Speaking is the fastest form of communication. And that makes it the most prone to error. Chiseling a message into stone is probably the slowest, and the place where an error lasts the longest. Or so I assume. I only thought about it for a little while and then I typed it out. Writing resides somewhere in the middle, a ponderous form of communication that also can be done flippantly and swiftly.
Writing is about making choices, about revising and refining. It is about bringing a toolkit of craft built over the years and applying the contents to a problem. Writing can be wonderful, writing can be profound, writing can be profane and urbane and terrible and low and pointless. Writing can be what it is crafted to be.
I'm working on making changes in life. The kind of changes that are supposed to be permanent and positive. The kind of changes that I know will be painful and wonderful and temporary and permanent. Because change is usually all of those things. If you see the world as a long process of constant change it becomes easy to ignore the chapters and the verses that define who we were at a certain time. And if you ignore the content of each sentence then you ignore the meaning of the whole story.
It is an argument I have made before and an argument I will make again.
For tonight I am stamping my foot into the dust and saying that the things I did today mattered. The things that I have said today mattered. And that if I stomp in the same spot often enough then I stop just saying and start carving.
Whether or not I will leave behind a litany of errors is for the future to decide. My chapter and verse will be in the attempt not to do so.
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