Sometime last week I imagined what it would be like to wake up the next day, pay no heed to what I was supposed to do, and instead sit down and write whole the day away. (Or read; that would certainly be easier on me.) What prevents me from acting on this is probably a modicum of social sanity, although I'm quite sure that were I made of stronger stuff, I'd act on this one of my many whims. Forgetting talent - never a prerequisite in this world anyway ;-) - the allure is obvious. Writing involves expressing something that somehow demands that it exist outside your own consciousness. It has it a mind of its own, but not a body; that's all the writer tries to provide when he puts them on the page. When I read particularly fine book, and the purity of writing makes me pause, it seems exceedingly sad to have a life without being in some way involved in this mysterious medium.

I'm not quite sure what life is, nor what I'm meant to be doing, but I wonder if it's natural at all to feel this calling. As I said earlier, talent is out of the question, and it isn't as if I've demonstrated a particular skill in this area. What makes me concerned is that I can well imagine such thoughts as being literally dismissed as lunacy. I'd be inclined to agree, but only assuming a very limited definition of success in life! What I'm saying I suppose is that writing and other endeavours are only seen as worthwhile if you've already made it and established yourself as a talent. Otherwise you're just wasting your time. It's said that you should do what you love, but implicit in that line is that what you love should be worth something, and not just to you. With art, it has to be something that pleases someone beyond yourself. I see the value and necessity in such a statement, and understand that this is mandated by the fact that other people exist too (!) - but still, I can't help but wish things were not this way.

Granted, at the very least, the pragmatist's view helps inject a bit of groundedness into even the most idealistic minds, and makes one consider why exactly one writes in the first place. Like I said, it's hard to fault this stance when one possesses what I'll call a normal view of life. But this fact doesn't stop me from having moments like this where it all breaks down, where I reflect on how little anything really counts at the end of the end, and ask why I can't spend the rest of this life in conversation with whatever spirit of the aether relays messages to us on earth.