Reflections
Writing perturbs me, quite frankly. Speech is fleeting; words are wind - but writing is a monument. An obelisk of thought outlasting empires. We read Shelley, Tolstoy, Brontë, Shakespeare, Homer, Sappho. We know not the people but by their writing, and others writing of them. Yet we know of their thoughts, their ideas and their fears, by their writing. A direct link across centuries from their hearts to ours. A truer source of magic has never been known.
My discomfort stems from this great beauty: that my mind be etches upon a plaque to last the ages. A hundred years from now someone may read of me and know me, or a stranger on the internet, yet I may never know them. Literature as mental voyeurism - a baring of self through the building blocks of consciousness. Language is a cognitive system by which one interprets the world and understands it, the de facto method of constructing reality. And to share my reality with the world is - terrifying.
But overwhelming that terror, wholeheartedly, is love of the beauty literature allows us to bask in. Expressions of a billion realities, open to our perusal. To become a part of that tapestry is an honour, and yet a responsibility, too. Writing exposes one to the world, but more vividly, I feel, exposes one to oneself. Our soul reveals itself in art.
In fear, I have painted Dorian's portrait: in hope, might I create an odyssey.