We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection
We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it
We also write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade out lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely. We write as the birds sing, as the primitives dance their rituals. If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it. When I don’t write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.
by Anais Nin
(February 21, 1903–January 14, 1977)
from In Favor of the Sensitive Man, and Other Essays
The New Woman
image – tnarik
April 6th, 2010 at 10:12 pm
[...] We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection by Anais Nin [...]
April 15th, 2010 at 11:58 pm
“We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely.” I wonder…food for thought…
Good excerpt, thank you…