How do I begin to explain?

Writing is a tale of resilience, of ambition and of the writer's longing to be free through and from creation; all that come together to a cold irony, a pale paradox, a hopeful satire of humanity's best side.

But writing is also a mirror of desires, of a civilization's deepest contemplations, a mere strive; it is a projection of what we thrive to become and what we thrive to overcome; it is both the journey and the end product, intertwined through a wild urge to possess every inch of the words, to feel them and cup them in hands stained by ink, the human race streaking as one for just one sniff, one breath, one taste of a tangible substance that we call words, then to watch them slip away like water from an ocean, but each of us sated by the knowledge that we own this ocean, and the ocean owns us and us only.

That sniff, that breath, that taste, that sheer obsession over every jeweled letter, is why we write.

It is the passion, the breathless longing, the moment when words rush out of your blazing chest, when escape and sentimentality and drama teach you that flesh isn't enough for your world anymore; that writing only begins to embody a tip of the winged fervor bursting and expanding within your very awareness; that is why we write.

In the echo of the bloodier times, times when poets were burned at stake under politicized witch hunts, it was writing that ruled, writing that commanded hope, writing that kept a revolution alive, if only because of its untouchability. Untold messages slipped under doors, fiery demands birthed under the furious clacking of a typewriter, soft illusions of Another World cradled and tended by poets and their readers alike. Materialism dictates the world since then, just like it has always dictated politics and economics, but writing remains a dream, untouchable, unseeable, immortal. It burns despite of materialism, not because of it. And that is why we write.

Now in the twenty-first century—or perhaps it is the twenty-third, thirtieth—there is a possibility that we lost count—we romanticize writing, we give it a process and a cycle and a thousand names. Some say it’s excessive, that the true mirth of writing lies outside of idle revision and drafting, but in truth, writing is the only thing in life that harbors those little details that slow down and frustrate the process, but that are simultaneously worth loving. The revision, the drafting, the querying, all those wearing details, are not like the labyrinthine materialization of politics, or the uncurbed commercialization of art, but they are like formulas in math, newly found but that have always been there, silently waiting, waiting to be found, waiting to romanticize writing, because isn’t the whole point of writing to romanticize.

And that is why we write.

At night under slowly shifting stars, we lie on a pedestal, arguing about politics and finance and chemistry until we forget to look up, until we ignore the laminated wings ashy with time unfurling on our backs.

Then writing reminds us, prompts us to look up, just one minute, one second, for the mere possibility that what we see might become a story, the story that some writers seek all their lives, and before you know it a minute has turned into an hour. The sky is infinite.

And that is why we write.

As time's cruel children, molded by the ebbing of empires' fall, chased by our own conscience, we rush until we forget, until we shed time behind in a pursuit of another auburn autumn, another lush summer that we forgot to enjoy. But although we don't realize it we are also chasing a dream, an illusion, a sweet romanticization called writing. It is touchable, it is replaceable, it is idle. It is filled with excessiveness, it is frustration, and it is luxury. But it leads revolution, happiness, bonding, solitude, romance, love, laughter, sweat, reunion, tears, escape, finding, seeing, and all that burns down to a fiery, passionate blaze unmatched, unseen, bejewelled. But we do not see.

Because it is only when writing is gone do we realize its presence, do we recognize what is under—nothing, merely a pocket full of dripping stars—it is only then do we stop, quieten and look back; miss the sweet smell of coffee, fresh scent of books, the sound of typing on a keyboard. Because, see, writing has been here all along, for us, for dreams, for nothing and everything, brooding and useless and romantic.

Sheer like crystal, soaring like want. Tilting towards stars.

Under these stars, that is why we write.