An Antediluvian Approach (2004)

Skimming through some of my old notebooks, I noticed the myriad of quotations and excerpts from literature which fill their pages with hopes, dreams, tragedies, and, indeed, life itself. Almost all of these adages and axioms had been procured from the internet with its glorious database of famous (and some not-so-famous) phrases. As I progressed in my perusal, something caught my attention in an epiphanic way: Every word, every line, and every single page--though written in inks of various colors--contained quotations, not made sterile by the technological norm known as Times New Roman but given passionate meaning in their imperfectly handwritten form. Looking back, I noticed the erasures, the scribbles, and the tattered pages of yesteryear. In those minute presences, I saw somewhat of a diary of my life: At times, my penmanship appeared flawless, reflecting a confidence and charisma with the ability to transcend even that which we call "time"; and yet there were periods when it seemed that each word--each letter--became agony to produce. But as I trudged onward, the lines began to flow more smoothly, my mistakes gradually became fewer, and my state of ease returned with full force.
I could have simply "copied and pasted" every line from a website and printed it into a neat little booklet, glibly labeled "Quotations." But I did not. There is something one feels in writing those words with one's own hand that makes them truly one's own. Even though they may have been brought into this world by another, they have the ability to become part of one's very soul when one lives them and knows them. Words cannot remain mere words when they are made the focus of an individual's being. They amass new powers incomprehensible even to him whom it overwhelms, and in those powers lies the essence of mortal existence: If ever one must endure a time when the world is brutally frigid and sterile, all that need be done for remedy presents itself in a transferal of power--a personification of dormant or lifeless words who then act as angels, lifting one out of his misery and bringing him to unsurpassable felicity.