I MATADOR, I ACROBAT

I suggest my meaning without metaphor, and slay you by the passing of my hand.

Writing about writing can be a real drag. But not for me. Poets hate other poets and writers are like any other clique-self congratulatory and useless. Time spent in a writer’s group is time better spent writing.

In some hot strike of luck or grand stroke of genius(madness), the act of writing has provided me with more inspiration than I could ever use. Writing about writing. Yep.
I’ve outsmarted the once crowned&ever hated writer’s block. Heh I put that bad bitch down and took it out like last year’s trash.

Writing about writing can cast me as acrobat, deadbeat romantic, matador, hack journalist, and dayworker. And if you follow, writing about writing is like holding a mirror up to a mirror. There are infinite mes spreading out into the horizon, with just as many typewriters and mugs of steaming black Italian espresso.
I’ve long since lost count of the amount of poems, blogs, letters and short stories that begin: “Here I sit…”.

As far as this blog is concerned, I tire of applying the multiple layers of metaphor it takes for me to present my truth publicly. I’ve really been working at it too, tweaking the details and minutae of my daily life so that I can speak it to you true&plain but also-I have been wearing a disguise on here, writing not from where it’s at but where I would like it to be.

In the years before my death I was an antichrist
-KJH

It pains me to have put so much time and effort into Creative Nonfiction and casting the “collision of the kings and queens” in a heroic light, only to be reproached by a reader about what on here is “true”. Not to mention that my writing is my refuge and more important to me than eating. It’s beyond reproach, Brothers&Sisters. No explanation is needed and none will be offered.
Anchor’s Up. Spring is here and the truth lies somewhere between these digital diatribes and the remote seaside bungalow I write from on the great white machine. Aho I have started writing Fiction in earnest on the IBM Selectric II. Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction-these terms are just genres really. I’ve always looked at writing like performing, which would explain my preponderance with writing about writing. Genres are great, a framework for you to weave your own truth to, sometimes in the words of another, and from way on down the line. That’s how they speak through us. So, I’ve been writing Fiction on the great white machine. And I’ve been telling you the truth on here for years.

But I’d be kidding myself if I failed to realize that the truth is stranger than fiction. And there is no greater Truth than the lie we constantly tell, to ourselves and to each other. And the audience for this blog is somehow so much greater with the loss of 1 reader.
She’s still in the stands. Cheering the entrance of the young matador as I stoically take my final bow.

It goes on, as the late great critic and American Sage Kurt Vonnegut has written. And on and on. Beams out from my perch, where I sit golem like on the roof cranking out these missives for you. I get 50 readers on the reg and I make my petition for truth.
But as acrobat, I swing wide and loftily grab that thing, my heart moving forward into the highest point of its arc. I thread my body through and am suddenly on the other side.

Viva la ficción.