Pen Snob

I used to write a lot. Pages and pages and pages. I used to write in spiral notebooks, filling dozens of them, long before technology snuck into my life and grabbed me by the throat, dragging me, kicking and screaming, through the doorway of word processing and the world wide web... Eventually, completely against my nature, I stopped resisting and even conformed ...and flourished, spreading wings and adding graphic design and web development to my bag of tricks. I've become such a slave to technology that I can barely sign my own name legibly. But I can blow the motor in an electric typewriter pecking at warp speed! Yet, I still carry a blank book with me most everywhere that I go; a blank book and a fine roller ball pen. Yes, I am a pen snob to the umteenth degree, squared.

It's actually pathetic - my writing utensil collection. On my desk, both at home and office, I have jars, coffee cans, bier steins, and mugs, full of pens. Then of course, I keep the really good ones locked in my desk while ordering the cheap disposable crap for everyone else in the office. I have so many pens that they generally expire long before any one of them is ever used up. It's an addiction I'm sure, as I've also been known to unconsciously steal them as well, signing checks in restaurants and such, just as any other addict might thieve for survival. They justify the act as a lesser evil for the sake of self preservation, their need is greater - just as my mind has already resolved that I must write; I need to write. --Funny, I go through sunglasses quicker than toilet paper, but I rarely, if ever, lose a pen, especially if it was mine to begin with.

My love for writing began young, as an innate desire, no better, a need to expel. Like how, in ancient years it just made sense to someone to drill holes in people's migraine heads to let lose the demons inside. Thus I write. To let lose my inner demons, thereby saving the innocent lives of unsuspecting annoying people.

The art of 'word-smithing' is no simple matter. Words must be deliberate and flow like a melody, or at least a melodrama, and punctuation, must be very precise, even when utilizing creative license. It can be a painful process when one is wordless. Mental constipation of the creative kind. I'm pretty sure people can die from that; heads exploding, spontaneous human combustion... I have learned to alleviate the pressure by writing warped nonsensical rhymes and vulgar free-word associations. It works.

I have hoards of compilations from the past 2 decades - literally thousands of works of poetry, short-stories, journals, 'interludes,' and 'pieces'... I even have a designated folder entitled "Unfinished," fuller than it ought to be. Occasionally I share, though there are few, and those few have become great fans... "How are you? Have you written anything lately?" they'll ask, thirstily. It's a question far above idle chit chat. It is a sincere invitation, because they most certainly know that such a query may mean having to critique yet another twisted tale, spiritual insight, obscene poem or a combination thereof. I always smile inside, then I miss writing as a mistress misses her lover and sigh, "No, not lately." I've often been asked, by those who have read me, why in 20 years, I have never bothered to publish anything? (I have been published actually [an early childhood journal], just nothing of literary genius.) It's not that easy I say. I don't have the time. Blah blah blah... I have even had an offer from a fellow kindred spirit to publish a collection of my choosing for me. I was honored. However, that means I'd actually have to chose them first, excuses, excuses.

The truth is, I write for me and I am my own worst critic.

Yes, I adore provoking thought in others. I relish the glazed over distant imagery I see in eyes when I read. (Poe said poetry was best read aloud.) And I love the astonishment in voices asking, "You wrote that?" Above all else, I delight in slyly slipping my whispering hand beneath the breastbone of another and gently creeping my fingertips around their soul until it nests securely in my palm, squeezing, squeezing through the climax and pain, until I see it too in their eyes... and I know, I have taken my audience, for a moment, into a place they have never before seen, a place they would have otherwise never dared to venture...

But the truth is, I am my own worst critic.

---

A poem begins with a lump in the throat, a home-sickness or a love-sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where the emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words."
--Robert Frost

"A poet is a bird of unearthly excellence, who escapes from his celestial realm arrives in this world warbling. If we do not cherish him, he spreads his wings and flies back into his homeland."
--Kahlil Gibran, "The Poet of Baalbek"