And I did not write for many evenings that followed. In my new security I began to see it all in a different light. I began to hate that inner chemical excitement that made me run the words through my head while getting ready to set them down on the page; I felt a revulsion against the long isolation that writing imposes, that claustration, the sense of exclusion; I experienced a thrill of distaste for the alternative life that writing is supposed to represent. It was then that I saw the business of writing for what it truly was and is to me. It is you penance for not being lucky. It is an attempt to reach others and to make them love  you. It is your instinctive protest, when you find you have no voice at the world’s tribunals, and that no one will speak for you. I would give my entire output of words, past, present, and to come, in exchange for easier access to the world, for permission to state “Look at me”. And I do not go back on this. For once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And writing is the enemy of forgetfulness, of thoughtlessness. For the writer there is no oblivion. Only endless memory.

-Anita Brookner

Look At Me

John Bielecki

Author John Bielecki

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