Why Write?

The question has been put out—why do I write? What is the reasoning behind the words spilling out onto the page? I don't know. Most of the time. Sometimes I do know. Sometimes it's no more or less than to untangle the thoughts jumbling about in my mind. Sometimes it's to slow down the thinking process itself. To make sense of it. Other times, it's about a dream I've had. Working through it and trying to make it fit into a semblance of—what? How it fits into my life? Normalcy? Most of the time, though, I think I write to make sense of everything. And especially the foreign landscape that is my soul.

At the heart of the matter, my heart, not everything makes sense. Sometimes, hardly anything makes sense. There is a straight path that I try to walk. Not always successfully, I must say. The struggle is there. I walk it as best I can. When things become—twisted?—and messed up, then I write. Making stories out of happenings that seem strange. Making stories out of things from a distant past—that does not stay in the distance. Resolutions. Those stories are sometimes resolutions. Other times they are just stories made up of the bits and pieces that wash up at my feet from other lives—or others' lives. Making stories out of the ebb and flow of life as it sweeps me along. Washed up. Washed away. Life is nothing if it is not ebb and flow. There, in the waters, are reflections of alien-ness. What seemed certain only yesterday has become unclear. I write to clarify it. Make it certain again. Or, at the very least, bring understanding to the uncertainty. I write to let go of the pain of experience. To find beauty in the struggle. Writing a story here and there of things that are, at their very core, incomprehensible.

In everything I write, there are pieces of the real rather than the purely imagined. Each story starts out with a piece—perhaps very small—of a truth. Mine, yours, ours. Somewhere someone may have experienced this piece of life. Where it goes from there is where my understanding takes it. Or my attempt at understanding. Some of these stories contain more reality than others. Of course I've never been visited by aliens. But there was that time, when I was younger, that I wished aliens *would* visit me—and take me away with them. And what would that look like? And why would it look like that?

And what better way to try and understand someone else's truth than to write about it—try to become that person for a time. At its worst, the story falls apart because the understanding just won't come. Ah, but when it does come, then things fall into place a bit more. I can almost see through those "other" eyes. Feel with those "other" feelings. To know, almost, what it might be like to *be like* that person in that situation. And how would I have done things differently? I've learned what it feels like to hate with unbridled passion. To be a zealot, a coward, a saint, a thief, a liar…all by shifting my view to that of an alien landscape—and find small pieces of myself in those others. What must it feel like to *be* that person for a small while? Those exercises may or may not reaffirm that the path I have chosen is the right path—at least right for me. Or reaffirm that this other path is too full of hate and unreason that it's surprising that anyone could or would choose to live that way. But I can see, if only for a moment, why they would. And maybe feel a bit more compassion and tolerance. Maybe. Sometimes I discover that evil is just evil, no matter how it's sugar-coated.

And when I've gone too deeply into this process, there's always the option—these last few years—of taking out my camera and looking through that other lens at what is beautiful. Because with that other lens, I seem to look for symmetry and beauty. Color and light. Another way of seeing things. If my writing takes me down too many dark corridors, then there is this other escape into sunlight—where the shadows can't always vie for control of my thoughts. So, I suppose I write to exorcise those demons we all have at one time or another—some more than others. Because, quite honestly at this point in my writing life, the demons want to dance. So, I often let them. And sometimes achieve acceptance, if not understanding.

Now I ask myself: Is this me? one of my characters? or both? Hmmm….yes.