Ramshackle Review

FALLING INTO HUGENESS

by Marcus Speh

Dear accidental reader, 

be careful now: this is strictly for writers. It's not called ‘Falling  Into Hugeness' for no reason and you need to pay special attention now to see if you want to go on reading it at all. Yes, now.

I repeat my warning: this is a story strictly for writers and writers only. 

If you are not a writer, do not read beyond this line. Do not read further.

   ___________________________ [this is the line I've been talking about all along. It really exists, you see, I wasn't kidding. This is serious business.]

If you did read beyond this line anyway and are not a writer, you may need to revisit your livelihood. 

Now consider this:

It may just be that by regarding yourself a writer you will enter a new dimension of being on this Earth that brings you happiness and fulfilment way beyond your wildest dreams. 

An additional advantage of continuing your life's journey as a writer is that you're not stuck with your wildest dreams but you can write about them. Or you can write about people, call them characters, who have those dreams. Or you can write about characters who write about people having those dreams. As you can see, your mind can get pretty frazzled. That's a risk you might want to take.

In any case, now that you've crossed the line, even if you let yourself off the hook by saying: “This guy tricked me into reading things I didn't really need to hear or want to hear”, there's no going back. 

That's the incredible beauty of this method. It's life-altering if you like it or not. This wasn't a story at all, you see, it was a magical potion. 

Miraculously, it's the same with anything that you write: it's going to change the universe and the way things are after you wrote it.

Drop me a note from wherever you are, my friend. Let me know how you're treating yourself. Whatever you do, illluminate the riddle.

Marcus Speh lives in Berlin. His very short prose has appeared in elimae, > kill author, metazen, monkeybicycle and elsewhere. His story "Cahiers du Cinema" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Blue Fifth Review. For this piece, he would like to give credit to Cynthia Ozick for first using the expressions "falling into hugeness" and "illuminate the riddle" in an interview with The Paris Review in Spring 1987. Marcus has nothing to flawnt at http://marcusspeh.com.