The Looking Glass Confession

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   "In the beginning was Initiation. The flesh profiteth nothing; the 
    mind profiteth nothing; that which is unknown to you and above 
    these, while firmly based upon their equilibrium, giveth life."

Sometimes I have to wonder if my words are my own or if I'm channeling dead poets.

I will get caught up in the process of crafting one of these small tales and there are these words, phrases, rhymes, verses and rhythms that will come out of me from some sliver in my mind: voices, images, laments and strange elementals searing through my nerves and neurons — like fire and ice, dark and light — in a synergised quartet ballet.

Then, when I'm finished, and I read these tiny symbols that I've strung together into a tapestry of sorts, I have to sit here befuddled with both disbelief and wonderment that I am looking upon a creation — whole and self-contained with its own personality — by my hand. 

But am I penning the contents of my own mind, or am I a vessel for a menagerie of passing spirits? The sensible answer, of course, is that yes, it is, indeed, mine. And creators happen to be notorious for sharing their exploits so that they might find their immortal place in the heavens and hells and purgatories of our busy, laborious lives. We set them free into the tempests of taste, interpretation, slander and praise, and, unlike their creators, they endure the best and the worst of it all with hardly a crease.

I've been writing since I was 12 years old. That's 22 years of an obsessive passion to expand my vocabulary; to learn all the nuances of linguistic expression; to navigate a narrative away from the blight of cliché and stereotype; to learn how to intimāte atmosphere and tenor, light and dark; to evoke within the reader a lucid reverie of the delicacies and subtleties of the somatic experience; to weave together universes, unfold vaster landscapes, and bend to my will the very fabric of reality...

And, as with all tall tales, resolve the dissonances, assuage the grievances, and reconcile the opposites. Of course, not all good stories have the happiest endings, nor should they. There are those rare, crystalline moments where tragedy is the hero, where a lament becomes the lullaby of lovers, where despair triumphs the life fantastic for just enough breath, and just enough desperate passion, to tell its story.

We are all just living tomes of flesh, blood, shadow and soul; the ephemera of the material; the revenants of pain and pleasure; ever feeding on the eidolons of faith, hope and love. We are the pages, the quills, the ink, and the binding. We are all each the apocalypse of our own inner worlds with wonders and raptures at our fingertips, and it's so obvious...

Do you see it? Do you recognise it? 

Ahh, there it is. It's beautiful.

And oh, the stories...