I realized something today thanks to an email I received from a magazine I had previously submitted work to. I was at that time rejected, but I still get emails when they have new submission guidelines to put up, and I remain hopeful. Some of the greatest authors were not even recognized as such until their death, after all.
That aside, I was reading the guidelines for a new project they are doing that calls for literary erotica. And I realized something rather profound. I could certainly write erotica, but it would really have no soul. Because the last time I felt erotic was...a while ago anyway. Sure, I've had lovers since that time, but the engagement was much the same as writing a piece of erotic literature would be. All of the surface detail was there, but it was hollow. There was no spark. Even if something like that got published, it wouldn't necessarily make me happy.
I guess what I'm saying is to write, and to write well, one needs passion. You can string words together all day long but if you can't feel it it's not there. The same as with people, or work, or anything else in life. And passion comes from being able to share something with someone else.
Really the only reason I'm thinking about all these things is because I'm living alone. I almost had a heart attack in the shower this morning when the door blew open thinking someone was in the apartment with me. Too many years of paranoia driven parenting. I realized in that moment that there was nowhere I could go. No one I could rely on. No way to be safe. And no one who would miss me if I disappeared. The last isn't entirely true of course. My mother is coming to visit this afternoon and so she would have realized if I was missing or dead. But that wouldn't have done me much good.
Still, I understand why people who live alone go out all the time and are never home. It's lonely to come home to nothing. You wonder why you're doing what you're doing. What's the point if the only person you're living for is yourself? But that's not really true either, it just feels that way from time to time. You're always connected. Even when sitting alone inside hollow rooms that echo with nothing.
