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THOUGHT CONJURED
. . . provoked, or just pokin’
Wednesday Jan. 22, 2014
Why write?
Because it is brain food.
Without it, I’d starve.
I love to talk writing. Nice to have someone ask, be interested and encouraging. Met with RH (thanks for lunch!) yesterday. He is inspiring for me – not so much for friendship and hospitality but because he engages in discussion of ideas and considers philosophy and history, literature and reality, in his choice of how he articulates, unpretentiously – all at once – obviously through intellect, education and being incredibly well read. I enjoy it so much. I need to hang out with more people like him much, more often …
Why write?
Eyewitness accounts of what I see, saw and want to see. No more ambitious than that. No less. Not to be popular or agreed with, nor to be disagreeable – I write about how I see the world. Not just my world, the whole world – the one you see too, but certainly just my view of it. My view. My lens. How that looks to me, offered to those who wish to share it or to shoot it down. Doesn’t matter, ever, if we see anything anyway alike.
Just poke someone with a stick, or stick them with a lawsuit – you’ll soon have a reaction.
Or paint them green, or blue or yellow – then too, they react. Possibly retaliate.
But to provoke someone with a thought, an idea, a point of view?
That, for me, is writing’s greatest reward.
Not to alter thinking.
To inspire some.
Not to persuade anyone to or from a point of view.
To challenge readers to consider whether they have one at all.
Why write?
Why not?
Mark Kolke
199,624
column written/ published from Calgary
morning walk: -5C / 22F, light dusting of snow overnight, overcast, insanely slippery – we were both sliding everywhere we tried to find good footing – nice to know the weatherman says we’ll be back in melt mode soon. Gusta is certain spring is around the corner, her shed-factor is doing it’s annual coat-everything-in-every-room thing, so I’ll have to get into daily grooming for a while!
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