I just write.

I just write.

I want my fingers to speak in cipher and symbol, in character and punctuation --- I want them to speed across an empty slate, filling it with idea and passion. I want others to read it, and I want them --- for a brief fleeting moment --- to see what I see. Understand the world through my eyes, and be brightened, saddened, twisted, bent, gyred, spun, and transformed.

It is not ego that drives me so --- there is nothing inside me so great that I must stop at nothing to get it out, no explosion of math and science and passion that threatens to tear me at my seams.

It is not sadness, madness, or gladness that makes me write these things --- it isn’t some overwhelming fire of humanity. My life is not a particularly interesting one, my struggles not particularly unique...

And yet --- there is something here. Something inside me, chewing away at every thought ---fattening like a worm in an apple ---- driving some arcane wheels in my head. Turning some dust-covered gears and animating my fingers to write, write, and write.

It is through this writing that you and I can grasp up to the heavens of our own design, and sit for a while, enjoying the gentle passage of time, like two idle lovers caught up in the healthy currents of life. I can turn to you, and as my fingers speak to you in confidential tones, you can see things.

Simple things sometimes, the gentle swell of sea on a shore, the delicate sway of a single strand of grass caught in the wind, eyes shining with starlight. Complex things too: an ant-hill overflowing with activity, a million times a million engines of desire performing those tasks which define them.

I will say: Can you see this all? Isn’t it beautiful? And then you might understand why I write. Then you might see what it really is that drives me forward, as surely as an electron spins itself into eternity. The ants, the beach, the grass, the people, the laughter, the light, the stars, the everything. Things which are neither bad, nor good --- nor do I wish to ever think in such black and white, love and hate, destroy and create terms. Things, which just are --- which in our tremendous winding up of life, we seem to miss.

We don’t treasure those tiny moments of time where the only thing that should matter is that single blade of grass, or that lovers shy glance, or that wave breaking gently on the shore. Torpid currents of life swirl us into balls of hate and envy, and darkness, and those moments are past. But they give birth to more light and laughter, and we ignore those too --- we Hunger too much, we Pain too much.

And one might think that my avoidance of the truth --- repelling from my words like corresponding magnetic fields --- is because I don’t have the truth. This of course is partially true, just like everything is partially true --- just as this phrase itself is partially true. And even before my words swallow themselves in a twisted-eight swirl of infinity --- I am still here, and my words still flow, and my purpose still exists. I don’t write because I mean anything, I don’t write because you mean anything.

I write because everything is beautiful and nothing is, simultaneously – as if by a magic that everyone practices but no one understands.

I write because when I write, I trap those lost moments of time like insects in amber, and I hold them up to the brightness and I make available that spark of mankind that is so transient in our busy lives.

I write because I am godless and naked and alone, and tired and sad, and frightened and terrible and thirsty.

I write because we are all those things, all of us in our own ways, and because this is one of the few ways in which I may drive it off for a while.

One of the few ways I can say Hello to the specter of death that hangs over every dew-drop that hasn’t yet been born, that wreathes me in a crown of my own thorns, and whispers to the sun in words of violet and orange.

I write because it allows me to cheat death at least for one more day, to proclaim in my own little, tiny, fleeting voice that everyone can be a beacon, can be a light in the planes of the lightless, and can Shepard their brothers through the valley of darkness.

Most of all, I just write.

Bakit ako nagsusulat?

At a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty, I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature.

You see, I’ve never considered myself much of a writer. I’m not particularly great at it. On my better day, I will be passable. On my best, I don’t have half the talent of many people I’ve been lucky enough to work with. And this is not false humility.

But why do I write you might ask...

I write because I see these images in my head that I don’t want to forget, because I hear words that need to be in ink. I have to get these things down because it’s torture if I don’t, and lost to oblivion if I’m unlucky and without a pen.

I write because nothing satisfies me most than turning my words into ideas and then sharing my complete work to people for their enjoyment and criticism.

I write because I’m not very good at speaking. (Isn’t this the very logic of writing?)

I write because it gets me to avoid things I loathe like cleaning my room or cleaning my room or cleaning my room.

I do it because after a page or two of writing my heart out, I feel like I’ve lost pounds.

I write because I know this is the best gift I have to give.

The reason that no matter what I have done in life, writing has always been a constant is that there is power in words for everyone. Be it making us laugh, reflect, angry or just making us think. And for me there is nothing more exhilarating or rewarding as seeing someone’s eyes light up as they read my words or I imagine them being played out.

I can only imagine what it must be like to write something an entire nation (and beyond) tunes in for each week, to see your written words personified. I will continue to be envious of all of you who are lucky enough to write for a living and I will continue to write myself, even if what I write never leaves the confines of my computer, because it is still so much a part of me.

I watch television and movies because I know a writer has written all that I am watching, and for that, all you writers out there have my utmost respect and full support. Thank you for all that you have written and for all that you have yet to write.

When I think about my life now, I thank the person, who once said,

“What do you do when your life exceeds your dreams?”

“Keep it to yourself.”

I guess that’s the other reason I write. One day, if I’m lucky enough, I hope to write a line half that good.


Thank you for reading this and for giving me a reason to write why I write.