Why I Do What I Do

Why do I write? Someone asked me the other day. I did not have an answer for them. "Because." I told them. Now, if I had asked a question, and someone responded with "because", I would have wanted to drop kick them. I hate that word. That word means one of two things. It either means you don't actually have a reason, and you're just spitting out the one thought that comes to mind, or you have a deffinite reason, and just don't care to share. Laziness. That's what it is. And in any case, "because" does not apply to me. I do write for a reason. But it is not one deffinite thing. Not that I can fully express. Now, however, after I considered it, I thought of what I should have said.

I write, like most others, to draw connections between the past, the present, and the future. I write to make sence of the things that didn't make sence when they happened. I write because it's the only way I really know how to keep a solid record of time. I take what people call black and white, and make a mess out of things, creating this big blob of grey. It's like squirting paint on a canves. Imagine it. The sound it makes, squeezing the bottle until nearly all it's contents are on the stretched vinal. Then take your hands, and rub them around in the cool, sticky paint until the white and black are no longer two seperate colors, and instead, they are so blended together that it is a big puddle of grey on the canvas, and on your hands. Who wouldn't want to do that? Yes, it gets a little dirty at times, but even still, it's a good kind of dirty. And finally, I write to bridge the gap between reality and the imagined. What we feel, and what we do. Between truth and lies. Because there is no set definition of reality. What we feel rarely coresponds to what we do, and there is truth, even in the lies. I write to show pain, happiness, pride, fear, helplessness, and love. I write because often, I cannot find the words to speak it. Because nothing, to me, seems as real as when it is writen down on paper, where I can see it. Where I can show it to the world, and hope they understand, too. Where I can draw the image with words, exactly how the sky looked that night that two young, innocent, and sweetly nieve kids lied on the grass, holding hands under the crisp autumn moon. I can express the was his hand felt in mine, warm, and fitted like a puzzlepiece. I can show you how the ocean smells just after the rain, and the way that salty, miosture holds onto your lungs peanut-butter to the roof of your mouth. The sound of a friends voice, raised in song, so full she was almost in tears. The taste of hot spaghetti prepared moments ago in a kitchen where time stopped and the only thing that mattered in the world was that the sauce not boil over the brim of the pot. All of those sencory things, that you would never get to experience if I didn't write them down. And all of those things that I am afraid to forget. I write because the people are too great, and the life is too precious, to be forgotten.