We Are The Written

Fosterverse Weekly #26

Oct 29, 2024

There's a common conception of artists, especially writers, doing a lot of hard work to surface our quote on quote truths.

We sit down, dig deep, deploy any number of modalities and methods at our disposal, and, hopefully, unveil a beautiful gem of poetic honesty.

In truth, the exact opposite process is the case.

We work hard to suppress the truth, constantly, and when the truth does come out it's only because a part of us finally gave up hanging on so damn tight to one of the million+ carefully manufactured delusions we created to cleverly obscure the truth from ourselves.

The truth will come out eventually, as they say, and “it will set you free.” The process of allowing it to come out is a hard one, no doubt. But that’s not because anything needs to be “done.” Rather, it’s because a bunch of things we've been conditioned to do need to be undone and not-done.

As a starting point, “we” are not what’s most important to set free.

We get out of the way of the truths, desires, eros that beg to flow through us, and once we do, they work on us and we and everything around us changes. Absolutely nothing needs to be “done” for this to happen.

Reality itself does most of the heavy lifting, working on and through us, and to an extent well beyond our preconceived notions of what would or could or should happen. Once we fully recognize what needs to be recognized, things just. start. happening. Truths take on a life of their own and begin to pave a path. We might simply walk it. Though if we’re not careful, we might instead get dragged kicking and screaming. At best we learn to enjoy the ride, because we are no longer (and never really were!) in control.

Such recognitions, realizations, reckonings take us like a set of powerful waves all the way to the shoreline we were always destined for, and in the best possible way, leave us on the sandy beach broken wide open and gasping for air. The sun rises and life begins to reorder itself around the truer truth that’s impregnated the very fabric of reality around us. We start anew and the tides only ever grow stronger.

Last night I screamed at the trees and told them that I’ll shed every last leaf on my body right alongside them if that’s what this takes. I can't fight it anymore. I’m unwilling, unable, forced to give up and give through, forced to welcome the waves in whatever length, height, duration they may come. Screaming YES to each one and letting them tear me wide open, all the way to the inevitable shore.

There's this part of me that wants to rip off all my clothes in front of everyone I’ve ever met and yell at them to look at me. REALLY LOOK AT ME. KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN AND LOOK.

I want them to see my bare naked ass and my soft bodied stomach, notice one square centimeter of my flesh at a time and yet somehow the whole of me too, see my glistening sweat reflect who I am, witness my birthmarks and defects; how one of my armpits has substantially more hair than the other and how they’re somehow perfectly symmetrical with my asymmetrical eyebrows and, of course, how it all makes divine sense that I would be exactly this way.

I want them to know how utterly insane I am and hear the things I really think about this world. I want them to know the secrets I carry, the ones I hold not because I’m afraid to speak them, but because they’re so unspeakable. I want them to feel the full and total gradient of life experience I’ve felt; know the many heavens and hells that I’ve visited.

I want to take the truth to the top of a hill in Central Park and wrestle it into submission, laugh like a hyena when I realize I am, once again, the one who’s submitted, and then howl at the moon in surrender to nature as it rises above a glass skyscraper.

I want to write like shit, really just fuck up my sentences and trip over myself and my grammar and use too many cliche metaphors and break all the rules— not because I don't care for words but because I care so much I'm careless, like two lovers who rip each others clothes off and break a few sacrificial vases on the way into the bedroom.

I yearn for the truth, or perhaps more accurately, the truth yearns for me. However it may come and whatever structure it may take — let er’ rip.

For alas we are not writers. We are the written.

P.S. Writing Circles are dedicated containers for allowing the truth move through us and into creative expression. They might just change you! ;) There’s no howling at the moon required…