Today was my last Writing for Publication class. The professor gave us the same assignment he gave us day one: start with "I write" and carry on from there, for 5 minutes. Go. Incidentally, last night I re-discovered my journal and delved somewhat into this question of writing. Anyway, the first section was my class assignment, and the second was my journal entry. Merci.

I write because I can, because I want, because I love. If the trees didn't so persistently torment me into inspiration, I would not write. If the lake were not so green and blue and greeny-yellow-blue, I would not, could not write.

I write because I like to find
Rhyming words of different kind.
From yellow chicks hopping in their nest
To when the sunlight takes its rest,
I write.
For if I didn't I might
Explode.

Freed from stifled thoughts, my words sometimes dance or drip or stumble or collapse onto pages and books and volumes. I write because who listens? No one can listen, no one will listen. The pages listen, for in their silence they cannot interrupt me.

I write to be remembered. I write because I fear I will forget. And if I forget me, who then can recall me? I desperately write to leave my mark, my authorship, my name up something no one can interrupt. I will not go away. That is why I write.

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I hear your whispers, but there are voices all around me... and they are friendly voices. But they are not listening. No, indeed they babble on and on and never cease. There, again! You speak too, but I don't know if I like it. It's so different, and I truly fear that which I do not know.

I think I write because I want people to listen to me. When you're filling lines and pages and volumes with ink and words and sentences, no one can interrupt you. They can put down what you've scrawled and walk away, but even then the pages cannot escape your thoughts. Why am I so determined to leave my mark, to sign my work, to claim my authorship? LISTEN TO ME! I always feel unheard. You'd think for someone so desperately longing to be heard that I would be one who listens well to others and to the Lord. Not so. Always speaking but never heard. Truly, I am both blind and deaf.

"I will not forget you. I have swept away your offences like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me for I have redeemed you" (Isaiah 45:22)

He will not forget me! Why should I be so concerned with leaving a mark? I have been cleansed and redeemed...

So I stop my desolate wanderings and sit and cry, my face angled away from the city lights before me. Sometimes this is me returning.