For me it’s about punching a hole through the crust of things to get to that whatever-it-is. Some writers whisper to it sweetly to coax it out, and there’s all the other ways in between. We’re connected to it way down, something we’ve met before. I think of these times after the bus dropped me off after school; I’d sit on this wall up on a hillside on the edge of the American River canyon in the late afternoon sun and I would just sit and everything was wide open, perfect forever. Of course there were other times and things too can do that. Whether it’s Wordsworth’s visionary gleam, the logos, abraxas or the Tao, I don’t know but I think it’s part of everything, emptiness, misery too. For me writing is an attempt to let that vastness come through, so sometimes I think it’s about a lack, either to replace something that’s missing and if we’re celebrating, to augment what’s already good or complete. Then also, the strange dialectic of it; it’s doomed to failure; we live past it, it wears out, it’s bound for nowhere and whatever-it-is is beyond words. That’s what makes it kind of heroic. I love that about it too.
- Why Write? 17: Tracy Thomas - June 14, 2013
- It Means Bread - April 16, 2013
- Red and Yellow Kill a Fellow - January 8, 2013
