Are you a writer, CC? You wrote this. But perhaps we need to tease out what it means to be a writer, a critic, a human... We could take a millennium of unpacking human, from individual to group. There are real interactions and metaphoric overlays, the echoes of the real events in our lives and the impact it has on us emotionally, physically, socially...

Are you a writer? Are you persistent and persevering. Do you know how many good writers, people we love and know well today, Doctor Seuss, Disney, Sylvia Plath, Rudyard Kipling, Hemingway... So many that were told not to write. Fuck, people hated Vincent van Gogh...

We don't write because it's fun or easy, we write because we are called.

Are you writer? Do you see the world not just as it is, but how it can be and not necessarily should be? The tension between that is the cognitive dissonance resulting in the tale of two cities... Are you brave enough to highlight these artifacts and how they effect our social orbits? Are you clever enough to spin it in such a way that the message gets through people shields, their resistance, like the master Dostoevsky? Can you turn your words into an agreement on others, only to flip it around so they realize this is a mirror and it was them all along...

Are you a writer? Are you an adult and simultaneously a 5 year old who remembers what it's like to be chastised, disparaged. Can you see it as both a wound and badge. Can it be the encouragement that fortified your soul in doubling down and building the skills necessary to push way past talent. Was your five year old deprived of a wardrobe to disappear into for a season? Did Miss Gruff not exude West vibes? Do we not still love Margarete Hamilton, the best West ever? Can you see past the mask all us souls put on? Are you the untrained psychologist and sociologist, unrecognized while writing your treatise on the world?

Are you a writer? Even as the world pushed you into the inevitable position of fortifying sustainability, do you nurture that dream, water it, feed it, and let the light of conscious shine into the darkest parts of the mind, heart, and soul. Do you see the angels and the demons? Do you see the magic in comets, which, yes, practically, like a critic, we can classify and make it mundane. Can you see past the forced terrestrial grounding by those afraid to fly, the crush society normalizing even that mystery, while forgetting at least one reasonably modern writer we esteemed to the point of being a magical creature, namely Mark Twain, born Samuel Clemons, born as Haley's Comet tore a zipper seam through the night sky, becoming Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's little Prince incarnate, kind of like another story of a child who's family was so poor he was born in a barn. Mr. Clemons said he came in on the comet and would go out with the comet. He kept his word...

Magic enough for me.

Friend CC, Keeper of Words and dreams, joys and pains, researcher, analyzing, searching, inspired and inspiring, sometimes Texas kind, sometimes New York direct, will you write as if no one is reading? Do you write to change the world or change yourself? Will you let the storm of your words be gentle rains or thunderstorms? Then let your words come. Let them be the tears you held back because the world lied to you and said you had to be strong. If even one lightening strike illuminates a path for one soul, is this not the call of a writer? Is this not the Wizard of Oz and The Rainbow Connection?

Let the storm of words become the rainbow and sunrise that follows. Can you get past the words to the stars beyond and find your comet?

Are you a writer? You wrote this. You reached out to others and inspired this. Be you, be genuine, you got this.