On the Self-Hatred Which Accompanies Literary Melancholy.

  I haven't written anything of consequence publicly since 2009. The shame a writer feels when silent is unconquerable. Though, amusing, since one who believes in the importance of writing does so because it's despondency's antithesis. Yet the type prone to prose parrots their parents failings, through projecting only onto art, as their only children, only negligence.

  You see, the clock is not circular but constantly stretching it's hands, always close to reaching the pen from which it could start documenting time and therefore validating it. But to dissect your ability to affect change from the lazy river in which you're cyclically floating would rile up the water a little and I'm pretty sure your hair is the most important part of today. So don't worry about it.

  Well, until you find yourself with no tether to any former you. If you happen to be someone you hate (which I'm not) then you might hate reading about yourself (which I don't think I would.) But also, if you're a person you hate (which I think I'm becoming) then maybe you should have read more about yourself as a villain (which I still won't.) From there, it's only learning to take down an adversary, and that's basically all I can do (though I really don't.)

  And when self-betterment is ruled out as enough motivation, what's left is just art. It's the desire to see beauty and point it out. I googled poetry and it spoke exclusively of intensity. And of intensity, I have no shortage. But if that intensity is satisfyingly internalized, or expressed to be consumed, which is nobler? As the tree falls in the woods, is a poetic mind within itself heard? Or is duty, to use a word that makes me laugh, to a hypothetical listener enough reason to speak?

  Recognition is a dirty word that drains us. It fuels the saddest amongst us: our celebrities, our politicians, our reality show chefs and our louder acquaintances. And recognition, our expletive, suffocates the saddest author I've ever been. Approval is not friendship as well as respect does not equal love. Documenting the things I know to show the people I love means that I want their money or their admiration, which I do. So where then, is any honor in the life of one who wants to live by helping people live as themselves?

  I can't (but I can) make myself write every day. I want someone to listen but not everyone and my head's been too globalized to grasp less. This has been the most satisfying typing I've had in forever, so there must be something here. I feel like I stumbled on a small spot of grass I used to lay on in the woods. I can lay around and sing, maybe some birds or hikers will hear a bit, but no one's being forced to. This is all I want.

  I smoke to die.

-Grizzly Goldman