Jumping the Rail

He, the failed writer, down there, toiling away in obscurity, was shackled by the very things that would free him. Chains of stinking litanies held him frozen in fear, catatonic at the prospect he might actually wake up. His identity began to wear thin though, and he began to see through the garb of who he thought he was. He saw the black coat that had defined him in a clear, irrefutable starkness -- it was a fiction that served only to contain the light radiating from that part of him that was the gift of a dying star. He was, he realized, a drop of an ocean, connected to a mystery he would never understand. The words, he saw, could only free him if he let them come to him from where he knew he did not know. From the quiet of "doesn't matter what others think" and "you do this because it is what you do with no thought of the outcome" he found freedom and joy in the work. This getting out of his own way made him a bit crazy in the eyes of others, but gave him the attention he needed to hone his craft. Beauty. Beauty. Whether or not anyone ever sees or understands.