the brothers crow

It’s weak writing, unrefined and unrevised. I know that, and yet I still press on. I can feel the rawness of it, the stark honesty. The stream of consciousness is laid bare, and I can almost dip my hands in the flow and feel his emotion. I know his fear, I know his drive.

There have been others before him, men with ambitious dreams and plans for epics. Their stories fell short, unfinished, like so many grandiose visions of the past. Starting is hard, finishing is harder.

That fear is like my own. No, it is my own. It’s not even projection anymore, I know that I share the same tension, the paralyzing choking which seals my heart to my ribs and clogs my throat. The slight congestion in my nostrils becomes overwhelming, and I feel like I can’t breathe.
No, it’s worse than that. I can breathe in, but I cannot breathe out.

I am taking, I am absorbing. By the grace of god, you might even say I’m learning. But I am not giving back. The imagination grows stale, and the weight of the images presses down on my spine. I slouch and look downward, and the sky becomes a stranger.

—

I feel the gaps growing larger. Not in just my story, but every other. Before, when I was younger, I needed little details. I could fill in the holes without a touch of effort, and the weakest story became my own. I could close my eyes and see it all, whether I wanted to or not. It would consume me. It would demand expression, and I was a slave to the paper.

But now we’ve become strangers. We are old friends, once upon a time, who just barely recognize each other’s faces when passing in the dark. I still remember the other faces though, faces of people yet to be written, people whose stories have yet to be told.

So much has been written already. Perhaps my stories are not worth reading, and perhaps they offer nothing new. But they are mine, and no two stories are alike. Such silliness, such cowardice should not be suffered any further.

But will it?

—

I have these moments where I feel terrible for not writing anymore. It’s a shame that grows larger as time grows longer, and when I imagine the reunion the pain becomes unbearable. When I think of all that I have forgotten forever, knowing that there is no return and that it will never be the same, I shudder and flinch.

They say that the way to discover your true calling is to pretend you’re a millionaire, without a care or concern in the world. But that’s a damn lie, because I know I want to write, but I know it’ll hurt no matter how much time or money I have. It’ll always hurt because it’ll always be hard, always be painful, always be nearly impossible. It’s always just a little less than it should be, and I never have an excuse for why.

—

I’m near the end of King’s story. I have 224 pages remaining. I can’t imagine how agonizing it must have been to come this far. At first I was appalled by his audacity to place himself within the story. It seemed so arrogant, so insulting. But… I think I understand why he did it. It may be the only way he could do it, because it’s as much about him as it is about anything else.

It’s a story about a need, a compulsion, an inexplicable and unjustifiable desire to do one thing above all else. It’s as complicated and as simple as that.

I don’t know what answer he found, or what ending he wrote. Maybe I’ll change my tune 224 pages from now.