On writing

This is going to be a short blog.

A survival blog.

An I'm-overwhelmed-and-don't-have-time-to-write-right-now blog.
This is an after-the-fact blog, a take-a-deep-breath blog, a there-is-so-much-going-on-in-the-world-blog, a how-could-I-possibly-sit-still-for-even-a-moment blog...

An essential blog.

This blog, this writing, this act of creation, needs to take place. For me. For my own sanity, for my own survival. This act I must do. This moment I must take.

There have been so so many others who have said the same thing much better. Under much more trying circumstances. Why create? Why write? Why think?

It is Nelson Mandela writing for 30 years in the prison of Apartheid.

It is Georgia O'Keefe noticing, really noticing, a flower. The skull of a cow.

It is Paulo Freire engaging, teaching, revising, communicating.

It is Martin Luther King, Jr., in an Alabama jail;

it is Henry David Thorea in a Massachusetts jail;

it is Arundhati Roy unwriting a dam with her pen.

It is Andrea Gibson, tiny as the universe, standing up on a lit stage in a darkened room:

"we have to create
it is the only thing louder than destruction
it is the only chance the bars are going to break,
our hands full of color
reaching towards the sky
a brushstroke in the dark
it is not too late
that starry night
is not yet dry"