Date: Wed, 24 Dec 1997 17:29:44 EST From: Canned Nuts Subject: [WRITERS] FILLER: Yes, There Is A Writers' List [with apologies to Francis P. Church for mistreating his words and my apoligies for doing this in a hurry (off to a service soon). The original is available various places,including: http://applecity.com/MerryChristmas/SantaClaus.html ] Dear Tink--- I am just starting on the Internet. Some of my friends say there is no Writers' List here. Please tell me the truth, is there a Writers' List? Virginia O'Newby Virginia, your friends are wrong. They have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not immediately obvious to the most inattentive member of the audience. They think that the only good lists are the ones where they don't have to participate, only absorb. Yes, Virginia, there is a Writers' List. It exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the email if there were no Writers' List! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. Not believe in a Writers' List! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get Sculley and Mulder (or the gov'mint!) to watch all the email everywhere to locate that Writers' List, but even if you did not see Writers' List email going around, what would that prove? Nobody sees The Writers' List, but that is no sign that there is no Writers' List. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. But (and here is part of the secret of the Writers' List!) we can try! Put word after word, twist and strain, stretch the meanings until they cry...and if you do it, if you try, then you help make the Writers' List real in that moment! You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. And when you glimpse what is behind that curtain--write about it! Tell us a story, ring us a poem, describe the technique that you've just learned, whatever you do, make the Writers' List. No one alone controls this list--and every single one of us, by our participation and contributions, takes the abstract Writers' List out of our imagination and into the world. No Writers' List! Thank God! It lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, it will continue to make glad the heart of childhood. As long as one person thinks, and writes, and takes the leap of faith to put themselves out here in public--and others read, respond, and keep that leaper from crashing to the ground, there will be a Writers' List. Here...and everywhere that any one of those touched by this list goes, in every word and space and punctuation mark that grows from them...there is a Writers' List. So write. tink [Is it perfect? Far from it. Can you contribute to it? Of course. And to my mind, that's what makes it a Writers' List--YOU!]