Why do we write, despite the lack of reinforcing feedback?
I have a theory, and here it is, expressed in doggerel.
(OT because no anime or manga reference contained within)


     ON A HAPPENING 

A friend asked me the other day 
   To come with him and go and play,
'A happening',  
   I believe he called it then.

Where strangers flock
    to play or mock
All in a group,
    for reason thin.

"Foolishness," I said, "I've half a brain
    And I'm smart enough to abstain.
And stay at home not wasting time
    On activity so vain.

"Why do you do it?"  I cried,
    and he shrugged.
"Why do you write?"
    his rejoinder came.

That night I could not rest, the idiocy confessed,
    What purpose served by fools
Who gather at some fore-mentioned place
    And follow silly rules?

Why do I write?  
    And I readied my broadside
To blow him 
    From his complacent slide.

The world is there and write I must
    I suppose I'll keep on til the end
The ether of the firmament is where I'll place my trust
    An incandescent splinter in the wind.    

Analyze it all we might
    Writers write because they write
And that's the long and short of it,
    Amen.

Why, indeed.  
    I create.  
And yet
    And yet.  

Yet, I could not truly say.
   Do I write for other's praise?
To enlighten fools such as he
    Or warehouse warmth for elder days?

Yet, rarely do we glorify
   One individual firefly
Nor praise a single facet
    on a gem

Every being is a happening
    An atom suspended solitaire
Each seeks to belong to bewildering throng
    Though isolated in mid-air.

No.  Not I alone.  There must be those
    For whom my pen doth flow.
They cheer me on when hope is wan
    And feed my soul with their outflow.
Yes, I write because others write,
    While what they've written leads me on.

As fish swim in water, 
    I swim in literature
As birds fly through the air,
    I float on metaphor.

Why do fireflies light at night?
    Why do swallows southward wing?
Why do salmon swim upstream
    Doing their fishy thing?

And as the salmon swims upstream,
    Thru noble play of gill and fin,
It's not so much that they must swim
    But, there's sacred water to swim in.

Though I may glow but briefly in the flow,
    My feeble flame joins with my mystic kin
A grain of sand in the universe,
    An incandescent splinter in the wind.

Analyze it all we might
    We writers write because we write
And that's the long and short of it,
    Amen.


James
jeeades@wanderway.com

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