A symbol of status.

Oftentimes, when you run out of words, you change the way the words are read.

You twist, you turn, you melt. You manipulate. To change the way the words are read, the way that the sentences come across, so that the nubile-minded reader might reach into the Grand Guignol universe of the Whatever-It-Is that is presenting them with the sublime gift of printed text, if only to bring themselves ever so much closer to someone else’s headspace, if only to help people come together, like precious lovers in a movie running across the width of a 2:35:1 frame with so much careless abandon; you -- meaning I -- the proverbial scribbler; we do this when we cannot bring our capacities to manage anything else. We manipulate. I try to manipulate, when I can’t bring my sentences to a place where the main idea could be managed by anything else. It’s cheap, is what it is.

It’s cheap.

It’s also fairly common. And it works, for a time at least. But bit by inch, inch by bit, the people -- the you’s, and the I’s -- start to notice. They start to see through the mechanical nature of our proceedings, and then the take to the streets, throwing fruit that’s rotted through, so that it might freshly bud and blossom on the soil of our only pair of battered shoes. Truth be told, it’d have been a long time coming. It’s been a long time since I’ve -- it’s been a damn long time since I called myself a Writer.

And now, still: It’ll be a long time yet. If ever.

These days, all days (as is the case with the internet) I’ve been making my living doing something else. Something that I like. Something that gives me room to grow, something that will possibly let my fingers dance in a different way than that with which you precious -- so, so precious -- non-existent readers are so joyously familiar. Somewhere with people that I can appreciate, who I can talk to in dire hours; people who I would happily pick up from the airport, with a morsel of delicious muffin at the ready. I like my job enough to not mention what it is, as I’ve no desire to get TOTALLY DOOCED LIKE A DUMBFUCK. I like it enough to keep on truckin’, babydoll.

And yet…it’s cheap.

Even more than the last few jaunts around this tiny block of free webspace, wherein I danced like a silly gorramn clown with sentences hanging from the edges of my lips like churros covered in seasoned salt, dancing, dancing my way into some kind of oblivion while hoping that the precious We of us wouldn’t notice. But we -- you and I -- we noticed. And nothing happened, of course. Why would it?

How often do you wish you could manage proper words?

Constantly, I’d imagine.
“Constantly,” a precious -- so, so precious -- non-existent reader says.

As people who live in the world, we wish that we could see clear enough to let our words -- and consequently, our thoughts -- stand lean and tall, like willows laughing defiantly at roaring typhoons. We wish that they might be able to fend for themselves.
No tricks, no weapons. Skill against Skill alone.

“They get brutalized,” that precious -- so, so precious -- non-existent reader says.
“They always get brutalized,” I say, “But at least they could manage it on real terms.”

The world where I exist, where I work now: It’s a world founded on manipulative things.
It’s acknowledged, it is. To a point. It’s tolerated, it is. To a point. It’s cheap -- so, so cheap -- but I’ll be damnable entity if it doesn’t pay well.

So.
Last week was my birthday.

Here I am, a sweaty entity in the midst of a sweltering world. Not a Writer.
Not as far as we -- you, and I -- are concerned. Because a Writer means more. A Writer writes. A Writer does more than simply fill pages, a Writer does more than try to spin fancies by way of complicated jibber-to-jabber ratios, a Writer does more than simply try to get things down. A Writer writes. S/He just does.

And that, babydolls…that there is a world of meaning.
Here, here, there is a world to see. Perhaps someday I can write it down.

Until then? Until Ever?
A fool -- this fool -- will spin his wheels.

Anon.