The pen used to be a beautiful thing. Now, it’s thrown to the side like old cassette tapes, waiting on us to remember the joys it once brought us. The beauty of writing used to be in the painful hand cramps and bruising right below the nail of your ring finger. The way the pen touched the paper was orgasmic to say the least, though nothing to be compared to Fifty Shades. It was like music the way each line had its own tune; the way the paper began to carry the pen. We’ve forgotten how it felt. We only know the sounds of keys dancing under the light of a monitor. We backspace instead of erasing those minor mistakes. While erasing, one had time to embrace the mistake and challenge it to happen again. A simple backspace does no justice in comparison.
The pages were beautiful. They came in every shape, size, and color. A watercolor canvas stained with barbecue sauce from last night's dinner could comfort even the loneliest soul. The way the paper felt was the best part. Like any animal, if held incorrectly it tends to bite back. I suffered numerous paper cuts due to my improper care. However, when held correctly it let out a faint whisper of inspiration. I think that’s how Virginia Woolf produced such glorious tellings. She held her writing and comforted her mistakes with a quick scribble or perhaps a smudge. Her papers spoke to her and coerced her emotions onto the page.
I do not discredit, though, the writings manufactured by monitors and keys; most of my best work comes from endless nights of typing and backspacing. The ultimate message is to just write in general. Regardless of your tactics, you must write. We must tailor our emotions into some great piece meant for the rest of the world. We must write, even if we are our only audience. Writing is a beautiful skill many take for granted. The way words compliment the page can only be compared to the way knowledge compliments humor or the way Leonardo DiCaprio compliments Kate Winslet.
We must write because our insides won’t let us carry the weight of the world anymore. We must loosen the top on our bottled up emotions and let the carbonated feelings saturate our papers and computer screens. If no one else will listen, just know that your pen and paper have ears; your keyboard and empty google word document have ears. The pains of the world are too devastating to carry inside of our small frames. Our organs get shifted and packed into one area. We begin to bleed internally. Let writing serve as our thoracotomy. Let writing stop the bleeding.
We must write because others can not. We have to be the voices for the ones unable to breath. Our words become extension cords for their words. As they’re being stomped out and silenced, we must remind the world that they stand for something. We must remind the world that we stand for something and that our words will not be denied access to the ears of the innocent and sheltered; we must tell them the truth.
We must write, because no one else will. We tell stories and paint pictures of grandiose heartbreak and betrayal; the glorious telling of true love's first kiss. We are bearing witness to the world and we must write so that our children, and our children's children, know the soil in which they were birthed. We must write so that they can write. We tell our stories so that they are able to tell theirs.
