to turn mercury into gold

I grew up in a small town and it shows, but not so strikingly as some would like to believe. At least not in my case.
Perhaps the only repercussions of my growth process were the fear to get lost in a big city and claustrophobia - which some would say it's weird, because there are two notions that somehow cancel eachother. To those I would say that you might as well choke with air that’s far too difficult to breathe and stings your lungs as you can suffocate without air at all. But people have much to say and hear too little. Or at least people who grew up in a small town.
The Court of Arges took away 19 years of my life ... but before I continue I want to keep in mind this is not a story I’m telling. This is not a story at all, not an explanation, this is not even a justification. Now I’m writing thoughts and reviewing memories only on my behalf , I owe myself and I owe my past , not the world. I’m not even doing this for those who once believed in me and that maybe still do. I’m am doing this for myself only and the reason why will be clear in time ....
Returning then to the Court of Arges ... it’s a town that’s even more dead than the people that inhabit it, a city for the retired as some would say, a terrifyingly small, tranquille, silent place. Nothing ever happens in Arges, nothing worth mentioning any way, so people get the dreadful, yet absolutely necessary habit of turning banality into spectacular. But the trivial can not become spectacular so easily! To turn mercury into gold you need a nuclear transmutation. The exact same thing is required to turn banality into spectacular , only this time the process is not physical, it is abstract and does not toke place in particle accelarators, but in the sub-levels of the conscience. If we can be so ignorant-and I'm sure we can- that for a minute to imagine that factual reality, or in other words the notion of truth, as a vertical bar, then the process which I speak of is not only simply bending the bar, it is replacing it completely with a wooden pole. As information is passed on orally, or as the bar now transformed into a pillar is being passed on, it gets the miraculous property of increasing itself progressively in diameter and length. Only so you can turn and you can convince others that banality is truthfully spectacular.

And I understand! Honestly I understand! It's a degrading process some would say, but put in the context of living in such a place they would be the first to commit the sin of ignorantly tossing words, gossip and "poetic exaggerations."
And I understand not because such a sin is far below my level and I am standing high while gazing, somewhat with mercy, on those who now commit it .No! I understand because committing this sin is how I learned to write. From it I learned why and how to write, because everyone that's "ever poured his entire being on to a white sheet of paper" truthfully knows it's about much more than grammar and lexical coherence. To get by with naturalness and confidence, not to look like a bohemian imbecile with aspirations of being a writer you need more than just to write, you need to know how to bullshit. You need to know how to "sell it" and especially how to sell yourself. You need to know not only how, but especially to whom.
And anyone who has ever taught others to write knows that the only real advice that's worth giving is: "Write, boys! Write!" - because repetition is holy. And nothing in the world that I encountered so far was more repetitive than life in the town where routine is like death: dreaded, but inevitable.