Writer Statement

Now I look to writing to find my soul. I've been to many imaginary places. I have bowed with the dryads amongst the willow trees. Writing is the closest to thought, feeling, imagination and soul that I've ever been.

To write is to search for truth no matter how fantastic or fictitious we make it. The treading of spring shadows and the winking of winter lights meets paranormal phenomenon, gods, and what's really out there in the unknown world. This includes everyone else's worlds.

Perhaps we all live in our own little worlds and therefore develop different perspectives on life due to the differences in ourselves and in our lives. When opinions clash it's often because little worlds clash. He feels this way because this happened to him. She feels that way because that happened to her. And then lies and rumors about how good or bad he or she is in thought and deed put his or her integrity at risk. In the war of their world versus our world, truth is the first casualty.

I often tend to write about the deeply traumatizing, most melodramatic, most unbelievable things that happen to me. I once wrote about staying a couple of days in a homeless shelter in Ottawa with girls from  places as far removed as Zambia and Nunavut. It's amazing how many people thought I was lying. Looking back, I even found it hard to believe. It was as though I never leave my house; I could never wind up in such sticky situations. When in reality, it's often the shyest and most insecure among us who are probably most likely to wind up with such trouble. We lack the confidence to make the connections to prevent this kind of trauma. Though in my heart I feel it is the things that are often classified as trauma that are some of the most inspiring things. My stay at the Native women's homeless shelter was one of the best experiences of my life. It taught me a lot about looking out for others as well as myself, and being truly human, perfect and imperfect. And it's the things that are often classified as inspiration or help which are most damaging. Don't try to "help" a teenage girl by telling her she has to change; that she's not lovely the way she is; that she's not an important part of this world psychological problems, insecurities and all. Instead, believe in her. Grow with her. Love her. Acknowledge that she is who she is as a result of the experiences and psychology of her own little world and nature is bound to mature with her. 

My mind takes me back to my adolescence when I would write silly stories, obvious works of fiction (to me) and some others would think I was lying. I have learned to try and put fiction in an obvious context by itself. I have learned to try and put true life in an obvious context by itself. But in doing either, I must not compromise the quality, integrity, or imagination of the writing. Such painful lessons are ones that every writer faces. The inherently moral nature of many writers is often damaged by others' interpretation of their writing. Readers can project too much of their own lives into the writing of good writers. Soulful writers learn how to put their ideas, feelings, and fantasies into a context that everyone can relate to. Here's an obvious, simple example: A writer could say "life is difficult". Pretty much everybody has had difficulty in their lives. But the reader's difficulty is bound to be quite different than the writer's difficulty, yet the reader can still relate to it. This is where projection and presumptuous interpretation comes in. The reader will think he's reading about his own life when really he's reading about someone else's. Even the specifics can be written to have a similar effect. As a teenager I was up crying in my cold bedroom all night because I thought nobody liked me. That statement is a lot more specific but all but compromises the writer's ability to draw in the reader. Really, very few didn't find themselves emotionally isolated as young ones. Very few don't find themselves emotionally isolated in some way every day of their lives. You don't have to be shut in your bedroom every night to be crying inside.

Ask almost any writer and they will tell you that many of their works of fiction include characters similar to people they know, or events similar to those experienced in life. Many of their made-up stories were inspired by real life. Hence fantasy takes on an element of truth. And many true-life stories by creative writers or poets are dressed up in metaphors or far-fetched similes and other creative literary tools. The naïve eye can take them seriously. Example: The straps of her dress were mere strings of spaghetti. But they weren't really straps of spaghetti; they just looked like they were.

Now, if I were to tell you that there is an ancient graveyard of 33-foot-long sea monsters in the arctic would you believe me? Sounds unbelievable, but this is true. And the truest writers write about the truest things. That gives their writing power, intrigue, and an ironic sense of credibility. True writing is true writing. Bad living is good writing. The coolest writers write about the warmest things. That's what makes it cool. It's kinda different. So few write about good things anymore.

