5779

There are twenty-six letters in the English alphabet. Four of which to write the word word. A writer needs (at best) three words to write a sentence. Three words to confess. A hundred to write a paragraph. A hundred to tweet. One thousand to write an essay. One thousand to picture.

There are two hundred seventy-three thousand words documented by the Oxford dictionary. A combination of thirty-seven thousand and thirty-six of those make the Book of Isaiah. Five hundred eighty-seven thousand, two hundred eighty-seven of those make Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

Yet out of the twenty-six letters and all its combinations, only four are used to document me—A-C-G and T: the four bases of DNA. The four letters which say, I am me. It’s this irony that Man, in its infinite expression, translates its humanity not through painting, sound, nor even book. We are—in all our history, values, creativity—translated into mere data. Translated into letters.

A man looked at a window and saw flowers.

I am a writer.
A writer doesn’t agree with summaries. So I splinter an idea, I let it unravel. A writer lets them unravel until they grow up and become words. Words are letters that are linked with words together to create meaning in order. I steal from the truth and I make it fiction. Fiction is nonsense made to tell you the truth. The truth is that the writer doesn’t create truth but interprets it through nonsense. In essence, our job is to lie truthfully and get away with it.

There is nothing on this earth that comes from ourselves. Everything is as original as it is recycled. What dies on earth is bound to come back. What passes by the earth is bound to return. The fact that it comes back, again and again, to tell us it lives, to tell us it dies—it wants us to know that it in itself is worth happening. It wants us to know that it is fleeting, it is returning. It is worth the writing.

But the Thing Worth Writing is not simply written. I cannot just look at the window, see flowers, and simply write that A man looked at a window and saw flowers. It has a certain beauty, yes, but even magic has its calculations. A writer is bound by their own expectation, ability, and cognition: the Unconscious Formula, to make the Thing Worth Writing become worth reading. So I write again, about my view through the window; about my view of the flowers. I write that

One peered through a window and reflected on the flowers.

A writer translates.
The process is simple: it is not procreation. It is not about making a new feeling or a new experience, but about making our feelings felt and our experiences experienced. Writing is the chicken after the egg, it is the expression from the idea. I take the idea and I mold it with letters. From these skeleton letters a writer makes…something. “It will be a masterpiece, I will become Picasso,” but a writer must not forget they work with skeletons, butchered meat—so and so. What I’ve made is simply an old story, what I’ve become is another Frankenstein. But there is no shame in opening our caskets. There is no shame in disguising me. In the end, a writer is just trying to say, '“Here he’s arrived—accept me!”

Two people can look up, view the same clouds, and end up interpreting a different heaven. A writer is the same. I am in the ever-eternal process of recreating the Moment. Not only that the Moment has happened, but that I have happened along with it—that my experience of it has also shaped it. What makes a Thing Worth Writing is its ability to last forever: as a few dotted lines on a corner; and its curse to last a moment: as our eyes catch one word and leave it for the next.

Each writing is a different translation. Each translation a memory of the Memory. Both writer and reader is in the process of destruction and replication. The first experience is always its own experience: on the second we think about the first, and on the third we think about the second. We ruin the Memory, but we also get to make it our own. A writer destroys, destroys, destroys—I hammer it down with fire and refine. A writer creates paragraphs of synonyms. I eliminate the ugliest lines. And a writer hopes that what’s left is what’s simply on my mind.

He glanced through the window and saw his eyes.
At first staring back, then fading to unveil the flowers.
They were barely there altogether.

Translated is the Memory.
So then a writer is living writing. I am passed down from gene to gene to final gene. A writer is both blueprint and copy. There will be stories of us as we’ve been told stories of our ancestors. They will weaponize our words, they will weaponize our souls. I am comforted that they will not be original. I am comforted that they will become Frankensteins.

Our Memory will become part of another lifetime and it will be called A-C-G and T: the four letters which translate, I am me. In the end we will be summarized by our letters. There are twenty-six letters in the English alphabet. Four of which make the word word; four of which make the word soul. A writer needs one soul to have a memory. Two memories (at best) to translate a story…

Through the window a boy saw a pair of eyes. They met his and he shouted, those are not mine, he shouted. Jumping back, the eyes faded, and the boy was met by daisies behind them. Perhaps the daisies were just the eyes, the boy pretended. Quickly the eyes came back, then it sat in front and behind the daisies. Once the boy stood still, the two things shared the same image. He could not tell the difference. Were those the eyes or were those the daisies? They were both barely there, yet they were both looking at him. They both wanted the same thing.