The Light

The light doesn't exist because of darkness. Maybe that's it. It's possible the light is just around. Just there because it is good. Existing for its sake alone. Darkness is REALLY just the absence of light, not the opposite of it.

Maybe that's what writing is for me...for my mind's sake, it exists if only for me to make sense of the senseless. To persist with a blind man's stick, inching about tap, tap, tapping the fuck away so as not to be lost. And for it to be absent, presents an emptiness that is frustrating and evil and heart-aching above all else.

It solves problems. Keeps the program running like it should. Tap, fucking tap. Grants meaning. Tap, tap, tap.

There would be a hole that couldn't be filled, I suppose. God likes to make jokes, and I think the big "Marcelle joke" is that writing will be something I yearn for, for all my years but I'll never find success with it.

Still, the light, though. There's nothing like reading the words aloud and hearing the power slide off each syllable like oil from a piston. It's magnetic and intoxicating and exhilarating. It's everything to me like basketball was everything to Jordan, I guess. 

That me, however, cannot be defined by anything like writing. As a human, I'm much too complex. Complexity aside, I accept it as my personal superpower. I just have to learn how to use it effectively. I'm like that Smallville Superman: the most powerful being on the planet and it took him 10 damn seasons to finally fly.

Mediocrity

Maybe we all need to be ok with being mediocre at something.
We all can't be geniuses at everything and anything.

Recently, I came across this guy, whom will remain nameless, that was ecstatic that he'd published his own book. Yeah, I've done it. Twice now. And they are, reasonably average at best and at worst, blaring horns of resounding mediocrity. Testaments to my own self-aggrandizement. 

And also, labors of love.

So, his labor of love, if it was that, was a terrible read.  From the beginning, it was hard to read. It started out with sentence fragments and over-explained situations, taking us stutter-step through the main character's waking moments. 

As much as it was hard to read for me, I can only imagine that someone with better skills would find my best work hard to read for them. I can only guess.

Anyway, as delusional as that guy was, I can't be one to deny my own delusions. I suppose I think I'm a better writer than I actually am, with more potential than the law allows. That I'm good at something, without putting my all into it for more than a decade. I haven't suffered enough to be a good writer. To even say I'm a writer, maybe I'm subconsciously hoping that I'll receive some validation that has weight.

It's possible that the delusions persist as a human condition. Just to help us reach our pinnacle, if there is one.