The Literary Out

I have a good feeling about this year. I think it comes down to this inner mechanism that speaks in waves and in volumes. I feel it. It's called HOPE. I wrote a poem long ago called HOPE but it was the most depressing thing ever. I read it to four people and their comments were invariably the same: "After hearing that, I just want to go f-cking kill myself now." Geez. I didn't want to be the downer but I guess that's how I was writing. I think HOPE has something to do with HONESTY.

Then I was thinking, well, what do I like to read? Certainly, I didn't like to read depressing stuff. I wanted to write uplifting words, words that made me hope. All this time, maybe I was trying to be somebody I'm not. I was trying to present myself better as though I couldn't accept the part of me that reads romance novels and chick lit from time to time. (Yes!!! I know!) So I realized that I like historical fiction (like Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, The Twentieth Wife), Young Adult novels (like Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian) and I like inspirational pieces and paranormal stories. I was ashamed to admit it. But who cares really? I thought there was a judge and jury ready to pass judgment on me just because I like these "non-literary" genres. These are mostly commercial fiction. I've let myself get brainwashed by the "Literary Man" that the great books only lay with the stuff we read in schools. I love Harry Potter. I secretly like the Twilight series (OMG, yikes!); admittedly, it's not written very well but, man, that did that author hit a primal nerve or what! So here it is: I've just come out of the literary closet. I'm not as highfalutin as I thought or pretended to be. I'm part of the mediocre mass that I mocked not so long ago for so long. But then again, I also loved the mental push of me sounding so uppity, spinning words and breaking them into synonyms, acronyms and antonyms, getting stuck in words of convoluted verbal passion. Yes, I am that too! I am part of that other (imaginary) 1% that actually reads (as in gives a rat's ass) on Nietzsche, Augustine, Lacan and, lately, Zizek. So I have bipolar literary desires.

I'm bi-textual.

It's good to be finally frank about it.