i can't decide whether it's an illness or a sin, the need to write everything down and freeze the flowing world into one rigid form. in a way, writing a thing down fixes it in place as surely as a photograph capturing a dangerous creature - rendurring it every bit as stationary, and every bit as false to the original thing, flat and still and harmless.
i write things down because i so desperatly need to remember my thoughts, and my ideas, and all the gutts of my heart.
i constantly find myself searching for proof that i have lived - as if my scars, and photos, and trivial pocket souveniers are not enough, i need documentation.
i do admitt however, that it does seem unjust - to cause this kind of grevious harm on such a wild thing that is our memory. but defying the very nature of our minds is indeed an honorable act. for our memories are rebellous. they are unmangable little vapors - who, if we are not quick to conceal, would gladly evaporate into the atmosphere. it is true that our memories posess the greatest power over us. not only are they able to change the entire history of our lives, should we permitt them so, but they can also abandon us completely. and god forbid a memory should escape you. for there is no bigger pain to the heart, than when a memory flees us.
this all reminds me of a jack kerouac line - "What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? It's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's goodbye (on the road)." he wrote about leaving his past behind him, and how liberating it was, to watch his memories disipate into the horizon. jack kerouac wrote to remember what he forgot.
i write what i can recall and in amazement of myself. not of the things i have accomplished or not accomplished, but of the passions i can no longer control. i write to remember, to remind myself of when i was brave, and to keep alive my desire to live.
hmmm.
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