Thank you so much, Sheryl Martin, for you kind words! you really have made me think about how and why i write.
i actually have a significantly longer essay that started to emerge in response to your own gift to me. However, it is too — idk, rambling, self-absorbed, or something that just is not ready for publication, and perhaps never should or will be.
however, i will attempt to distill to something palatable what i am now marinating in, as a result.
i hope that i am creeping towards what i considered a hallowed land of creative writing, of crafting words that would be gifts poetic. i look at the art that surrounds me here on Medium, and sometimes aghast at my temerity in sharing my “work”.
In any case, while the term “angst” carries in some contexts, or for some people, a negative connotation, i soooo relate, unapologetically, to your words, “strangled soul”. i wonder if perhaps i am too limited in my writing scope, but find i canʻt write (or play, or act, for that matter) anything personally satisfying that does not speak with truth, that does not come from a place of honest experience, from that which i recognize in my life, of which i have not just knowledge, but a deeper knowing, that touches beyond the intellect, that reaches . . . idk, spirit? Is that what they call gnosis? if angst is what emerges from this, my oft-times drowning spirit, that is indeed something which it recognizes, “knows”, in a gnostic manner of speaking, and therefore, carries with it a personal truth. Perhaps that is what is perceived by some as a gift of poetry. i can only hope.
at the very least, i find some artistic (and at least personal, if not spiritual) validation in A. E. Housmanʻs lines,
“Why, if ʻtis dancing you would be,
Thereʻs brisker pipes than poetry.”~ ”Terence, This is Stupid Stuff” (A Shropshire Lad, LXII). 1896. A.E. Housman (1859–1936)
thank you again for your gift!!!!!