Someone once told me I was arrogant because when asked what I wrote about I said "the truth". Of course, he took me very literally thinking I said I wrote "the truth". When really I answered him very directly. He didn't ask me what I wrote; he asked me what I wrote about. Again, I said "the truth". I don't write the truth per se. That's a sacred thing that nobody really knows. But I don’t write lies either. I write about the truth as a subject, like beauty is a subject… and love, and trees, and rivers and seagulls. I write about the truth as an area of emotional study. Though when that's taken to mean that I feel my writing is the truth, it's also taken that all other humanity knows no more of this phenomenon than they know of alien abduction.

Writers will continue to be considered selfish for putting so much of themselves on paper. But if we didn't put ourselves on paper, what else would we put there? May we searchers of truth see the double standard should the doubters of truth not doubt how much of themselves mechanics put into their engines or farmers put into their crops. If half a horse and half a donkey didn't put their full hearts and souls into their offspring then it would be half-assed. The same applies for we mules of truth. Written words are the offspring of all of these searches for truth. And the search for truth is much a stubborn one. See this writing. I've dedicated pages upon pages to looking for what really is as opposed to what I think is, expecting a mere paragraph or two. For many writers, in particular myself, writing is the only real, pure form of communication we have. How can you criticize someone for having a voice, a silent voice? If we feelers of pain did not write, then we thinkers of reason would neither ever communicate. The future provides many different kinds of communication. And the present is just jealous should it consider any of these selfish. We all talk. May the future plunge into the past should that mean we are all selfish. How can a rememberer of the past be selfish simply for communicating?

Much of my writing is about the nature of fact and actuality, the search for love and the search for truth, and where I hope to find it, where I believe it most definitely is not. Is this the truth really as I see it? Or is this the truth as I see it while I'm in this mood? Is this what love really means to me? Or is this merely what it means to me while I'm in the frame of mind and spirit to write this?

How crassly worded things can be if the writer truly doesn't feel comfortable writing about them. If you're not comfortable with the topic then you should not write about it. You will be so detached from the writing that not only the emotional and intellectual sides suffer, but the technical/ grammatical sides as well. You cannot expect to focus on the technical details of a writing if you're discomfort with it won't allow you to focus on even the subject. You'll be too uncomfortable reading it to revise. Also, leaving the writing for a while helps you to be more honestly objective about it instead of having to suffer through it. The longer you leave it, the more objective you can be. You can remove yourself from it as if they're not even your words anymore. The feelings and ideas have grown so unfamiliar that the writing becomes brand new; it's as though it's someone else's.

Being a creative person, I'm constantly developing and learning,  and constantly embarrassing myself: Oh God, I can't believe I wrote that. Oh God, I can't believe I painted that. Even a redundant semi-colon can drive me mad. I don't even like semi-colons. I am not a "verbal gymnast"; I am obsessive about my writing actually saying something that has true meaning: lying in bed with two pens, scribbling down ideas. If you leave the writing for a couple weeks, months, years; you immediately see whether or not that was truth or whether it was just a bad mood. Things that seem obvious to you now were not obvious to you then. Obvious feelings to the writer may not be so obvious to the reader. You wrote that. You know the bad memories and damaged psychology that caused you to write that, but the readers do not. To them, it's one of your bad days immortalized.

Perhaps this is why I'm so self-conscious of my writing. It becomes so permanent. The written word should contain as much truth as possible because the written word is permanent. Bad moods and feelings become permanent even though, to the writer,  they were temporary. She may have been having a bad day when she wrote that piece. That's why she wrote it - to help her to deal with that. But bad days and bad feelings don't last forever, in writing they do. Bad days are the things that inspire many writers to write the most. Gosh, writers must seem as though they're always in a bad mood then, when really it's often just their bad moods that inspire them to write.

So fear not, oh writer, contradiction; that is the inherent heart of the literary beast. On a good day you will write about how good the world is. And on a bad day you will write about how bad the world is. Contradiction is not an indication of a digression from personal values and a loss of integrity; it is an indication of the changing moods and feelings that are normal with the passing of day to day experiences.  It's when you're habitually preaching one thing and habitually practicing another when you really have to sit back and take a good look at yourself and your value system. Time to revise and reconsider.

