Keep Writing — Readings at the Rhinoceros Coffee House
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Reading Tom Robbins makes me want to write less. Maybe even quit.
Why does he always wear sunglasses like an 80s actor or a 60s singer? Why does he seem to blithely delight in the #MenWritingWomen tropes and deplorable underage sexualization? Every time it lands even a kaleidoscopic talent like him in subreddits and other sordid corners of the internet.
But he also describes a man’s face “like a plowed moon sewn with seeds of nettle and narcissus, that pink grapefruit carved with an assassin’s dagger”. He can bring a shredded invitation, a scrap of paint to life: “as silver white as birch bark, and when a sudden draft blew through the tatters and curls, it made a sound like a war canoe moving downstream, like kites fighting.” He transmuted the breath of exhaling in the cold into lace curtains parting.
He has the gift.
Pale shadow of the writer I want to be, maybe I should write less. But I can’t stop. So you should start. Write more.
Here’s the thing. You don’t have to cut the perfect nib on a reed pen like some anointed scribe. You’re not a calligrapher soaping paper you made from papyrus. But you are inherently you. Ignore the Imposter Syndrome.
You who swings back and forth, barefoot by God’s most perfect turquoise waters, you have hurtled around island cemeteries, the sun gliding behind dancing fishermen arcing their nets wide like giant spiderwebs across the lake. What are you searching for when you are crossing arroyos toward volcanos and temazcales, time zones toward ancient temples and gold-plated Buddhas? What happens when the music stops? Does the armor drop?
Write about that. Write about jazz. Argentinian saxophone players and late-night piano jams on the beach. Write about street cats and cock fights and animals bred to die. Fire season. Sex and existential dread and that pitch-black two-lane road through cartel country. Write about your rage. The irredeemable ones. Write about how fucking unfair it all is, why you believe violence, not music is the universal language. Write about what could be, and the two birds buried beneath the tamarind tree.
“Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief. All kill their inspiration and sing about their grief.” — U2
What’s the point? I don’t know, what’s the point of anything? Gonzo journalism? Graffiti art? Gardening and good food? Dancing? Do you know how long it takes a cockroach to die, swimming on its back after it’s been poisoned? To sculpt each branch, to paint each blossom on a tree of life a different color? You are that intricate clay ceiba too. And if we’re lucky, we die more slowly than the cockroaches, surviving our own poisons, seeking the same joys.
Nietzche thinks the world is a “filthy place” but not “a filthy monster”. He is “wounded by his own happiness.” Thus bemoaned Zarathustra. Sometimes the misanthropic recognize beauty in dystopia others don’t, can’t.
Your anguish is valid. It comes from a gorgeous tangle of tormented compassion. Marrow-deep. But don’t let it lie to you.
You know you don’t have to be original to be great. You don’t even have to be great to be good. You just have to be honest from wherever you find yourself on this Pale Blue Dot. Deeply earnest. Vulnerable. Or lie with authenticity. Tell beautifully human lies.
Write your own obituary. Live backward from there. Inspire strangers with pure love and dark humor and your own truth — a truth that reads like home. The comfort of the familiar can ignite as much in you and your readers as the shock of the unknown—soft sand, hot coffee, holding a scared child’s hand can be just as story-worthy as careening adventures and terrifying risks and the demolishing heartbreaks that collapse you like a building, crumbling you into dust.
Write poetry again. Write song lyrics, and refrains for road trips with no regard for whether or not it’s “good”.
Write letters to yourself from the future. Write the scathing polemics you devour now, try dithyrambs for the tragedies, eulogies for the lost causes, greeting cards for the fleeting things.
Yes, someone will always write better than you do. Someone will always be funnier than you are. Smarter. More original. More clever. Lots of someones. But someone else will be inspired by you. Someone else will find solace, a familiar friend in your perspective, a rescued animal grateful for your kindness in the jungle. If you can save a life you can certainly write.
Despite some of his problematic writing, Tom Robbins has solid writing advice: “Always compare yourself to the best. Even if you never measure up, it can’t help but make you better.”
Your reader will take your art, your gifts, but writing can also be another drink to keep you company. Your writing is a sober bartender drying glasses, quietly listening to you talk. Stories are good for the storyteller too. And your ideas are turtles waiting to be named, fed, stretching their necks toward the sun.
I’ve wandered the colorful streets of your mind with you. I’ve gotten lost in those winding alleys, widening over hills and colonial churches and revolutions, narrowing under Juliette balconies where men have proclaimed what they couldn’t keep quiet anymore. Your metaphors are physical, tangible. Beautiful.
Share your sadness. Your world-weary hope. Your hilarious insight.
I never said it would heal you. But I still say do this drug too. Robbins also says, “It’s a bit like being out of control and totally in charge, simultaneously ... Try it. It’ll drive you crazy. And you’ll love it.”
Verba volant, mi amigo. Scripta manent.
I won’t argue the Theatre of the Absurd with you. Anything we write can be overwrought. Everything can be meaningless. Yet we keep seeking. We keep creating. Stop overthinking it. Start writing.
