If I erased ever word I wrote that I thought was wrong, I would have a scarce and scant collection of thoughts and emotions, poorly controlled and contained. Perhaps it is my thoughts that words are true and virtuous. Everything we write becomes permanent, even for a short time. Thoughts may come and go, fleeting past us in a sense of withered age and forgetfulness, but our muscles remember every keystroke we made, our hands remember every scratch we detail and our hearts remember every emotion we had to have in order to create them. Words are always there, no matter how much you try to destroy them. Words will always be there, no matter what else we try to do to ignore it or implore them to change. Static, and infinite. Words are not to be trifled with. When people call me a writer, they give me a most important task. They charge me to document the world as I see fit- a place that may be ugly, that may be dark and depressing. They charge me to search for truth in the lies of spoken thoughts- the nasty topic of speech and the letters that flow from our mouths as we tumble out things we want to make permanent, but can only cowardly erupt. Speech is a volcano that we cannot control and words written are strikes of blades and metal and the birth of a nature made of iron and steel, lead and plastic. Words outlast time, they survive the man and means he uses to describe them, the cause he writes them for and the hope he brings with doing it. Creation and destruction are contained in paragraphs, wars against the world fought through sentences. Words are permanent. And, in the nature of the human mind to resist to change and the world that compels us to do, I never erase. Because every word had a feeling for it, every word had a meaning at sometime. For time to stop, we write words. For time to last forever, we read them.
“I have often rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.”- Vladimir Nabokov
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