Sometimes I worry that I might come off as overtly assertive in my writing. I don't have an argumentative personality. Such conflict is just a mask worn by my search for truth and love. The rumors and lies of others make me wear it, make my soul aggressive, make me embarrassed of who I really am. I'm shy and sensitive. I'm filled with moods and feelings that change with the reddening of the sun and the greying of the clouds. I am filled with contradictions caused by these changing moods and feelings. That doesn't go over well in an aggressive world - an assuming, judging, aggressive world.

Detached assumptions can become bigger lies than the lies they assumed the attached was telling. There is little truth in assumption. There is little love in judgment. But there is peace in understanding these things and understanding why they are different… and why they are the same. And that's why I write. And I must not trust the abuse of common opinion and the mask of self-consciousness that it wears. What really is and what we really are can be hurtful and seem hateful. Truth is hate to those who really have something to hide. But truth is love to those whose true love had been hidden by the lies and hate of others - their goodness doubted, their sense of belonging and sense of self crushed. Truth is love to those who had been hurt so badly by the lies of strangers. .

For an artist or writer, trying to express our own personal truths creatively is like walking in a field of picture grass and word flowers. These beautiful things should represent the truth for those so hated by lies. But the heart walks in a field of broken glass, dirty syringes, dog shit. The pain of what others have said and done can rain on us for the rest of our lives and become our truths. Truth can seem pretty rotten to some of us. But love, now. That's even more loathsome stuff if you consider how unhappy it can make us. Perfect but miserable, especially if it's one-sided. Try loving someone who doesn't love you back. That's love. And that's pretty miserable. Unhappy. It's a reality I have endured my whole life until now. And being loved, that's pretty perfect. But in self-conscious fear and doubt.- "I love but no one could ever love me" - It's more loathsome than that big, black, slimy, crawly thing in the bathtub drain; more impractical than a garbage net. Thinking about everything, about gross love, helps to keep our souls together but it keeps the rest of the world out and essentially we're just full of garbage. It's not "happy" and only "happy" can free the soul of trashiness. Only love that is treated like love can be happy.  And you must never talk about it - the "L" word. All poisonous ideals. All poisonous feelings. Trying to express those poisonous ideals and feelings with integrity is about as easy as trying to express our own personal truths. And trying to express our own personal loves is pretty creepy. Just trying to wrap your head around how you really feel sometimes can be pretty confusing. It's hard when a beautiful feeling like love can evoke such conflicting moods and feelings. Happy when loved; unhappy when not. Yet it is all love, the search for wholesome love, the search for the truth behind the beauty and anguish of love.

It's an endless web of truth: the more I try to write my way out of it, the more I think my way back into it. It's disturbing how one or two groundless opinions by complete strangers can destroy a child's truth for the rest of her life. To that child, her soul is no more wanted in this world than a bug in a bed. And that's a lie instilled by someone else's far removed truth. A child who wants to belong but doesn't belong will make herself sick trying to be a good person - the kind of good person that belongs if not the kind of good person that is truly good. No one's really sure what a good person is, but many of us have very strong ideas of what it is not. A good person does not take another's life. So most of us need not mourn our integrity. But a good person also does not lie. But what the hell is a lie? It's not a difference of opinion. It's not having different experiences. It's not going to a different school and learning differently. It's not living a totally different life and seeing things play out differently. But it is. Try telling a wise-ass that.

Some may even regard too much truth as bad... like sharing everyone's personal business with everyone else. Some things you just don't tell and must be covered up to protect the innocent spirit of someone else. I would resist telling the world about things my sister did when she was too young to know better because it's none of their business. And besides, it's no longer truth. It may have been truth then but time changes truth. That's another thing about truth; it is transient. What is true today may not be true tomorrow. It's seems so impossible to write the truth ('cause there is none). Sometimes I feel it's best for me to stop trying and to just write complete fiction. Every time I try to write the truth there's someone there saying that what I believe is not true because they don't agree with me. And they don't agree with me because they've had different experiences. These experiences formed different perspectives on the same things.

