I am making myself write today, because my habits have become quite counterproductive. My game playing, reading, and drinking have pushed into the space where the creation of elaborate strings of words used to reside, and have thus inhibited my ability to be myself. Of course, I enjoy all of those things, and writing, whatever you might think, is dreadfully demanding and difficult, so it takes quite a big push for me to break the pattern and be myself again.
I have been working a lot, and will continue to do so throughout the holiday season. My distractions are like islands scattered about on the sea of my weekly existence - reading about the Reformation on Amanda's deep scarlet love seat (no metaphors, no metaphors - sometimes a couch is just a couch!), sanity-saving chats with a certain nerdy dancing barista (though she doesn't dance while she makes me coffee, which is unfortunate), weaving a story of Burgundy through the ages on my computer (games, not writing, again unfortunately), drinking wine and smoking cigars while Ed teaches me poker (no metaphors, no metaphors!), and movie viewing and nice dinners with my Significant, Miss Abigail de l'ange. I am about to go watch Eli Stone, another one of my favorite preoccupations.
So when do I write, you might ask?
Well, not often. I'm trying to blog more, which you are currently witnessing. I have so many ideas that I can barely keep them straight. I am always working in my head, sorting through the new and the old and revising and editing and throwing some away and making some new. Just yesterday I had a new idea that will be a pleasure to work on (of course, in the future, after lots of research). Maybe the new apartment will help me - setting seems to have a huge influence on how productive I am, and on how often and what I write.
Oh, and I should get published. Any thoughts?
Enough, enough. Eli beckons, and I am his willing mistress.
Um, just ignore that last bit.
J
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
The Whole Wide World
I am going to extricate myself from this room and go procure food with my Significant. I then will try and write a little before I dress and go to work, slinging cases of wine with the greatest of ease and only a little annoyance. Tonight, maybe drinks and poker? Who knows - I have been shocked into awareness again by brilliance from the Left Shore *deep head nod to my guiding Star*
Adieu.
Adieu.
Some Old Writings
I found these while looking through my writing folders. I am now less panicked, though whether that is a blessing or a curse I am not sure.
Old 1:
Old 2:
I had to choose a path and the choices around me were wide and far. I could run in one direction and it could take me so far that I would soon lose sight of the other directions and then I would be self-inflictedly lost and would lose my ability to back track and in a way it is okay because I have already back tracked enough. I have to become an American which means working at jobs we don't like and paying debts we shouldn't owe and wanting picket fences always the picket fences. I am not an American I am a citizen of the Invisible Continent, the Continent that rolls on waves like lost boys in crowds, the Continent that rolls on waves like she rolls on my body, the Continent that rolls on waves like I roll on God, the Continent that is so far away you can never see it unless of course you are standing on it and I am.
You are only beginning to see.
My friends are scattered like the Diaspora like the grapes after picking and the basket is spilled we were never made into the wine that would make the world drunk and giddy some are in the Old World and some are in the Triangle and some are in the Island City of Finance Cutthroats and some are in the forests and some are in the mountains and those are in the valley where I stopped being a madman visionary to Dionysius and became a visionary for Earth and then I moved to the Island of Waves and Invaders and became a visionary for the Buddha and then he gave me to the Word and I became a visionary for the Christ and I fought it and I fought it and I hated it because everything that is in dark hates the light because in the light all is in the open and ashamed and so the dark hates the light and the light is truth and He is the light and now I am done fighting it and I am a Visionary for Him and I will be mocked for it and I don't care but when have I ever.
J
Old 1:
I don’t write anymore. Where once there was thunder now is only cobwebs and dust. What happened? I used to live with passion and anger and fire, and now I’m ice and caution, watch your step-step up again around and I used to breathe-breathe and now I hold it.
Where do you lay down the lines to redraw a life?
Is this how artists die? Do they jump in water and sink to the bottom, drowning to find ancient cities and gold and myrrh? Or do they go out upon the cliff and look down and realize that they brought no rope, and go back for it and have to work and pay for the rope and then they get some and think its not enough so they work some more and save and bye more rope and weeks and months go bye and they wonder what they needed the rope for.
