A conference with demons

Writing is a conference with demons, said Kafka. What does that mean? You’re not living, so you write, or you write because you don’t live. Somehow the two are intertwined, writing and death. And with every word you bite deeper into the apple. Writing begins to surround you, as you realise it always has. So you look around for a new beginning and you realise it’s already your end.

No writer should call himself a writer. When I speak of the sin of writing about myself – it’s a sin, to be sure, but who am I? Perhaps the sin is writing itself.

This my go-between to no one. In lieu of a line to God. A substitute for the strength to write to no one. A remainder of hope, or a hope against hope: strange phrase.

Muster the strength to say: begin again, from the end. From the ruin you’ve made of your life, that has been made of your life.

Alone yet not alone. All manner of voices obstruct my silence.

I write and writing ruins me: I can’t feel my mouth, my fingers, or rather I feel another mouth, other fingers, in these words that never meet or part.

I dreamed that writing wrote me.