Catch 22

I love writing. I swear I do. But there are times I stare at the screen and want to break it. I feel beyond tired, beyond exhausted, beyond empty. 

What gives value to our efforts is time. The more time you spend on an activity, the more important it becomes for you. The reason you hate giving up on a person or activity you've spent years on is exactly that; time. Time is what validates everything, and it cannot be replaced, influenced, bought or brought back. It's the coin we give in exchange for meaning, the one parameter that cannot be omitted in the equation of understanding. It's the funniest thing; every passing moment brings more meaning to our life while making it smaller by that same amount of time. 

Time passes, inevitably, inexorably, mercilessly. The same eyes that stared at me in the mirror years ago stare back at me now, and yet I am not the same person. The only thing that authenticates our existence, makes us mature, that may even make us happy, is the thing that kills us. So I suppose what we should do is use it wisely. Choose what to do with the time we have at our disposal.

There is enough time for everything.

Everything happens in the right time.

So billions of people before me thought, and so billions of people after me will think. 

That they have time.

Oh, I know, I know, I am becoming obsessive; I am losing sight of the bigger picture. There is happiness out there too. Love, friendship, hobbies, art, so many sources of joy, so many distractions. Right now I could be out, seeking love, or friendship, or cheap thrills of any kind. Most of the time this translates as discussing existential questions with people who don't understand what it means to exist. It's so much fun. I see through all. I see their despair, their need to be loved, and the wrong ways they try to achieve it. I see through humans. I see through them and they are dirty, they are desperate, they are petty and disgusting. Then I feel pity for them, and for the human race as a whole, and I include myself in it. I see the very foundations of their misconceptions, the roots of their deprivation, and I still manage to feel pity because I know what they crave is love. They crave what they never had, or what they had a twisted ghost of. And so they make the same mistakes again and again and marvel at the fact the result is the same, they marvel at the fact they get hurt again and again. And one day, there is no more time to make the same mistakes. As Buddha said, the problem is, you think you have time. You don't. You fucking don't.

I am a hermit by choice, voicing out my deepest thoughts and needs to those few ones I know won't hurt me. They won't judge me for how weak or silly I may be, the same way I won't pass judgement on the rest of humanity for how silly and petty and desperate they are. I am spending my days and nights in front of a screen, working on a book, making it better, trimming it, polishing it, making it as good as I can. I could be out, talking to others, listening to the same questions and the same answers for the umpteenth time. I choose not to. I choose to walk the streets alone at dusk, talking to flowers and trees instead of humans, listening to music or the breeze or the chatter of birds instead of my own kind. Because I know my own kind cannot give me answers. The only answer is found in the silent toil in front of a screen, rewriting, erasing, perfecting what I have created. 

 

I don’t expect fame, or money, or even understanding. There is a story that needs to be told, it demands to be released out there. I struggle with so many demons to make that happen. I struggle with boredom, CVs, tiredness, headache, a language that’s not my mother tongue, distractions, and you wouldn’t have guessed it; time. I struggle with all those demons inside and outside and word by word I carve my way, sweating with the effort, cursing, despairing, straining like I am carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. I write and erase and re-read and re-write and ache, literally ache with how long it takes, and how that time will never be returned to me, and it will be what makes this book important. It’s the one parameter that gives it meaning. It’s the payment I have to make to make it work. A part of my life, countless hours, days, months spent on it, and looking back I don’t regret a single moment. I just wonder what kind of life this is, and what it offers.

I don’t write to be loved or get laid. I write because there is no other way I’d rather spend that time. There is nothing else I love more in order to devote that time to that person or activity. I know that once the book is out some will love me for it, and some will hate me for it. It makes no difference. They do not know how many nightfalls found me struggling over a keyboard, how many dawns found me re-reading the same text with aching eyes. They cannot comprehend the happiness I experienced while I watched it take form bit by bit. They can’t understand the frustration I had to overcome, the resolve I had to show, the pain of not finding the right word or the next occurrence. They can’t guess how many days and nights I spent walking empty streets and listening to music in order to untangle a part of the plot. They can’t possibly know I chose that over going out and meeting with friends, or seeking love. And all these facts are also the reasons they can’t take it from me. They can’t make me regret, or change my mind, or doubt whether I spent my time wisely. No-one can make me hate it or disregard it. I know what I did. I know why I did it; because nothing else would have made me happier. That’s why. And the reason I wrote it like I did is because I, and not someone else, wrote it.

Next time you read a book, remember you are bearing witness to how a part of someone’s life was spent. I wish you to be lucky enough to come across those books that were written because the writer loved them so much they wouldn’t have spend that time in a different way. I wish you to find those books that they’re not the voice of the writer, but all those voices of dusks walked in silence, and dawns that arrived without any sleep. I wish you to find those books the writer had no choice but to complete, or go crazy with the voices inside their head. 

I hope my book will be one of them. I hope my book will be as deep and as quenching for your thirst as it was for mine.

Time, time, time.

Will I ever find the one who will make me forget about writing for a while?

Where are you?

Maybe you’ll show up in due time.

Time. Ha ha ha.

God/dess, I am so tired. But there is writing to be done.

Goodnight.

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