It's an endless web of love. The "L" word. Who's to say why the word is so difficult to say? Perhaps it's because many have been criticized for using it. It's cliché. Everybody writes about love apparently. And it's pretentious, even if it is something that truly inspires. I don't care how loathsome it is. I'll continue to write about it as long as it continues to inspire me. And the bazillion pop songs that have sold it into commercial slavery will not stop me. Love is the one thing that every happy, stable, functioning relationship is built on; but then you're discouraged from talking about it because it's uncool or something. So really, love is not cliché; hate is cliché. Love is taboo. But to never think about it, talk about it, you must not even be human. Love is the one thing that has brought out the sheer humanity in my most valued relationships. I have been in relationships with some of this old town's kings of bad mood. They would never say "I love you" even though "I love you" is why laughter and tears are happy together and why their lives work. Mercy be with those friends who cannot stand each other. Integrity find the mother who does not love her child, the girl who hates her boyfriend. Tell me those relationships are not miserable. My present boyfriend is the first to ever tell me that he loves me; my present relationship is the first to ever work. He treats me well because he cares about me. As those who don't care about me also don't care to treat me well. I love him, too.

Like earwigs of family and silverfish of friendship, love creeps boyishly out of every woman's woodwork, girlishly out of every man's plumbing, heartlessly out of every fool's heart. It sucks and it bites and it sucks. It's the very core of mother/child, father/child, boyfriend/girlfriend. Souls stuffed full of vermin: spiders, possessiveness, snakes, competitiveness, rats, jealousy. The very framework of a boy and a girl swarms with beauty, anxiety. Living, rotting. And then it winds up on paper. No one else will take it.  Or a love-infested heart won't let anyone take it. It's dirt. Absolute dirt. It's insecure. Who would want it anyway? People spurn love as though it was a form of hate or something. Oops, the "H" word. It's far more cliché.

Okay, so I may find it hard to settle the love-hate thing within my social and creative consciences; I do, however, take pride in knowing that this is my writing. This is my soul. Ninety Nine point nine percent of my ideas come from "in here" and not "out there". And the bugs of inspiration that do come from "out there" don't come without a fight: conscientious pesticide. It's needy and it's obsessive. It's the search for truth. It's the search for soul. The truth can only be found within me, not without me. The soul can only be found "in here" and not "out there".

In a world of soul thieves that steal each others ideas all the time, I can't allow my soul to be stolen. I can't allow my truth to be taken. Nor can I allow myself to steal another's soul, to take another's truth, to steal another's ideas. I could never steal another's ideas because I hate it when mine are stolen. To steal another's soul is to put your own in jail. To take another's ideas shows no influence. Influence shows a rich soul willing to be filled with inspiration; whereas a plagiarism shows that there really was no inspiration. Two may write in a similar style, have similar ideas, write about the same subjects, have the same values; but to use exactly the same words - somebody else's words, somebody else's truth, somebody else's soul - well, that's not personal truth. That's not truth at all. That's not soul. I would never use somebody else's soul as a template for my soul; therefore, I would never use somebody else's words as a template for my words. The search for truth will never end until I find the truth within myself. I cannot find that within someone else. Nor can I find my soul in someone else. For years I tried to find my soul in music, someone else's music; I wound up repeatedly crushed. (See essay about music.)

The human spirit is the most beautiful thing in the whole wide world. How hard it is to get the whole wide world to acknowledge this beauty. I am told I must never write about beauty. Beauty is $8.99 a bottle, a quiz you take on soyouwannabeamodel.com, something you read about in teen vogue. According to those who see nothing but what's right in front of them, beauty corrupts the minds of teenaged girls with nothing to see but what's right in front of them. So I guess I must never write about the thundering of Namibian zebras across the plains, or the gathering of great musk oxen in herds spreading across the tundra, or the awakening of the purple hills of a sleepy dawn when the sun is deep. Those are all most beautiful things with the greatest depth of spirit; they are also shallow as they are beauty and all beauty is shallow, apparently. But to my long-alone, long-alive, truth-starved soul, such beauty tastes the humility of the mud villages of morocco, the simplicity of a little Eskimo girl in a red coat and blue jeans sitting on a rock near the water. This beauty probes the spirit with the depths of pink, orange and purple-studded starfish grazing the rocky bottom of the ocean. They ward off the danger of hungry molluscs with their modified spikes. I ward off the danger of magazine beauty with my modified values. This is poetry beauty, nature beauty, soul beauty: the sum of everything real and pure and good. This is not magazine beauty: the sum of everything glossy and air-brushed and Shoppers Drug Mart.

