The Questions are Big, the Answers Small

The questions of art are big, but the answers are small:

•  For years I didn't want to write. I wasn't blocked; I just somehow wasn't up to it. Realized that I needed but did not have a comfortable chair to sit in, and that the writing table at home was too high off the floor and uncomfortable to work at. Got some used office furniture that is just right. The chair that fits me best is a child's chair. So what.
• I didn't have the time I needed to practice my art. I began to steal the time. It worked for a long, long time and let me write four books.
• Felt too stressed and sickish to do my art. Hayfever, depression, acid reflux, anxiety, joint pain, etc. Turned 45 and realized I was mortal. Problem solved.
• I too often let good ideas get away because I wanted to be polite or look attentive. Now I switch on the light, get up and write the ideas down. Ideas and strange notions flood me during poetry readings and workshops. Now I take along a notebook and pen. Looks like I'm taking notes. I am!
• My "neat gene," inherited from my mom, tortured me into deep-cleaning the refrigerator and dusting the fan blades when I should have been writing. Answer #1: Sports injury left me immovable and all I could do was write. I found cleaning did not matter. Answer #2: Got well. Budgeted for someone to clean the house once a month. Bonus: When she leaves, the house is clean top to bottom.
• I couldn't get solitude, not even a whole hour alone, because significant other, although a writer himself, didn't like that I shut my door to write. I mean, he took action against it. Applied to writers' colonies where I stayed for a couple of weeks at a time. Relief. Then chucked him. Voila, problem solved.

So Much Good Writing

Why are there so many good creative writers these days? Having recently read some litmags -- the Spoon River Poetry Review, Rattle, the new issue of Natural Bridge -- and some collections of poetry and nonfiction, I'm awed. Today in the U.S. there is more good writing by more good writers than ever.

One can reply "Leisure," pointing out that a great many people (but not all who want to, not by a long shot) may now pursue what was formerly an elite activity. Along those lines of practical reasons you'd have to include "literacy" and "education" and "freedom of speech."

But, from a spiritual angle, the swell of creative writing is perfectly parallel to the swell of lies and con games invented by those who use life and language and imagination not to enlighten us but to make us smaller, needier, more complacent, and more anxious. Creative writing is a form of resistance. The more lies we are told, the more we are urged to be ignorant -- and that's not natural -- the more we resist. Simple. And, writers: GOOD JOB!!!