Literature and politics are mutually exclusive. A writer is someone who works alone, who needs total independence.
A politician is someone who is totally dependent, who has to make all kinds of concessions,
the very thing a writer can't do.
~ Mario Vargas Llosa
HERE & ELSEWHERE
I cannot write I cannot write
when I want to, when I need to.
I mean I cannot write
what must be written
what demands to be written.
Every morning I ask myself : why?
No good, nothing, nothing, nothing.
How long will this go on?
Everyday I wake up and around me
terror earthquake murder fire killing
the newspaper the radio the television
tanks famine death war corruption bombs.
Where am I, me, I mean?
And you? Where are you?
Torn away. Displaced. Angry.
It's not that I cannot write
oh yes I can write
anything I want
but it's this one thing
this one thing I cannot write
this thing that refuses
to let itself be written
to surface out of me.
The horror in the world
the human debacle.
Reading writing speaking
my life has been but that
a life of words
a pell mell babel of words
a life full of stories
but a life anyway.
I awake here in exile
It's because of the world
because of history
because of what goes
on in the world
that concerns us
frightens us
dejects us
saddens us
the moment I jump
out of bed there is
this horror in the world
and I cannot write it...
— Raymond Federman
Uni-verse
