“I Am …,” I Said.
Thanks Neil ~ “What Defines You And How Does It Affect Your Interactions?”
This semiconscious prompt came to me pre-dawn recently, and I thought that my sense of it might be a familiar refrain to some of my poeting peers.
I am an introvert by nature and a recluse by choice. I avoid social situations like I have a highly communicable deadly disease because introductions require idle conversation and I prefer anonymity and the solitude of the sidelines.
Let me embellish these sensibilities; Invariably, at any typical social soiree, someone will say, “What do you do?”, and reluctantly I’ll say, “I’m a writer” because it sounds so pretentious, albeit not for long because next they’ll ask, “Oh, what have you written?” (“What do you write?” would be more appropriate, but only a writer would know that.) Replying, “All I Have To Leave Behind Are Words”, sounds more like my epitaph than a book title, so instead I say, “Well, more precisely, I’m a poet and a “self-help” guy, so, no stranger to obscurity. I doubt you know my work.”, which is usually their cue to either turn their attention away to someone else or awkwardly feign interest for a bit. Maybe instead of saying “I’m a writer” I should simply say “I write”, and see where that goes. It would be a lot more fun if I could reel off the titles of my best-selling novels. But that ain’t gonna happen.
My sense is, that this old hippie-headed poet dressed in his best “I don’t really give-a-shit about you or this event” thrift store sheik is not alone in his disdain for these self-aggrandizing bits of social intercourse.
Novels are not my forte. I can’t do fiction. It’s way too hard and it takes way too long(ADD and all). Instant gratification is more my speed. Novels are written to captivate and enthrall and I don’t know what this says about us, given that poets are rarely famous in their lifetime, and therefore not in it for the money, we write to fulfill ourselves and are rarely captivating, or enthralling, except perhaps to other poets.
Anyway, once that brief tête-à-tête described two paragraphs ago concludes, I get another drink and skedaddle with what’s left of my dignity back to the safety of the sidelines, and anonymity.
I have been a soldier, a coder, a trader, a builder, and now, a poet crusader. Four of those were sustaining careers, but none so rewarding, durable, and existentially defining as being a writer, or more precisely, a poet. I have never before been able to adequately express myself. But now, poetically and anecdotally, through wordsmithing and phrasing, writing gives my identity being and it succors my soul. I am defined in & by my writing.
© July 21, 2024 ~ RidgeMagee
Naively, But Doggedly,
With But Pen & My Poetry,
I Assail The Idiocy Of Bigotry.
