Works of Genius

Nothing to do but write, I suppose. Concatenate the words like train cars until the sentence ends in a satisfying caboose. And then do it again. With enough trains of thought you can have a paragraph that positively hums.

Not everyone can write, they say.

But that isn’t true. I’ve been a teacher. I’ve taught writing. I’ve seen the penciled squiggles of letters on paper becoming ideas, wiggling with potential.

Everyone can do this. It is basically free.

Some students understand writing immediately. Others need guidance. (We all need guidance at times.) But this makes sense. You don’t know how strange and delicious fruit can be until you have peeled the shockingly pink skin and eaten the speckled flesh of a dragonfruit. You don’t know how funny and complete a world can be in a few paragraphs until you encounter Barthelme. Experience informs your work.

Writing is a becoming.

It is magic. It is art. The transfiguration of your life into a sharable text.

Like music, there is math to it. You can diagram and structure it, but a pleasing phrase can keep you warm at night. Sigh and turn it over and over in your mind.

Just a couple of words can get you hot. A call to action.

A single word can be a triumph. Capitalized, a full-bodied exclamation. YES!

And yet, they have invented a lying machine that writes for you. Sometimes it is free. Sometimes it costs money. But there is clearly a price to be paid.

If you don’t use the lying machine, they say, you will fall behind.

But that isn’t true. The lying machine can never experience the baffling and sensual pleasure of a dragonfruit. Belly full, the scent lingering on the fingertips hours later. The morning remembered while wiping a few grains of sand away from your cheeks, before you reapply sunscreen on the humid, crowded beach. Still slightly sticky, a smile. An animal rumbling, a need.

The lying machine has already fallen behind. It cannot experience the pleasures of the flesh.

It can never cum.