Reform

In Kora in Hell (1920), William Carlos Williams writes:

"There is nothing sacred about literature, it is damned from one end to the other. There is nothing in literature but change and change is mockery. I'll write whatever I damn please, whenever I damn please and as I damn please and it'll be good if the authentic spirit of change is on it."

I have been mulling over what to write here - why to write here - until I reached this point: I'll write whatever I damn well please and as I damn well please. I started the same way, and little by little, ended up having some kind of semblance of my own style of structure. In a world where my writing has been bound by academic regulations, I want to come back to this space where I can define the rules myself. We, as aspiring academicians, are so tightly bound by the smallest of requirements. Even the poetry I have sat down to write has been 12 pt., Times New Roman, 1.5 spaced and with normal margins and Harvard style citations.

I think that's the limit where it all spills over and starts flowing naturally - refusing to stick to convention.

Here's to more writing, more spilling over of my thoughts. Here's to redefining myself and not letting someone else restrict me to 50 words or less - to being my own woman and not "nothing like I ever imagined".

To being very much imaginable, very much real, tangible - beautiful and grotesque and real -like all living beings should be.

Of course, all of the above goes without saying that whatever we do - whatever we are - must be out of kindness and genuine curiosity for the world around us. As every speck of dust around us lives, we must remember that even clay loses its form after a certain time period passes. We can try our best to preserve some things - but others must stay free.

In 2018, I would like to walk back into a world where life and its circumstances are not as restrained as I started imagining them to be. That with every instance of chance there comes hope for a different, a better, future imaginable.