Monday, September 22, 2014

A Simple and Sincere Account








Thoreau lays his scalpel along my vein.

I...require of every writer...a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives.

I type one-handed and shield my soft underbelly with the other. I cannot permit it.  My regrets, my shames, my failures are my own.  Better to scratch at the ugliness of others than to reveal my own darkness.

The price is too high, and so my words are dreck, stale and tepid. There is no healing in them.   My words themselves are sick. 

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

Taking the scalpel in wavering hand, the ink flowing red, I lance the wounds that sicken me. The pain is only a phantom whose story has little power.  The feverish healing begins.

My biggest wound was 


 (from Walden)










1 comment:

Cherry Odelberg said...

The price is too high. I am unscathed.