It is my soul, my strong soul, that pushes me to the finest, sharpest edges of my integrity. No matter how sincere I am, it's not sincere enough. This explains how candid my writing is. Tell everything as is for that's the truth. That's my writing. That's my soul. That's me. And if it's not from the soul it's not even writing let alone good writing. What the hell are you gonna write about? Without soul you see nothing, feel nothing, understand nothing. Writing gives me an outlet to understand myself and my own character as well as the characters of others. Instead of making superficial judgements, it probes deeper into intuitive understanding and "figures out" people of character and why they behave the way they do. Do people have more control over their own characters than they have over their own environments? I'm still searching for the truth.

Everything I read inspires me (sometimes in a bad way). So everybody is a good writer. Some people just don't  bother. I believe we're all good writers or have the potential to be. But it takes a long time to shape that goodness. It took me fifteen years to develop my top secret approach to the creative process.  In particular, my writing. Why top secret? Well, it's quite an extensive process that I mastered in the post junior high school, lame diary stage.  It involves a lot more than those who read with their eyes can see. I'm not "just writing". It took me years to reach this level of competence and satisfaction with the usage, arrangement, and rhythm of words; but most of all, with what the words are saying. After all, it's not the words you use that make you a good writer;  it's what you're saying with them, and how you use them. Fifteen years of ridicule, jealousy; insecurity, self -doubt: It took me that long to accept that I'd much rather write for those who read with their hearts anyway. I must write about the past as an object of the past. I must stop writing about the past as an object of the present. And I must not write to appease the creative biases and emotional/intellectual superstitions of others. I must write to comfort my spirit and to search for truth.

The pen talks. It talks of imagined things. It talks of dragons wielding swords. It talks of fairies resting on mushrooms. It talks of mermaids sitting in shells. It talks of moral things: impressions of people should never be formed by word of mouth. There should be at least casual acquaintance. Going on what others say is not good enough. Rumors and lies and going on what others say is a plagiarism of understanding and has little truth and no soul. I go on what my soul says. It talks for my pen. My pen talks for me. It talks about social things: integrating children with disabilities into our little worlds, taking care of the elderly, respecting the poor. It talks of remembered things - mistakes I've made, things I wish I had done differently, bad-bad things of the past that I cannot change. Bad-bad things are things that taunt truth and mess with my soul. They fill our souls with things that are not truth - like we had done something wrong though we had just done it differently, or someone did something wrong to us though not really. We just see it that way. Good-bad things, however, are bad things that inspire good things... like bad memories inspiring beautiful poetry.

I write about things that make me live free and pretty, out of a fantasy. The storyteller does whatever the hell she wants to do. I fly. Writing leaves me curious, private; like the baby fairy ripping away the husks of the corn so she can hide inside. Writing makes me want to tell: I need to write about this otherwise it will just poison me from the inside out. Writing makes me not want to tell because every time I do, I feel like I'm saying something wrong.

I don't write about things that have no purpose in my life. They deserve no control over my mood, my conscience, my principles. They make my heart and head sick; therefore, those things never enter my mind. I fictionalize the truth and factualize the deliverance of conscience that often forsakes me. It overtakes me. I write about goodness and integrity. These are confusing, misunderstood, yet often strived-for things. And they have had a profound effect on my life. Sometimes I write about things that I don't love, though once loved; and therefore, the complex feelings occupy my obsessions. This causes me to write about them. Music is a good example of this.

I don't want my writing to be propaganda. To write what you think is the truth can be propaganda if distributed. To write about truth is merely a study of what is commonly believed to be true versus what is really true. So when asked what I write about: I write about the truth. I am not writing rivers and trees and seagulls as all of these things are true; I am writing about the wandering of rivers and the trembling of trees and the grieving of seagulls as all of these things are true. Truth is my unobtainable standard for achieving moral, spiritual, and intellectual excellence. The soul is already excellent.

