I think that writing, when it’s at its best, has this marvelous ability to say things about the world and people that would otherwise go unnoticed and unsaid. These unnoticed bits of life are tricky because the question is truly up for debate as to whether they’ve always been “unnoticed”. Perhaps they are new pieces of information in this grand puzzle we all stumble through. Or, perhaps, they’re truths we’ve always known in our hearts but have forgotten due to the harshness of life and the bitterness of its brevity.
It’s difficult, to say the least.
I like to think, however, that it might be a bit of both. To quote Viktor Shklovsky, writing exists “…that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony.” To quote St. Augustine, “But in these words what have I said… What has anyone achieved in words when he speaks about you? But woe to those who are silent about you because, though loquacious with verbosity, they have nothing to say.”
Shklovsky speaks of some inherent qualities about life that we’ve lost and must recover. Augustine speaks paradoxically, noting the futility of trying to find words for something we cannot ever comprehend, and yet the sin of not trying anyway. These things, however, are not mutually exclusive. Maybe writing helps us to recover that which we have lost while together and at the same time helps us to reach for that which we can never fully know. Regardless (a funny word to use in this context, I know), these unnoticed bits of life, whether they are in our hearts, beyond our understanding, or both, are worth trying to pen down.
That’s all this is. An attempt to try, when I see them.