I find the world unknowable and therefore fascinating, unfamiliar and therefore irresistible. I long for that space where life seems uncertain, where I have to revise or reject the comfortable assumptions and convictions that have structured my life.
I used to frequent a local coffee shop where I often saw a particular woman. Whenever she saw me, she would move to the table next to mine and start writing on whatever piece of paper she had available. After a few minutes, she would hand me the piece of paper covered in rapid scrawlings and signed AST, smile, and then sit silently. I don’t recall her ever speaking to me. I don’t see her any longer — the coffee shop has closed. I miss our encounters. I learned a lot from watching her and trying to understand her world, which was very different from mine. Now and then, when I’m feeling smug, I pull out those sheets of paper and look back over them.
A few years back, an incarcerated man sent me a couple letters outlining his critique of society. Pages filled with carefully hand-written words, each letter almost typewriter perfect. Diagrams drawn with draftsman like precision. In the upper left corner, in place of a staple, an orange thread pierced the pages and stitched them together. Another encounter with a world that is very different from mine. Those letters are in the drawer with the pages from AST.
These encounters with the absurdity of life give me energy. Some unanswered and probably unanswerable longing for the unknown drives me. That longing is the wellspring of all my creativity, which might turn out to be ravings of a lunatic, but what higher purpose can there be for creativity.