&#034On n&#039écrit pas la chance qu&#039on a, pas de chansons d&#039amour quand on en a. Voilà pourquoi, mon amour, je n&#039écris rien sur toi. Rassure-toi.&#034 -Zazie, &#034Sur Toi&#034

You know, I love to write. As if the four hundred plus poems, the hundreds of papers/reports/projects, notebooks full of notes, and nearly a finished novel don&#039t express that sentiment enough, but I just really enjoy writing. The process of taking a pen in hand or tapping my fingers across the spine of a keyboard just electrifies my mind, excites me, charges me. I sat down today at lunch under a tree on a bench and just wrote in the new journal I just bought (I filled the last one after two months&#039 worth of writing). Nothing important, nothing earth-shattering; just words, sentences, paragraphs. My sinuses, my aches and pains, all gone in an moment of writing on green paper with a green pen. Life is so much clearer when it appears on paper, on a screen in letters that can be gone over, re-read, and sorted out rather than mixed up in a jumble in a tired mind. Some people exercise, some people eat, some people play video games as their forms of therapy, their distractions. I write. I can&#039t imagine never writing again. My poetry, my books, my random scribblings on blank pages between French notes and physics homework… It&#039s so important to me.

Why keep a journal full of personal thoughts that no one else should ever read? Because writing my thoughts down helps me to organize my mind, my musings. Why rant on a web page that only a half dozen people frequent? Because it makes me feel like I&#039m reaching out, trying to communicate where I so often fail in person. Why write poem after poem that scant few will ever read and probably fewer actually enjoy? Because playing with the language, with imagery, with emotions is such a release, a joy. Why write a novel (worse yet, a series of novels) if I don&#039t care if they are ever published? Because it&#039s a challenge, a huge project of organization and imagination, an exercise of the mind like running a dozen marathons one right after the other, all the while knowing that even if I don&#039t win, the effort has gained me more experience than not doing it could.

I love writing. I think that&#039s why I like Zazie&#039s song &#034Sur Toi&#034 so much because it&#039s all about writing and why people write. My translation of the above lines are this: &#034We don&#039t write about luck when we have it, no love songs when we&#039re in love. That&#039s why, my love, I don&#039t write about you. Don&#039t worry.&#034

Posted: June 2, 2004 at three in the afternoon.