If someone were to ask, "what do you write?" And I said, "I write beautiful seagulls at early morning." It would sound as though my writing was beautiful seagulls at early morning. It's just a piece of writing about beautiful seagulls at early morning. If someone were to ask, "what do you write?" And I said, "Your mom." It would sound as though my writing was your mom. It's just a piece of writing about your mom. If someone were to ask, "What do you write?" And I said, "The end of the world. " It would sound as though my writing was the end of the world. It's just a piece of writing about the end of the world. And though I would love my writing to figuratively represent the cawing of beautiful seagulls at early morning, and the silence after the one final bullet to signify fighting's end, I would be satisfied with just finding love, truth.

But as pink is the colour of inner peace to me, sometimes I believe I have found this pink demon. Love that is. I have found love within others. I have found the love that I have the potential to give in others if not in myself. By that I mean the pink demon I have found is for others, not myself. And despite all my defects in behaviour, I have faith in the love I have always had for others even though others never had it for me, so I never had it for myself. Or maybe I never had it for myself, so they never had it for me. I use the word defects even though I mean differences, but they're commonly taken as defects. I'm still trying to find love within myself for myself despite my mistakes, evasions, bad secrets and weird obsessions.

I have many evasions. I have many weird obsessions. These often are a product of my bad secrets and mistakes. Consider how grimly affected I am by everything I do and say wrong. It makes me never want to talk again - not because I want to be right, though I'd rather be right than wrong, of course. Who wouldn't? But because I want to tell the truth. I know what you're thinking: telling a lie and making a mistake are two different things. You're right, too. And I really want to agree with you. But for the sake of found poetry and spontaneous philosophy, I will not. In such contexts as this such diversions as that just don't work. We're talking about the search for the truth not the search for always being right. So for the sake of supporting the main theme of this essay, I cannot. A mistake is not a lie but it feels like one. For if a mistake in logic and judgement is believed it becomes a lie: something that is not true. Evasions are not always lies if the evasion can be implied without the use of direct dishonest language.

How many times have people asked you, "What are you up to? What are ya at? Whatcha doin'? What's on the go? And how many times have you said, "Nothing"? But were you really doing nothing? Bad secret, evasion. And should I call you lazy for doing nothing? Or should I call you a liar because you were actually doing something? Mistake, weird obsession.

Likewise, people have often asked, "What are you writing?" Or, "What are you writing about?" Of course, now I have learned not to say "the truth" when asked what I write about. I lie, like everyone else when they're insecure about something. And I say "nothing". I write about nothing. Well, that's a lie. I know what you're thinking: I thought you said you didn't tell lies. I don't. That's an I-don't-want-you-to-know-how-I'm-truly-feeling lie; that's not an I-don't-want you-to-know-the-truth lie. So, what am I writing about? I guess I really do write about nothing. However, like truth, nothing is a great subject for philosophy. What is truth? What is nothing? It's an even better topic to write about. What are you thinking about? Nothing. What are you writing about? Nothing. Whenever I do or say something stupid I feel like nothing. But it's almost okay. It's not okay to feel like nothing. But you can only be happy when you admit that you are nothing. You can only be happy if you are nothing - No assuming somebodies to make feel small, no unassuming nobodies to be better than, no quick-mouthed judges of character to hate you because you come off as something, or someone who thinks she is. ("Wow, she really thinks she's something.") But everyone is something, someone. And that can only be truth if we seagulls of early morning fly to the end of the world. We are all nothing… except our moms.

My search for truth even effects the way I treat people I care about: not wanting to talk to them anymore if I fear the emotional thunder between us crashes down on truth. I feel safest when I'm silent. But if I stopped talking to them they'd think I stopped talking to them. It's not them; it's me. But to promise never to talk again is foolish because I will still write and make mistakes that can and will be construed as lies. But I do not lie. I tell the truth. But unlike so many others, I don't have enough confidence in my truth to persist in its honor and I wind up writing  illusory essays like this that do not tell my truth but tell of my truth, that tells of my lies that aren't really lies at all but strong beliefs that others do not believe are true. This makes me feel like a nothing, makes me look like a nobody with no thinking, no feeling;  no voice, no opinion.

