The point of it all

"Writing requires its own incarnation – hand–eye coordination, and some form of technology for making marks on a surface. We take a part of ourselves and turn it into physical inscriptions which outlive us. So that a future reader can breathe, in the words of Seamus Heaney, ‘air from another life and time and place’. When we write, we give ourselves a second body."

— Richard Seymour, The Twittering Machine (2019)

It has been a long time since I last wrote my another, "allow me to start again" piece. Almost two years has passed and here I am, writing again about how I am attempting to start something anything related to writing. Perhaps the only difference from then to know is I know that I've got a plan and a little bit more sense of purpose about why I am doing this.

This is becoming a Sisyphean task for sure as ever since I have stopped exclusively writing creative pieces, writing became a problem of definition. When I was an undergrad, writing my pieces, submitting them to workshops, and meeting other people who share the same passion as I once had, it is easy to write, define and tell myself and others what I do and what I am: a writer.

But after I broke away from my creative circle and got a job where writing became more structured, rigid, and with less areas to explore self-expression and creativity, I experienced a sense of denial that centers on the idea that my creative spirit is doing just fine. I knew that I was lost and I knew it was my decision to leave. That decision was borne by the insecurity of not being able to fulfill my belief that writing is a political act.

I used to deliberately direct my work towards obscurity and obfuscation. The purpose was to twist a writing piece, an idea, or a concept, towards abstraction that aims to be its metaphorical bulletproof towards any attempt of criticism. I purposefully abandoned clarity in writing. Eventually, I wrote a lot of things that abandoned the creation of meaning entirely, flipping the idea of writing on itself. My works were not used to communicate an idea. Ironically, it became a representation of my own inability to communicate clearly.

During those days, any sense of honesty in my own self-awareness was absent. I believed I was writing new forms of expression in contemporary Filipino literature. My own delusion consumed every ounce of confidence I had under the weight of the responsibilities of being a writer. I was not writing truth but falsehoods that are fueled by my own insecurities.

I guess throughout those years, I was still trying to live up to an image of myself that I created, when I was emboldened by my dreams of becoming a poet.

Now, I consider myself more of a knowledge worker than a "writer." I have become more interested in connections than meanings. My understanding is not anymore driven by my desire to interpret but look for signs that would lead me towards truth. In other words, I do not want to impose or extract meaning out of everything. I only want to be guided towards a path that I know I am unable to deny because of overwhelming evidence.

Of course, what this require is a system that would render a single source of truth infallible. If there is one thing I learned from Spinoza, it is the setting up a rigorous self-evident postulates brought by one's own capabilities of reasoning.