i got the rage in me every now and then

Keep stealing from other writers, like all of ‘em do, but somehow when I steal, it never turns out to be grand larceny, just a simple misdemeanor; I get a slap on the wrist, and I’m back on the street again hunting down my literary pimp, need to score some words and shoot ‘em into my veins, feel them race through my bloodstream, giving me the high of my life.

Because I’m after the madness, searching it out, looking in the deep, dark crevices of my brain where it usually hangs out, waiting for just the right moment to spring into action and ruin me as a human being…it stalks me like a homicidal maniac, watching me, taking notes, learning my behavior, my patterns, rummaging through my synapses in hopes of exposing some vulnerability, some tragedy from my sordid past. But my madness hasn’t factored in the level of my courage. It doesn’t expect me to confront it so boldly in the light of the noonday sun. It’s sitting there, hibernating like a big black bear conserving its energy for the big hunt.

And the words keep coming, and I can’t control their flow. They just want me to lay them down on paper, in no particular chronological order, no real meaningful way, just smash them against the page like a Pollack painting, put the words into a turkey baster and squeeze them out through the tip, watch them splatter all over the page, combine with other words to form colors and shades and contrast and composition, drip off the page into oblivion, into obscurity, into thin air and space.

What matters most is not the stringing together a succession of words that express a specific idea, thought, dogma, truth, philosophy, point of view, or opinion. Getting the words down matters, even if they stray from your original intent. Even if they become obscure and oblique and predictable as a rock-hard c**k at dawn, and you read them out loud to yourself the following day after you’ve slept like a teething baby and realize what a piece of s**t it is and crumple it up and toss it into the circular file.

If you can get up off your a*s and do that again and again, then congratulations, you got the rage in you, too.

Reviews

[GlendaK]

And, yet, the therapist always advises to write is a great form of therapy.

[Philip Gaber]

It is. Hemmingway said his typer was his therapist. I believe in that. No one knows you like you know yourself. That's why psychiatrists are a trap, he said, as he's about to enter therapy next month.

[GlendaK]

Unless it is some kind of punishment, you will be in control of the length of therapy. You are a good judge of character and real life. I hope it works out.

[Philip Gaber]

It's a bit disconcerting. It seems like I have two cases of mental illness coexisting in the same brain because writing is a form of mental illness, I feel. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. "I always wonder if eventually those who steal will find that madness overcomes the creativity to the extent that they are unable even to plagiarize." Well said! Thanks, Jacob, I appreciate your time.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

I always wonder if eventually those who steal will find that madness overcomes the creativity to the extent that they are unable even to plagiarize.
Head on the pillow at night...and we go to sleep with our conscience.
j.

[Philip Gaber]

I hope so...I f****n' hope so.