Reading Possession by A.S. Byatt always makes me think, about writing, about poetry. I try not to read it too often, only once a decade or so. I have a clear visual fantasy of sitting at a desk, in layers of grey silk skirts, with pen, inkwell, and ivory parchment. Pen poised, the moment before it begins. Writing.
Why do writers think so much of writing, of the act itself, the scratch of pen on paper, the texture of the surface under the paper, the way the ink either dances across the page or cuts through it, separating the white from the dark. Is it the whiteness of the page that holds the meaning or the ink splashed across it? Does the meaning lie in the ink or what the ink separates? Is all the meaning lost with the plastic tap of squares with letters on them and a light box with pixels and images of pages? I want to say yes, but I've never even owned a fountain pen or inkwell. It's always seemed like it would be sacrilege, to allow my penmanship to destroy a fine nib, my thoughts to desecrate paper's purity.
I read somewhere that if you wonder if you're sane, then you probably are. Why do I worry about it so much? Why on earth would it matter if I wasn't? Why do I value my mind so much? Would I miss it if it was gone? Where would it go? Maybe it would be happier there. It's not like I'm a genius.
How many voices are trapped in my head? I like the analogy, but the idea that the voices in my head are linked together enough to form fully-fleshed yet ethereal personalities is creepy. How many voices must be in someone's head before they struggle to express themselves through the hands, through writing? I have half-voices, connected to nothingness, always whispering like leaves in a wind, suggesting, hoping, shivering with fear. Contradicting each other.
What my hands write isn't always true, is never the whole truth. There is no whole truth, I think. What is true and real in the flash of a second is false and wrong the next. One moment's profound insight is the next moment's banality. All my writing is simultaneously a complete falsehood with an underlying core of truth. Or is it the other way around?
I always think of writing as an activity of the hands, of WRITING with a pen. I would hesitate to desecrate a good writing implement with my handwriting, my scratching and clawing words scrabbling their way across the page, desperate to escape. My mother has such lovely handwriting, so small and neat and tidy. My handwriting rebelled in ways the rest of me could not. I was a tidy, controlled, intelligent blonde child with perfect grades. Except in handwriting. I gripped my pencil as if it was the mother's breast I never nursed from, made my mark with such force I broke the lead once a day. My writing ran away from my tight control, refused to be tamed. It was my own.
I always wanted to run away, far away, burst out of my tight little existence, flee the scene of the crimes I was too much of a coward to commit. I've always wanted to run away. But what if no one comes after me? What if they don't notice? I did run away, once, for an afternoon. My mother thought I was next door playing at the neighbor's house. I never told her otherwise, made up some excuse for why I'd packed a bag with all my money and my diary and my elephant. I didn't know how to get anywhere. I was always too stupid to know where to go, and too smart to set off without an end in sight.
I wanted someone to come after me, find me, save me. From myself. From my simultaneous urges to run away and be found, to be perfectly in control and to be wild and free, to destroy everything I've ever loved or wanted, to take what I wanted and be thought bad and wrong. To not care. To not be afraid. To be out of control.
I've spent my life so far struggling against my two halves, control and freedom, wanting to run away and be found, wanting to be a strong feminist and find myself but have someone else be willing to take on the responsibility for my salvation. And yet I believe I'm responsible for my own salvation. What do I need saving from anyway?
So I write. As if twenty six letters and ink and paper can give me an answer to questions I don't know the words to express. Hoping I'll stumble upon it by accident someday, "Ah, yes, that was what I meant to say all along."