Published first on Rebelle Society HERE
Leave the pages bloody…
Leave them ripe with summer sweat, hard work, no work, lust, love, pain, grief, messy sex, no sex, lovemaking, mouth to mouth, warm hugs, spiritual enlightenment, rebirth, rain, fire, ice, ashes, matches, gasoline and lastly, most integral, life. Leave the pages of your mind drenched with the ink of the breath of every solitary subconscious thought.This is what writing is all about. It is not just about proper syntax, sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, heck, even spelling. I make up my own words, just like Jack Kerouac did, like sistermoonchild, lightingrites, bumblehum and numerous other misfitlike combinations that happen to pop into my skullbone while writing.
Sure, literary people will tell you that this needs to be fixed and that word is out of order, and that is much appreciated for I am no editor, but to take the meat out of writing, the lymphatic fluid, the millions of veins, arteries and capillaries selflessly pumping oxygen and blood that berths within the lungs, to the heart of the artist, is quite simply, utter and irreversible, literary death.
So leave your pages bloody. Tainted. Sheet stained. Leave them so moist with emotion that when you whip them out the window of your rusted and beat-up 1967 Plymouth Fury convertible, driving 90 miles per hour down some random road to someplace you have never been before, yet shall soon discover, after ripping them out of a 99-cent notebook you bought for no reason whatsoever, make sure whoever catches them, is fully and properly, ignited.
I do not mean just lit up either. I mean changed, awakened, alive, Make sure your words set fire to cities and nations, to hearts and minds, to the very core of every human spirit who is paying attention. Make sure your words seep into the skin of the reader, leaving trace minerals that sustain the ailing human shell.
Make them pay attention.
Set fire to the soul.Anything less is an abomination to creation.
The entire and main purpose of writing is to make a point. You can choose to share it or hide it; I write for release. If I cease writing, I fully understand and acknowledge that my head will burst like a pumpkin smashed on the sidewalk in October. It does not matter what your point is; it can be business, family, science, work, nature, passion, bliss, love, hate, light, dark, pain, death, love, a voice for the oppressed, suppressed, depressed, obsessed and impressed.
Like a fine tattoo, your words must imprint the reader so deeply that they begin to create, and begin to form different thoughts; quite possibly, they may start to see, if they already do not, this crazy beautiful ugly fucked up lovely mess of a planet we exist on momentarily, I hope always and forever, differently. Anything less is selling your own precious soul, and how dare you call yourself a writer if you refuse to reach into your own dank and dusty closets, yank out those nagging skeletons, grab them right by the damn neck, shake them loose, let them dance around for a while, smack ‘em around, show them who is boss and make them work for you.
You experienced all of that love, loss, pain, grief and bliss for a greater purpose:
To leave your pages bloody.
Don’t get me wrong, rhyming poetry and fictitious love stories are nice and all, but is that reality? How many people do you know call you up gleaming about the sun shining and the robins singing and the shore meeting the waves? Okay, sometimes I truly do feel this way and often write like that, I sound like a hypocrite, I know, but that is not my point. My point is, do not write chicken soup. Everyone knows how to make that anyhow.Write Miso or Acquacotta, dip those words into some Caldo Verde. Toss them around in Soto and let them swim in Rasam.
You get the picture.
Right now, the sun is shining ever so magnificently. I opened all the blinds in this place I come to write, and the warmth of the great star is soothing my ever-thinking brain that is, undoubtedly, on fire today. It is as if I am in a cell and she, my dear sunshine, is attempting to set me free. Her smiles sneak through the blades, coaxing me to come out and play, although my brain knows it is freezing cold outside. It actually started snowing again. I ignore all thought. I rudely tell my brain that it is an outright dirty, sneaky liar — and often, it is — and continue to type to you now, choosing whatever random thought pops into my head, and hope to cause you to think about your own surroundings.
Look around you. What do you see? What are you ignoring? What are you grateful for? Use all six senses, and even more, ones you do not know yet exist, and tell me, what do you hear?
Sssssh…
The low humbuzz of the fan in the bathroom sounds like a drone overhead ready to crush innocent souls.
See?
Easy.
Try it. Then write about it.
I will catch you on the other side. I will be the one hitchhiking, and I do expect one of the pages from your notebooks, matchbook covers, napkins, and random sheets of paper to fly by my nose so I am able to sniff it out, grab it, read it, grasp it for just that mere moment, and have my eyes whip open ablaze, almost popped right out of my sockets, until deep in my diaphragm the thrushes start to congregate that berth there, impatient to fly right out of my thorax, through my lips, causing me to choke, only to be set free to this glorious, most holy Spring skyline.
Can you do that for me? Meet me there on that freeway?
I am going to go play with the sun. The birds have now joined the sun in her chorus and the daylight is fading quickly. The wind has melded into this orchestral dance, howling so utterly hideous, that it excites me.
Immensely.
