Zero Bldg.
I look at how comfortable the pen rests in my hand--not pinched, but nestled in the crease of my thumb, rolled between the middle and index
I read an article once that began “The problem with writing is words”* Being that words do not self-manifest—do not just appear with no creator of sorts behind them, the problem with words could, conversely, be writing.**
As a writer, I bombard myself with words until any tangible vessel would overflow. Unfortunately, the human brain, to my knowledge*** cannot saturate. It will continue taking on information from all receptors until it deteriorates beyond recognition. In myself, I see evidence of this in that no thought goes by checked—leaving with perhaps four or five iterations. At the speed of thought, there is no self-editing.
One would expect that from these constant volleys of words carrying information, great knowledge would be gleaned as inevitable as nightfall, and yet... and yet and yet. No real organization comes, only the ability to arrange what is received and return it reconstructed, deconstructed, reconstituted, refurbished or completely unchanged.****
Lately I wonder if this channeling of information is not from wont of knowledge, wisdom—even the information itself—but an addiction; a need by which one suffers for lack and abundance. Or, as William Burroughs posited, words themselves are a virus as would be the need for them. By definition, a virus is an organism that feeds and transmits, a state I feel I am in much of the time.
And upon having this occur to me, it occurs then that this is the most original thought I’ve had in a while. And I’m not sure if that proves or negates any of this.
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* I now invite you to experience that article second-hand, free of context. Incidentally, the article was in Context magazine.
** Or writers. Or me.
*** Funny, that word. Broken in half, it becomes a warning: “know” “ledge.” Appropriate that thinly hidden in the word upon which we foist so much power is a warning to be aware of our—or its—limitations.
**** Why research if not to plagiarize? Possibly to avoid cliché. There’s another interesting root word, “plague.”
