august fifth

For a long time, writing was something done out of necessity—something I simply had to do. Yet, realizing I lacked exceptional talent and couldn't realistically make a living from it, I decided to shift my perspective slightly. It didn't matter if my carefully crafted sentences failed to produce a spark of brilliance, if a poem didn't elevate my worth, or if my daily journal entries went unread by anyone. For a single reader, all of that is more than enough.

I do not edit words once they are formed, nor do I alter my sentences. I want to capture the present moment as it is; the act of revising—often done to make things sound more polished—feels awkward to me. I aspire to be someone who embraces a shameful past rather than trying to fix it. So I need to cultivate the strength to quietly read and accept even the most cringeworthy of my writings. I still don't know if I have truly gained that strength.

"I still don't know"—that is a phrase constantly touching my lips. The deeper I delve into any subject, the more it seems that—rather than the unknown shrinking—my knowledge merely grows in tiny, incremental bites. Meanwhile, the unknown expands in great leaps, growing so vast and rapid that its sheer scale becomes frightening. This happens the more I know, the wider my understanding becomes. It feels like sinking deep into a bottomless abyss.

Perhaps I began writing simply to list the things I do not know, to broadcast just how ignorant I am. Or maybe I just want to share my curiosity. Strangely enough, at some point, my ignorance became something I wanted to boast about. After all, I reckon that knowing a lot—or knowing something well—does not necessarily equate to wisdom. I like that slightly imperfect, somewhat naive side of things.

I wonder what drives the urge to share my writing. Even though it stems entirely from my own desire, I truly, truly don't understand it. Writing like this doesn't warm the room by even a fraction of a degree, nor does it add a single grain of rice to my bowl... yet there is a strange satisfaction in filling a scrap of paper with black marks. So I keep writing. The urge to write often comes hand-in-hand with a sudden desire to stop, so even I can't say when I might go silent (again). But today, I felt like writing.

To you—whose name and face remain unknown to me—I lay out all the things that are unknown to me, still.