mind hybernation...everything is culminating, surfacing, everything is about to begin

Why do I write? I write because I kept my mouth shut all my life and the secret ego truth is I want to live eternally and I want my people to live forever. I hurt at our impermanence, at the passing of time. At the edge of all my joy is the creeping agony that this will pass--this Croissant Express at the corner of Hannepin Avenue in Minneapolis, a great Midwestern city in mythical America, will someday stop serving me hot chocolate. I will move on to New Mexico where no one knows how it feels to be here with the sudden light of afternoon, the silver of the ceiling, the half-smell of croissants baking in the oven

I write because I am alone and move through the world alone. No one will know what has passed through me and even more amazing, I don't know. Now that it's spring I can't remember what it felt like to be in forty below. even with the heat on, you could feel mortality screaming through the thin walls of your house.

I write because I am crazy, schizophrenic, and I know it and accept it and I have to do something with it other than go to the loony bin.

I write because there are stories that people have forgotten to tell, because I am a woman tyring to stand up in my life. I write because to form a word with your lips and tongue or think a thing then dare to write it down so you can never take it back is the most powerful thing I know. I am trying to come out alive, to find the distances in my own recesses and bring them forward and give them color and form.

I write out of total incomprehension that even love isn't enough and that finally writing might be all I have and that isn't enough. I can never get it all down, and besides, there are times when I have to step away from the table, notebook and turn to face my own life.

And I write out of hurt and how to make hurt okay; how to make myself strong and come home, and it may be the only real home I'll ever have.

-Natalie Goldberg