THE HACKWRITERS MANIFESTO in the form of a rant

SAT, MARCH ?...

TO CAPTURE THE MOMENT. I am living in hard times...hard times; subterranean or subconcious or subliminal hard times. There is a war going on but no draft...no realism. The media is so far from any kind of truth that only the safest find truth in it or some kind of community(commerce?).

I know that now is another hard time for me. Maybe I would be more optimistic(in context/contrast with my life here) if I knew the truth about what our American soldiers were going through in Iraq.

Never before have we had such accessability to the truth, yet, it seems that never before has the truth been so hard to find.

I, myself, it seems am in the midst of existing in my own destruction...I find it is much harder to avoid self-destructive behavior than it is to find it.

Still...haunted by relatives(family) that I feel too far gone(outside what is believed to be acceptable). I see them only in my dreams that are more like night terrors...people that I know and loved exponentially are always against me there...disgusted at what they see, who I am...in my dreams.

I am the worst of the hackwriters...a poser(or poseur),...fake,...phony,...only because...no, there is no singular--only. I am at odds with the daily practice of writing only because I think I am at odds with any form of ambition(I confuse for zeal) or success because each seems to be against or at odds vs. me...

I know this is bad writing which makes it painful to write but it(writing) is what or rather one escape that I have...time drawn out or passed through in ink...a time that is focused...letters, words like brushstrokes and form or figures.

It seems that literary competition not only exists(certainly it does and always HAS) but it seems that the writer of fiction(or any other form) has become the product for sale and not the fiction and/or writing itself...surely, this is nothing new to most excepting only those naive romantics(of which I once was and probably still am)...only because I choose not to accept reality where I seek to escape just that.

My mother bought a subscription to a writers' magazine for me and I found myself reading an issue with Ferlighetti on the cover...I was in my thirty-sixth hour conversing out loud with the text and came upon Cisneros hugging another beautiful woman and began to read...I found she(or was it someone else?) had formed her own exclusive club for writers of her taste and texture...MACONDO...(XANADU)...Lady of the Lake college...each writer had to be handpicked, have three letters of acceptance from the accepted few writers, have a published book, and pay tuition to become a student at MACONDO...Well,...I wanted to spit on that article...shit on that article. It sounded to me as though Cisneros had formed her own country club off the literary fame she found on Mango Street(It wasn't there but it was felt, so in turn my only reply is--fuck you too and double fuck you with an extra helping of fuck you.)

The magazine was for those with money, ambition, and talent(to what degree I don't know but every ad and article seemed directed at those with "the gift" and whom had already been published and praised by only those publishers and praisers deemed praiseworthy).

I want to be writing something else but this is what has washed upon and stuck to my brain...I am reminded or remind myself of Wollstonecraft writing essays for the rights of women only I feel(as in human emotions) that I am writing for the art of writing and writers...writing to be left alone by the elitists and to do so is to find a place of our own where all that enjoy the written word can enjoy each other...a macrocosm of writers without microcosms(SEE genres, subgenres)...really, anybody willing and wanting to know another persons story(whether it be written or told). To follow the path of the published is to narrow ones path of existence...and that is why these words, these feelings, only carry weight for me...because and only because I am not part of the elite and knowing from what little experience I have had amongst the elitist rank and file there is no place worse that I know of(for a writer or in context of writing) to feel the ongoing sensation/stimulation of a pretentious prick that only serves to further the deprivation of the mind...dull its senses, curiosity and imagination...reaching further and farther away from the source of acceptance and/or love that nurtures these more childlike aspects of the mind than anything adult ever has...for those that wish/want to feel/think that the cold razor thin blade of the swords blade turn warm...I ask only to put down the sword and make the pen bleed out that from which one looks to escape forever.