Is it true then that I am nothing? It is true, though, that words are just abstract voice pictures given to feelings and I want nothing from them but the truth. Even this has its illusions. Try finding the truth in a world where the truth hides out in the underbrush, rolling into a spiny ball like an English hedgehog. Translating abstract feelings into a language like English only drives the truth of how we really feel farther into the head, the underbrush with self-disillusionment and submission like spines  - "No one could ever understand how I feel because they can't get into my head, this underbrush. They can interpret the way I feel with the way they feel inside their heads all they want, but that doesn't mean it's true." - So few can touch another's deepest feelings, understand them, touch them with their minds, their understandings. And if they could they would only get pricked. The closer they get to another's self-disillusionment and submission, the more those hard feelings pain and penetrate the intuitive hands that guide their understandings.

You're never happy until you admit that you want nothing. If you want something, you'll just make your life miserable trying to get it. And as much as I want the truth I have to acknowledge that there really is none in order to prevent being miserable. There is no truth; there is only theory and contradiction. But in the search for something, anything, nothing; sometimes that's all the truth we need.

There's a lot more lies out there than truth. People believe everything they hear especially if it hurts others. It's not interesting to talk about nice things. So what does the writer do then? How can we search for truth when lies are much more interesting? We record neither lies nor truths but visions and ideas and perspectives. My way of seeing things and wanting things may not be your way of seeing things and wanting things but that doesn't mean one way is truth and the other is a lie. They are just different. I feel apprehensive even writing this. How many are gonna read it and go "Uh, that's bullshit" simply because they have a different perspective on what truth is? Life, the world, understanding means something different to them. Lies will be the most miserable truth as long as mouthy indifference assumes and bored hysteria judges. -"I don't care. I'll say what I want. It's excruciatingly fun to ruin lives when you've got nothing better to do."- Those assumptions and judgments are passed on to another who, in turn, assumes and judges. And then another. And the story gets more and more convoluted with each worm it hooks. From here, conflict arises as the integrity of the unknown has been judged, assumed about, lied about. And it is the right of the unknown to defend their integrity.

No surprise then why I'm so afraid of my own writing; I'm afraid everything I have ever written is a lie. I'm afraid of my own talking, afraid everything I say is a lie. I'm afraid the things that I have learned, experienced, been told had all been blind lies. I'm so preoccupied with truth and integrity sometimes that they make me sick. I sing about nothing, making up little songs about trees to try and help me forget, for a moment, all of those unsettling life stresses. Earlier today I tried to sing about "little white tissue box houses and big fluffy green cotton ball trees and a front garden of red flowers that seem to go on forever". Among other silly songs, this is one I wrote tonight. They help me keep my mind off of things.

This tree has eyes.
That tree has ears.
The other tree has a mouth.
But I have all three.
I sit and read my book beneath each tree.

This tree reads books.
I read books to that tree.
The other tree recites poems to me.
I see words and hear words and say words.
So do they, but only in books.

But I'll never be the princess of poetry even if I live together with little pixies and elves in my magical mushroom house. Wizards fish for dragons in the imaginary river that trickles through my backyard. The hand of nature winds the water up like a music box of night. The small falls trickle. The narrow streams hiss. These are the visions of my fantasy, my creative truth. I've considered blaspheming this. I've thought about selling my soul. Well, not really. - just changing some of the content of my already written texts so I can write what someone else wants me to write without sacrificing too much soul. Never to say what someone else wants me to say. Never to be what someone else wants me to be. But I loathe having to interpolate my soul writing so I can enter some kind of self-centred, closed-minded, soulless writing contest that I will only lose. But it's almost as though I need some kind of verification or reassurance that I am good at what I have chosen to do with my life. That I am a good writer, even though, by creative providence, anyone who writes from the soul is a good writer. The soul is god over all creativity. My mind craves an acknowledgement that my creative spirit is worth something. But my spirit insists that I don't need someone else to determine the worth of my soul.

A group of angry old men that I did not even know chastised me as a child for they assumed that I told lies. For years I thought I was a liar. Into my head, I put thoughts and ideas about things I said and did based on what they thought about things I said and did.

Chastised for writing lies. … Chastised for writing truth. Sadly, I can't do anything right.

Again, what I write is not "the truth" as one once took me to mean. It's about the truth. Truth being the subject of the writing not a word describing its contents.

The search for truth continues…
The search for love continues…
The search for soul continues...
The search for goodness...

Elaine
May 6, 2006-