licentia poetica

life's greatest pleasures lie in defining, and not in the definitions themselves.

a while back i wrote, advocating rather cheekily, that we should create ourselves as our own myths, our own heroes. i was speaking primarily from intuition back then, for the words had flowed through me to express something that i knew to be right without knowing exactly why.

now i do. for i have experienced the making of a myth, and now i remember vividly what was meant by this divine inculcation—making your own myth means making your life poetic, to be living verse, alive with the words facilely falling off your tongue because you live them. as a result, rendering them into written form is merely a matter of remembering existential moments with the words that serve to memorialize them.

perhaps, this is why i have always felt comfortable claiming that my life is poetry. as i make earnest efforts to make all that i do poetic, it becomes easier to create verse because my actions ultimately speak (and write) for themselves.

" Do you know why our poetry today and especially our philosophy are such dead issues? Because they've cut themselves off from life. Now, Greece idealized on life's own level: an artist's life was already a poetic achievement; a philosopher's life was an enactment of his philosophy; and when they were a part of life that way, instead of ignoring each other, philosophy could nourish poetry, poetry express philosophy, and together achieve an admirable persuasiveness. Today beauty no longer acts; and action no longer bothers about being beautiful' and wisdom operates on the sidelines."
~ The Immoralist, Andre Gide

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l.m