Personal Literacy Narrative

I don’t remember any moment in my life where I didn’t know how to read. I feel like just based on this fact, I can safely assume that my mind, at that time, was able to understand the significance of this new skill. I maintain the belief that the ability of written communication is what marks us as a superior species. Theologists say it is our belief in a “superior being”, artists say it is our ability to make art, linguists say it is our vocal communication system. I study literature. I say it’s reading and writing.

As I was saying, I don’t know when I began reading. I was a pretty sedate kid. I didn’t like the screaming games played in my kindergarten class. I preferred my own company to other kid’s. Yeah, I was a 5-year-old antisocial come mierda. More than anything else I loved to read. I used to go up and down whole aisles in my library looking for a book I might have skipped. I would go through whole sets every week. I became an accidental kleptomaniac because I had a problem parting with some books. Frankly, I was obsessed. I was also writing from a pretty young age. I would write letters to the tooth fairy or I would write songs that I’d invent. It’s pretty embarrassing to read these now, so I’m thankful for everything that has helped me progress as a writer. I’m grateful for those who supported and who support me by making me feel that what I write is worthwhile. I’m more grateful to a friend who once read my work and laughed in my face. She was the first person to ever tell me that she hadn’t liked what I wrote. Flippantly, flat-out, she told me it was cliché, badly-worded…just bad. It was a slap of reality, and I am eternally thankful for it. I’ve learned the value of a friend who will tell you the naked truth about yourself and your art.

But even more than a good critique is a good book. Books provide me with an unending source of potential. They allow me access into the minds of people that I otherwise would never have known. Ideas, styles, theories, insanities, experiences, worlds. It's like dreaming. A state of hypnosis comes over me whenever I read. I become extremely suggestible - strings of words disappear into all types of sensory hallucinations. It sounds like a type of madness because it is.

Writing is another type of madness. It involves creating a connection with your subconscious and pulling out strings of ideas and images, nightmares, fears, paranoia, experience, memories and fantasies. It is extremely difficult and most of the time just fucking frustrating trying to establish this connection. Sometimes you feel like you are there but then the words get blurry and meaningless when they cross the border from thought to paper. So right now, my main goal is to facilitate that connection between my conscious and my subconscious. I do exercises in dream retention - I make sure to write down my dreams as soon as I can (eventually I would like to manage to be lucid in my dreams and control them). Among this and other things, I do a lot of free writing. That is, you just write the first thing that comes to your mind, whether or not it seems to hold meaning. Maybe it sounds strange, but it's very effective.

Anyway. That is where and who I am as a writer. It's not much. But I am enjoying the madness.