On Writing, and Falling in Love with the Concrete

For a long time, I wanted to be a writer. I thought, talked, and dreamed about writing the Great American Novel or the memoir that would be raw and honest and lead to a kind of catharsis about myself. I wanted to be revolutionary rather than sentimental. A couple weeks ago, I went to a writing workshop with Warren Liu, Professor of Literature. He said that poetry was in itself subversive, because it's regarded as childish and worthless in society. And by valuing poetry, by making a living from literature, your existence is subverting societal standards. That stuck with me; I loved it. I loved the idea of rooting my self-worth in writing, creating beauty from a medium that is so illusive, where the line between uselessness and greatness is versatile.

Then I realized that I was in love with the idea of being a writer rather than the reality, the essence of writing. I romanticized a lifestyle to find out that I didn't have what it took to be a writer because I hadn't fallen in love with the subject, and the subject of writing is inevitably the human condition. I don't write because writing enables my survival. I don't even write to be honest because I choose to hide behind an image that I've crafted for myself. I couldn't bear to honest and carve permanent words that speak truth because those words would transform my reality and I didn't want to face reality, so I preferred to hide behind academic language. Safe, only understood by an elite group of people with very particular beliefs, distant, impersonal.

In life, I spend a lot of time being infatuated with ideals. I fall in love with love. I love humanity. Sometimes I have so much love bottled up that I could burst with all that passion, pain, and sacrifice. But somewhere along the way I've stopped falling in love with the subject, what is present, concrete, What exists outside my narrow conception of who a person is, what a place is like. Really I've just holed myself in a narrow cell fantasizing about what living the experience is really like, hiding behind the language of abstractions, and loving the void between walls of substance.

The other day we were given a piece of chocolate and asked to hold, smell, feel, taste, and see the chocolate in order to write about it. And I never really realized how I don't particularly like the smell of chocolate (it's odd and not sweet exactly). So the idea is, you have this concept of what chocolate is, but how would you know really, unless you've experienced every aspect of it?

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All my life I waited eagerly for rain
because of the way passing streetlights reflected
in water-on-glass shined like glitter
from a fairy godmother’s wand,
or unknown galaxies, or a broken mirror.