Christmas Threads

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a... writer?

This falls into the category entitled 'Dubious'. I get ideas all the time. They tumble through my head in drips or in torrents, and I catch as many as I can and pour them into my book of things that need writing at some point. But, dear reader, not all ideas are created equal - and yes, I am talking to myself right now because no one else is looking at this.

I have an idea for a story, and that story is a Christmas story. They've been done to death and then some, and yet I have some hope that this story is a worthy one. But what I fear more is the commercialisation of Christmas, and the fear of my worthy story being brutalised in the pursuit of money - whether by dismissive review or desperate interferance.

All this, and I haven't even written a word of it! I can't help thinking about it, though. The tales we weave are a part of us whether we want them to be or not, and seeing one bastardised in the name of greed is painful.

A thought for another day, I suppose. I'll have to flesh it out a little and see where the thread takes me.

Being instead of doing

Much as I don't like to cast myself as the tormented artist, it seems that that is sometimes my fate. To suffer for one's art implies that you deny yourself in some way - avoiding people, spending money you don't have, breaking relationships - but the reverse is just as likely to be true, and that is the situation I find myself in.

Writers are driven to write for various reasons. I've found that lately I write because the world is tormenting me; the threads of my own life become unravelled, despite my best efforts to stop them, and so sinking into the narrative of the Novel is escapism at its finest. It's also leading me to question myself, and my ambition of becoming a published author.

I believe, as I always have, that I was born to taleweave. Clichéd it may be; the world is littered with the remains of those who believed something similar, and they never made it. But I can't define my success or failure by whether I make it as an author, because I asked myself the hardest question: if there were no hope, no chance of ever being published or of living from my writing, would I still write?

The answer is yes. I would write even if I lost both arms. I would write even if every day my work was taken and burned in front of me. It's so simple, so obvious. It's the difference between being and doing.

I have a job, and it is a thing that I do because I am paid to do it. But writing is not what I do; it is what I am, in the bedrock of my soul, because the need and desire to tell stories is as much a part of me as my own name; so much so that I can't imagine a world where I am not a storyteller.

So what then? I will write even if no one will ever read it, and I judge my success or failure on whether I can look over my work and be happy that the result of my taleweaving is the best that I can do. Even this blog is a part of that.

The song of pain continues

I've read Part 2.

I did try to post only about things to do with writing on this blog, but some narratives are too big, too violent, too insidious to ignore. The story of the Dublin report has threads stretching out over the country and into the heart of every good Irish person who has ever walked inside a church. I can't ignore it, and I can't bring myself to stay silent about it. There has been too much silence.

Why did they do it?! WHY?! What damaged them so much that they thought it was acceptable to rape and to hurt?! Enough excuses, enough sanitisation - I want every last priest, every last believer in Ireland to know that this, this is the horror that was inflicted on the young, and the bishops let it happen! They were incompetant, and uncaring! They are unrepentant even now!

That the government were, and are, so utterly indifferent to the whole mess speaks volumes about their moral worth, and of the value they place on the Irish people. The evidence is there for all to see. These crimes were committed, and shown to have been obfuscated by the Catholic Church in order to save face, but there will be nothing done - not even a statement of condemnation - while the government remains spineless and self-absorbed. Andrew Madden talks here about his experiences while trying to obtain justice. The response of Bertie Ahern (then the leader of the country), that the State could not investigate the Church, chills me to the bone. And the sad truth is that they only care to speak about it at all because the Irish people are screaming at them.

It sends a clear message that the Catholic Church here is accountable to no one. That if a priest does something to me, or to the people I love, the law will not hold him to the same standard as a non-priest. I don't know if I want to live in this country any longer, knowing that.

I know I cannot be part of a religion whose leaders are so morally bankrupt that they allowed this to happen, and then refuse to take responsibility for the pain their decisions inflicted on hundreds of people. I will not have it on my conscience.

And so I sing across the Net, my voice lost in the chorus as the sons and daughters of Ireland call out the true lament; that our beloved country is broken, that there will never be justice to ease the pain.