In basic conversation the other day, I mentioned that I was a writer. There is something delicious in that moment, when I say that I’m a writer. It seems a validation of what I have done and do. There is an artistry to the craft of writing that is succulent and teasing. It draws me. Yet, what I realized is that it’s the interest in my writing that draws me toward ecstasy even more than simply writing.

I suspect that every artist needs their audience. Those that say they don’t are, in my experience, wrong or insane. We all need feedback. Artists are channels for not only the divine but for their society and their own thoughts and experience. An artist paints or writes what she knows and feels and lives; but we all live with others and other things. How can we be artists in a vacuum? We can’t.

So, we are not only a vision but also a mirror, aren’t we? It is in that reflection, clear and cold, that we get our high, our fix, our needs fulfilled. I love it when someone reads my writing and gets the evocative feeling I’m going for, or responds in some visceral way. I get my own little giggle of delight when someone has a big emotional response to my words, put together. A toymaker enjoying the delights of children, no?

I’ve missed writing for publication and I may start again. I’ve been writing a great deal of non-fiction and speculative philosophy. Nothing, though, is quite like the feeling of thrilling another with words, on a mass scale. And as all us writers know, it’s not for the money. Shesh.

It is in the writing that I discover not only the world around me but myself, and what I think of this world. There are moments of writing where I, that I that would be my ego, falls away and the words come from a netherworld. The come from the heart of all that is, was, and will be. I have no control. Other times, the force of words from my own filter is so great that it may tear my skin from bone. The ego must speak as well as the All. It seems to put a name, my name, to each is pretentious. And hollow.

Aren’t we all creators? Isn’t that the greatness of human beings, our ability to create? What we create either lifts us, gladdens us, or thrills us, or it takes us to the very depths of despair, heartache, and loss. Yet, both are creations. As time moves, so do we move with it and in time, is matter and in our matter is creation. The cycle never ends. Matter never losses its luster or substance. It is the shiny object we are all drawn to, as magpies to a diamond in the loamy earth.

Discovery. It seems our path and our delight. For me, discovery is in the words. The touch of a kind metaphor as it caresses my ear, a simile that teases my mind to open, like a quiet marshy morning.

~TDD