Why do I write?

 

WHY DO I WRITE?

 

"Children stand under and understand

the lemons of citrus  fears"

 

 

The question has upset my thinking for the last three days, so it might have some psychological gravity.  I am not anxious to address the gravity.

 

For thousands of years people first spoke and then wrote about the multiple environments (states of being-in-the-world they guess they inhabit.  In cultures where literacy dominate and deny validity to the oral, asking why do I write is trite.  People write.  Period. What is the profit of beating a dead mule?

 

In the age of the digital ( plus pandemic), the question assumes the guise of "the universal."   It matches the universality of the pandemic.

 

Why do you, I, and we write?  Select the pronouns with care.

 

The question "Why do I write circulates in the arena  of dialectics , in the territory of zero consensus, in traps that reject  justification .  I am a part of all that.  I write to affirm my absurd humanity.

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            July 3, 2021

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