throw my hands up.
to wave the white flag.
to apologize for everything i haven't done yet.
but usually i want to forget the pictures and the rumors.
to become a recollection,a shared memory. visually: a faint, sentimental face that blurs into the background of everything.
to watch all of the magazines turn to static.
and only be thought of by the clicking of these keys.

its a shot in the dark.but everyone has got to dream, right?

on my best day, when all the planets have aligned, i still couldnt come close to touching you.

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