"I"

Written by Jonas David

(@thejonasdavid)

“The final mystery is oneself.”

― Oscar Wilde

I’m bound to start eventually, I told myself again, and I stared at the paper on my desk, a fresh white paper with no creases and no watermark or texturing, and of course it was not common printer paper but high-quality paper which I purchased from a stationery store, a paper specifically chosen for its capacity to retain ink without bleeding and the ability to increase the speed of the drying of said ink, which, I ought to mention, is an exquisite artisanal ink imported from India, and my pen, I might add, is handcrafted from silver and obsidian and engraved with my name, imported from Sweden and insured for several thousand dollars. I held the pen carefully poised in the uppermost and leftmost corner of the snow-white paper and thought briefly that I might write the letter ‘I’ but immediately realized that it would be utterly wrong to start, once again, with such a trite word. How can I possibly start yet another project with ‘I!’ I berated myself for some time, then decided I might try the letter ‘T’ which is a very versatile letter. I then had the striking realization that ‘I’ was a perfectly valid starting point and, after all, was nothing to look down at. Despite its very common appearance, I realized that it was in fact impossible to overuse ‘I’ as one's first word, it simply could not be done, and even if it could be done, if ‘I’ could be ‘worn out’, what right did I have to believe that I, of all writers, would be the one who finally did it? What arrogance, what head in the clouds nonsense! I said to myself as I looked at the blank paper. I decided then that I would indeed write ‘I’ and I dragged my pen smoothly down and created a perfectly black and shining line that glimmered briefly with that special quality only possessed by the most expensive and rare inks used by the top writers, such as myself. I nodded with satisfaction. Now, don’t get too excited, I said aloud in the dusty air of my office, now we must consider the next word. But immediately I realized this was completely and utterly wrong. I was getting miles ahead of myself. I had first to determine whether the ‘I’ I’d drawn was even its own word at all and was not simply the first letter of some other as of yet unknown word. My hand grew tired from holding the (heavy, in the way of all expensive things) pen at the ready for so long so I set it down and leaned back, producing a loud creak in my desk chair, and let out a long and tormented sigh. I stood up and stretched and walked in a circle around my office, now and then glancing at the books on my shelves. I opened several of them to look at the first word. Many of them did start with the word ‘I’. And of those, many were incomparably good books, classics which I would never surpass, pinnacles of culture, masterpieces of art, all of which started with ‘I’. So who was I to argue with that? I began to regain confidence in my choice. Yes, I, I said aloud to myself in my office. I, I, I, I repeated to myself. I liked the sound of it. I sat once again and held the pen with the nib just to the right of the ‘I’ I had drawn. I... The second word is twice as important, I said aloud to myself as I looked down at my hovering pen, the second word is everything, everything! But I once again was unsure if I was ready for the second word. The first word still could be incomplete, and I again was starting to doubt the perfection of ‘I’ as a beginning word. I want to break new ground, I said aloud to myself as I sat at the desk in my darkening office. I want to start with a word no one has ever started with, in the history of literature! But, I’d already written the ‘I’ and I felt certain this was the correct starting letter but, I’d come around again to the feeling that it was not, after all, a word in itself. Yes, it was suddenly obvious that ‘I’ was, in true and utterly obvious fact, only the first letter of an entirely new and never before used word that I myself was inventing, on the spot. I jumped up from my seat and resumed my circular pacing with twice the fervor. Of course, the first word carried much importance, (or some would argue no importance) certainly it signified something, an origin point, and if the origin point were to truly be original--well, that kind of originality could have a cascading effect on the text as a whole. Yes. I paced several circles and sat down again. I must create an original first word, I said aloud to myself at my desk. But all words have been used in some form, or else they would not be words. It would be impossible to prove exhaustively that any given word had never been used as a first word in some text or another. A conundrum, I said aloud to myself. A conundrum! I held my pen at the ready and waited a while, and after some minutes a realization appeared. I need not choose the starting word right away, I said aloud to myself in a trembling whisper, only the next letter in the word must be chosen. And, if my objective is to write an unused starting word, then I must choose the most unlikely next letter. What letter is least likely to come after I? I asked myself aloud at my desk. I considered commonly neglected letters such as x or z, but then a flash of inspiration struck me, the kind of lightningbolt that all writers dream of and remember forever once it happens. I stood bold upright. Another ‘I’, of course! I said aloud in my office. I sat at my paper and with a delicious clarity of purpose I stroked another ‘I’ onto the sheet. I nodded with satisfaction. Yes, I said aloud, yes! I was on the right track, I felt it in the surety of my hand on the pen and the exact correctness of the nib’s scratch on the luxurious paper. ‘II’, a purely original opening to what now by simple logic must be a purely original text. I smiled down at the glittering artisanal ink as it dried. I stopped for supper, and then, since supper took longer than expected due to an unfortunate mixup with the oven, I decided to retire to bed and recommence writing in the morning, however in the morning the rain was pounding so feverishly hard that I could not produce a single thought and I laid down for a moment to wait for the weather to silence itself and thus dozed off for some time, and when I woke I was overly groggy as one often is after napping and I was unable to even consider writing, so I instead put on a pot of coffee and stood in the kitchen while it percolated and I listened to the hissing and the bubbling of the water and the violent frothing of trapped water being boiled and forced up and over a wall and forcefully guided into to the coffee grounds and then down into the pot where it piled up drop by drop behind a glass prison wall to be leered at by all as it landed in its new form, changed dramatically and traumatically into a blackened and forever marred version of its once pure self. I poured a cup and returned to my desk. II, II, I said to myself at my desk as I sipped my coffee. II, II, I know that there is a key to this, I said aloud to myself at my desk. I knew that there must be a key to this riddle of the perfect word, and as the coffee warmed my tepid blood I began to see a glimmer of the answer. I began to realize, not in a flash this time, but in a slow pulse like the washing of tides, in a slow swelling like pregnancy, in a slow slowness like the slowness of a tree. I knew it was coming. I’m going to write it soon, I said to myself, and I held my silver and obsidian pen at the ready with the nib wet and slick and hovering at the end of the Is and suddenly I knew what I must do. Without hesitation I drew another ‘I’ next to the first two, but I did not stop there, I was filled with inspiration and the ink was flowing, I had entered the flow-state, the ultimate zen of unfettered creation that artists only dream of, my pen moved unbidden, scratching letter after letter, all of them perfect and perfectly designed to follow the previous, I, I, I, I said at my desk as I stroked I after I onto the pristine white of the page. In the next hours I filled a dozen pages. After a week I had filled two hundred and one pages, composing a completely unique and utterly original text never before seen or read or written or imagined. I

About the Author:

Jonas David is a writer and editor at Lucent Dreaming magazine and lives in the Seattle area with his wife and two cats.