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The landing of a paper airplane brings joy
By Carl Heintze
Pawing through my papers the other day I found myself staggered by their quantity, the accumulation of 50 years. I won't comment on their quality. Suffice it to say there's a lot of paper there.
It got me to wondering: Why do I do this, why do I write?
After thinking about it for a while, I concluded it was because all my life in my own strange way I have (in the words of the old telephone company ad) been trying to reach out and touch somebody, anybody.
Some folks do it tacitly, by really touching someone. Others accomplish it by speech or song. My way has been to write what I'm thinking about down on paper in hopes that someone is going to want to read it.
That, of course, is a large, egotistical assumption. Who cares? You just never know. And even if you do know, sometimes you'd just as soon not know.
It always reminds me of a scene in the William Brinkley novel, The Fun House. The bemused Life magazine writer sails paper airplanes out of the 34th floor of the Time-Life Building with messages written on them. He seldom, if ever gets answers, but that's his way of touching the world.
Writing is like that. It is a lonely job. Most writers, including me, find collaboration difficult, if not impossible. Writing is something best done by yourself, usually in silence and usually in a room shut off from the rest of the world.
That, I may say, is not true of newspaper writing, but that's another story.
Writing also is not a scheduled process. Although others can sit down at a job at an appointed time and carry it out, then get up and leave, that's not the way most writers write.
They do it when they can. When they can is uncertain. Just what stirs them to words is a mystery.
I used to get inspiration in the shower (a damp place to try to write). I just hoped the inspiration lasted until I got dry, clothed and at the typewriter or computer. Now vagrant thoughts come at most any time and since I'm fortunate enough to be able to forthwith sit and write, I can be writing at most any time of the day or night. Not necessarily well, but at least writing.
I can't tell you where the words come from, but they always seem to arrive from somewhere. Were that not true, I think I'd have a difficult time living. For writing also is something of a curse. A long time without putting something down on paper produces a sense of guilt, guilt alleviated only by writing something, sometimes anything.
But the other side of the equation for writers is having readers. Writers without readers are sterile creatures. They're sailing those paper airplanes out the window and no one is picking them up. The writer needs readers, otherwise the exercise often gets discouraging. I'm therefore grateful for the chance to use this space on occasion to reach out and touch you.
I know I reach out and touch you because on occasion you have been kind enough to write or call me to tell me you've read what I've written. Sometimes you don't like what I wrote, but most of the time the letters and calls have been positive.
You don't know how happy that makes me--or any other writer for that matter. Sitting in my little room (not on any 34th floor) I sail my paper airplanes figuratively through the computer, hoping that when they finally get to you, they will have done what I asked them to do, they will have carried from my head to yours some message, if not important, at least worth reading once.
That's about all I ask from writing, and even though it's a lot, it's gratifying that my rewards keep floating in like paper airplanes returned, borne on some vagrant wind from you to me.
Like all those who share their thoughts, voices and other talents with the world, knowing that we've struck a response in the reader or listener is the only way of knowing how well or poorly we're doing.
I have to believe this makes me among the most fortunate of God's creatures. For most of my life I've been able to do what I have to do and I have been able to get what's inside me out and into other people's lives, even if it is for only a brief time.
You can't ask for more than that and I won't. Thanks, gentle readers, thanks a lot.
Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to The Campbell Reporter.
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Campbell, California
