In Memory of Michael Drexler

'Writing is a religious act: it is an ordering, a reforming, a relearning and reloving of people and the world as they are and as they might be. A shaping which does not pass away like a day of typing or a day of teaching. The writing lasts: it goes about on its own in the world. People read it: react to it as a person, as a philosophy, a religion, a flower; they like it, or do not. It helps them, or it does not. It feels to intensify living: you give more, probe, ask, look, learn and shape this. You get more: monsters: answers, color and form, knowledge. You do it for itself first. If it brings in money, how nice. You do not do it first for money. Money isn't why you sit down at the typewriter. Not that you don't want it. It is only too lovely when a profession pays for your bread and butter. With writing, it is maybe, maybe-not. How to live with such insecurity? What is worse, the ocassional lack or loss of faith in the writing itself? How to live with these things? The worst thing, worse than all of them, would be to live with not writing. So, how to live with the lesser devils, and keep them lesser.'
--Slyvia Plath, in a journal entry dated Dec. 12, 1958