Obscure Sorrows
In the
style of John Koenig’s “Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows”
Finitia
fy-ny-tee-ah,
fi-ni-sha:
The melancholy of completion
To write is to burn with the fire of
vision. The blank page roars in silence; it rages with invisible chaos. You
need only touch pen to paper to make it blossom.
Your creation starts out vague, awkward,
unsure of itself; but soon it tells you the shape it shall take. The work gains
momentum and your mood brightens. You give it your thoughts, feelings and memories;
you forget your troubles; you abandon yourself to the flow of joy.
Soon the gaps fill in, and you have a
first draft. But you see its flaws too well; so you revise the work, and revise
it again, impatient with its imperfections. You attack each draft with a red
pen and a critic’s joyous fury. You cut and paste, add and delete. Draft follows
draft, and faults fall away. The work turns transparent to your critical eye,
and it begins to glow from within.
Completion approaches, and the glow
brightens to a beacon. You run out of errors to correct and things to say. The
work says everything that you meant to say. Nothing more can be done.
You are glad to see the work emerge,
so full of light. Yet you are also sad, for now it is only one thing, and can no
longer be anything else. It’s in order, but you miss the chaos. You battled and
you won, but you are defeated by your victory.
The
flow is over. Now your creation is what it is, no more and no less. It won beauty
and it lost possibility.
The joy was in the creating.
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