If these words find you, in the place where you needed them, then you know why I write.

In an in a world of unfettered access to information, the abilities to gain knowledge, to know the truth, to have the answers, are qualifications of exponentially decreasing value. The ability to retain information, in the digital age, is a vestigial appendage of the mind that becomes a clogging dam. We humans are still struggling to catch up, as a species, to the reality that ownership is an illusion—that wealth is not the acclamation of resources, but the power to move them quickly from surplus to demand. That is why my words are wasted if I do not share them with as many people for whom they might positively affect: because sitting on a page, they stagnate, grow dry and meaningless. 

Maybe like me, you bore easily of metaphor in a world of literal beauty. 

Sun Ra once told me “I don’t believe in history, that is just his story. I believe in mystery, that’s my story.” Man or intergalactic space traveler, I have carried his words with me ever since, contradicting my meticulously constructed philosophies about knowledge and power. I am unable to let his words go no matter how often I attempt to release them back into the universe. Resonance. 

This is why I believe in the intention of literary citizenship. Because the words we share shape us as much as they shape the worlds we inhabit and the ways we have to travel between them. As beautiful and inspiring as I find the worlds I have traveled across on my own, I know that other worlds are out there and the only way I can ever hope to find them is to listen to others with the courage to attempt the share them. Literary citizenship is my opportunity to participate in the dialog about the words we write and why we write them. To listen to you, and let the passage of yr words guide me.

Benjamin