Why Write?

Author Barry Hannah’s response:

Twenty years ago I was out in the woods alone. The weather was clear and very cold, but felt good. I had a Pall Mall in my hand and I walked into an old abandoned cabin of the Roosevelt era. Inside the cabin was just a bit warmer than out. A dusty tin bed with a thin mattress on brown springs. I wanted to light the Pall Mall very badly but I waited a while for the dark. The hairs of a feral dog lay in a circle on the planks in front of the hearth. In the last grip of faint grays, I lit the cigarette and the smoke felt exquisitely good inside me. I knew I was pledged to something. This lonesomeness, this cold lost place I would soon warm up. Nobody knew where I was, nobody. It wanted to be lived in here. I knew life would be sad but quite fine then. I felt a hum of joy in my head. Like some old muttering conquistador stumbled up with a flag to ram the staff into God knows what mud.

Forever afterward I would crave abandoned rooms in lost places, me with my pencil and paper. I would mount a small country here. The frame was already there, you were not really a conquistador, let’s not kid our girlfriends. But you would warm up and put something in this hole. It might leak a little bit but it would be yours. From all my military readings I have gleaned the comment most pertinent to me and the gals and pals desperately given over to the writing life. The writer meant Korea and Vietnam, but he put his truth to the exact same glory and grief of our efforts: It’s the war we can’t win, we can’t lose, we can’t quit.

I’m waiting, however, for the future priest to be kicking around the shards of our old cabins. He finds some pages. My God, it’s paper, ancient paper. He bends over, holding the cigarette pack-size computer to his shirt pocket so it won’t fallout. Poor devils, the old scribes, jabber jabber, yadda yadda, he says.

But wait, this is pretty good.