Can Writing Be Its Own Reward?

How often have you heard someone referred to as narcissistic? Perhaps, in the past, you, like myself, have assassinated a character or two with the casual utterance of this word.

Yet are we not all touched by narcissism? Do we all not grease this cog in the wheel of our becoming? Certainly, those who receive our condemnation may have it emblazoned on their chest, but there are others too; those who keep it safely hidden like a mouse in their shirt pocket, tenderly feeding it in the sanctity of solitude; or those who briefly succeed in burying it alive, until it bursts from the mud with a piercing wail.

The question you ask yourself: If an artist was stranded alone on a desert island would she still experience the same joy from her art?

No one writes for no one. Every book, poem, article, missive is written to be read. To read is to write and to write is to read and through both, we commune with ghosts; we light dark and forgotten corners, provoke thought, arouse the body, remind ourselves we are not alone.

Yet we are alone. We can only be so in the act of reading and writing. For we are talking to the ghosts of ourselves and, through this dialogue, becoming.

Every reading is a misreading and every reading is utterly, terrifyingly unique. It brings to bear an infinitude of meaning upon every sound, word, sentence, paragraph, chapter; each rustle of a turning page and every recollection.

Can ghosts be narcissistic? Because that is what you are when you read and write. For no sooner do you hold the substance in your fingers than it slips away, scurrying off to meet its brothers and sisters in your cities of the dead.

What is your reward?

Becoming.

Silently, continuously becoming.

Oh, it certainly does feel nice to get that pat on the back Mummy and Daddy never gave you — for a moment at least. But the moments become smaller, and smaller, and smaller. There are no such moments, big or small, in those old haunts where you truly feel seen by no one. What an irony that this is where we writers feel most free, before and after the blaring lack of fanfare, amid the curves, ridges, and lines we take for granted, sequestered in our cities of the dead.

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