"ask yourself in the stillest hour..."

in
"You are directing your thoughts outwards, and that above all is what you should not do at present. No one can advise and help you. No one. There is only one way. Withdraw into yourself... ask yourself in the stillest hour of the night, 'Must I write?' Dig deep into yourself for an answer. And if this answer should be in the affirmative, if you can meet this solemn question with a simple strong 'I must,' then build up your life according to this necessity. Your life right down to its most indifferent and unimportant hour must be a token at a witness to this compulsion."

"must i write?"

in

Current fear: that I used up and exorcised all of my stores of anger and rage and things unsaid in LAST CHRISTMAS and that I needed that anger and rage to fuel and fill the well of what passes for my writing practice. Maybe that's true, maybe not. My wife said to me last night, as she sought to calm my frayed hyperventilations, "but you love writing,” to which I said:

"No, I don't."

It's the first time I've ever said it (aloud) and I know I'm at least somewhat correct. To love an inextricable – for better or for worse – part of myself is a fool's errand: there are days when it's my breath and there are days when it's nothing more than another chronic, incurable autoimmune disorder that I'll have with me until the day I die: I'm not sure that you can love something that's such a part of you that it's become another limb, another part of you that makes you you.

To quote Tina Turner, "What's love got to do with it?"

Thinking this morning of Rilke's first letter in LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET:

"You are directing your thoughts outwards, and that above all is what you should not do at present. No one can advise and help you. No one. There is only one way. Withdraw into yourself... ask yourself in the stillest hour of the night, 'Must I write?' Dig deep into yourself for an answer. And if this answer should be in the affirmative, if you can meet this solemn question with a simple strong 'I must,' then build up your life according to this necessity. Your life right down to its most indifferent and unimportant hour must be a token and a witness to this compulsion."

I must.