i’m a writer (not really) – (en)

As a young adolescent, I wished to be a writer because writers seemed glamorous and sensual –I am smiling an adopted-orphan smile as I write this. Writers lounged around places with colorful names, as Chiang Mai and Rangoon, inhaling opium in a yellow silk attire. They wet with wine their whistle in Saint Germaine, and penetrated tabooed marshlands with faithful exotic girls or lived in the harbor of Casablanca blazing pot while languidly caressing a pet gazelle.

I was odd. Free souls are peculiar and there is no place they could stay without getting exhausted. Not only of the place itself, but also of them, the mundane folks with the ability to confuse your inner peace with some kind of insensibility, that lifeless crowd-in-bondage shading your horizon. Really, it was not they were that bad. It is that they felt just obliged to pretend they were virtuous. I did not want to eat of that bowl, so I was surviving in an emotional black hole. At the same time, there was nowhere to go, but everywhere, through the books, going along the heart’s desire to fill the emptiness, to abandon the mind, meandering under constructed stars as an avid addict with a daily dose of daydreaming that healed the heart, soothed the soul, and strengthened the imagination. I was deceiving myself, I knew I was, and what I really longed was not just playing, but to play the real game, to transform the acts of joy in mere acts. You could not create art just out of good intentions.

I struggled and fought to cross the door separating that phony world from my inner self, but the whole wall resulted in an insuperable illusion, and I finally achieved what most do: neither taking life too seriously nor seeing it as merely grotesque; choosing a occupation and practicing it, grabbing one’s share of the common pie, munching it and, without conviction, declaring: It’s delicious! I acted as a man who, being responsive to artistic stimuli, reacts to the reality of dreams as it does the philosopher to the existence, observing closely, but just observing, and trying to enjoy the observation. It was not exactly delicious. It was too much, now and then, but not enough. I was as circus aerialist bobbing on the tightwire –and I could fall off into a vortex devoid of reality at any moment.

Then, I began to travel, and the world became the book as soon the pretenders in the plain receded until they turned into scattered specks. I wanted to travel not with the intention of going anywhere, but to move. I travelled for travel’s sake, not absorbed with arriving. Ten thousand miles, ten thousand times, not interested in different landscapes, but to see through different eyes. Travelling the world over to find beauty, in search of those free souls, those you would recognize because you feel good, incredibly good, when you are with them. And that brought back strength and some sense to my life. That was the glory of foreign travel: I did not want to discern what strangers were talking about, but, still today, I cannot think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Your whole existence becomes a series of fascinating guesses. That has been the best part. And still is.

I went all the way –otherwise, why even try? I lost the rational mind and became soul. I spoke fire, laughed smoke, and madness spilled forth from all my pores. Wine and a straitjacket, that pretty much sums it up. I explode like an artillery shell, and I wished all my bits would be found on the writing table. But they did not. They did not because, once back, I lost the soul and again became a coherent mind, an intellectual of shorts. And let us face it, while an intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way, an artist says a hard thing in a simple way. In retrospect I think I know what happened. I was losing my soul and I knew it, and because I knew it, I have still got some soul left to lose. Then, probably, I did not go all the way, and those who escape hell never talk about it –and nothing bothers them much after that. If you can so thoroughly dissect your child before is born, you will not get horny enough to actually father him. People who understand everything make no stories. Today I feel I have wasted enough time leaning on my elbow in front a blank paper, reflecting to myself: alright sucker, now what?

Nowadays, practically everybody has half a mind to write a book –and does. In the name of being social, writers learn to ignore their natural instincts. Society keeps dictating do’s and don’ts which they keep obeying day in and day out. This is not writing. Great writers are immoral people, they live dishonestly. The manuscript they write must prove to me that it deserves me. If this proof exists: is writing.

My view on writing? You see, I believe that you cannot be taught to write. You can be taught grammar and punctuation, but you cannot be taught to be a writer. That has to come from within. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Cervantes was a sword-wielding fugitive from justice. Coleridge was a drug addict. Pope took money to keep a woman’s name out of a satire, then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Bukowski, probably all these things altogether. Do you still want to be a writer? And if so, can you?

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I’m a writer (not really) – Dugutigui