On writing and other demons

Lately, I’ve been asked why I don’t write more often.

I find that a very intriguing, mesmerizing and extremely personal question.

One I think I’ve avoided myself for very long.

Many years ago (in my world that means about 8) someone whose opinion on life I valued a bit too much told me to never stop writing... after reading to me, some cozy but grizzly lines I wrote many months before about the future, by a time I had already forgotten I had written.

To write is at times, to deconstruct, to walk the same steps… to trip on the same rocks…. to laugh at the same jokes.

It, at times can be excruciating, living again the uncertainty of the “what ifs”, and at times can be glorious, just like when you are 13 and you just come out of the coma to figure out that girl you like so much had just given you a kiss…. its writing, and not the writer, who takes its own course.

But the funny thing is, that just as life itself, writing sometimes seems to take its own decisions, its own roads, and its own detours at the least expected point.

Sometimes it can be a breeze of smiles, sometimes it can be compared to child birth (assuming I had an idea what the hell am talking about, since I don’t have a vagina).

A very exhausting process at times, that might end up with a few miserable lines not worth of any attention, or a fun ride that ends up with pages of hilarity, happiness and an 18 hour grin.

It’s all a tangly mess of highways, where left or right turns are decided on mood, and loops and intersections seem to be the end of every road.

You never know where its going to get… it might take you the smell of the hair of your first girlfriend mixed with Coppertone, or to the smell of the flowers, earth and the salty flavor of tears at grandpa’s funeral.

Its such a thrill to navigate what one think are known seas that, at some inexplicable point, somehow become the edge of a middle age world map, complete with dragons, sirens and cliffs not just drawn but convincingly real.

Such is the mystery, even though every single word you write was in your mind to begin with, just in a different order, if anything… but then, when I wrote “lately” at the beginning of this post… I didn’t had a clue I was going to end it remembering how much of a thrill is to write, and how much of a thrill is to live, not once, but twice because of it.