writing and living/doing and being

No one writes alone. Anything I write is alive with everyone I have ever known, with everything I've ever read, remembered, or imagined.

Your thoughts are your own, but they only exist in the context of other thoughts.

As such, I find many accusations of "plagiarism" or "rip off" to be more than a little bit dubious, and tend to approach artists who claim to be "original" with extreme skepticism.

Like writing, our self-concept is a continuous, evolving process. Ideas and selves are fluid, social constructions; various people and experiences cause us to "re-write" our identities, to "revise" our sense of purpose. To live is to change. There is no "final draft" of who we are, only the current incarnation.

So...snapshots of one's identity that imply static, objective meaning (i.e. I am a writer) are things that I try to avoid.

Today: I write.