I only wrote this because of Toph. I heard the echo of a light in his voice and it called me back to remember what I was. Where am I? I have fallen off into something and I am safe now and safety is terrifying. Where is the threat of death and loneliness? Where is time that enemy and that comforting torturer? I have God now where I had nothing – I grew up with that reassuring darkness all around me, how can I deal with His ever-present light? And don’t I have to pay for it?
To be who I was I have to die. To be who I could be I have to die. To be who I am is a kind of death, a slow down of heart beats and a slip-slip into the easy arms of repetition, so like a pulse but more like the drip of some narcotic sleep-sleep. Here, open your arms, this is what you should be, like everyone else, here John, take this pill, you will play golf on Saturday’s and have a three bedroom house and two children and they will play football and soccer and grow tall and strong and you will go to church and you will end your life without Him or her and no one will know where you went John you have to reconsider but you can’t leave them all behind.
Old 2:
I had to choose a path and the choices around me were wide and far. I could run in one direction and it could take me so far that I would soon lose sight of the other directions and then I would be self-inflictedly lost and would lose my ability to back track and in a way it is okay because I have already back tracked enough. I have to become an American which means working at jobs we don't like and paying debts we shouldn't owe and wanting picket fences always the picket fences. I am not an American I am a citizen of the Invisible Continent, the Continent that rolls on waves like lost boys in crowds, the Continent that rolls on waves like she rolls on my body, the Continent that rolls on waves like I roll on God, the Continent that is so far away you can never see it unless of course you are standing on it and I am.
You are only beginning to see.
My friends are scattered like the Diaspora like the grapes after picking and the basket is spilled we were never made into the wine that would make the world drunk and giddy some are in the Old World and some are in the Triangle and some are in the Island City of Finance Cutthroats and some are in the forests and some are in the mountains and those are in the valley where I stopped being a madman visionary to Dionysius and became a visionary for Earth and then I moved to the Island of Waves and Invaders and became a visionary for the Buddha and then he gave me to the Word and I became a visionary for the Christ and I fought it and I fought it and I hated it because everything that is in dark hates the light because in the light all is in the open and ashamed and so the dark hates the light and the light is truth and He is the light and now I am done fighting it and I am a Visionary for Him and I will be mocked for it and I don't care but when have I ever.
J
Friday, November 07, 2008
All the World's a Page
How many odes have been written to the Blank Page?
A pox upon them all. Someone call down the Writing.
A pox upon them all. Someone call down the Writing.
The Flaw
I was built with a flaw in me. It was an artificial construct, inorganic, a hostile implant.
It was an idea of love.
It is a weakness like a structural anomaly, a purposefully insufficient base platform upon with the edifice of my life was stacked and created, girder by girder. It shines through me in an inappropriately revealing way, making me lean with the lack of balance, the synergy and design of me tilted like an athlete with a limp. I can at all times feel it, alternating between despising it and reveling in it, celebrating the deep tissue scar to make it art.
And yet the questioning of it makes me a monster, an alien, rejecting the "gift" that those buildings around me trumpet as their greatest feat of sociological engineering. Our gigantic web design of culture rejects as a whole the concept of biological genetic engineering, and yet they stumble through the sociological genetic engineering that is half-accident, half-viral weapon by a toxic and violent overly rewarded hierarchy. I have in me this twisted fucking beam, and I remember a time before my foundation when we were made without it.
How many of us see our own blueprints? How many study ourselves with any degree of regularity, or compare the blue on blue lines with those of others, or with those ancient models that were our predecessors? Is my skyscraper related to a Roman villa, or a Greek theatre, or a Sumerian ziggarat, or an Egyptian pyramid? Am I a recreation, or are just parts of me borrowed from posterity, useful designs copied like archetypes of weight-bearing arches?
Those who have questioned have been labeled safely insane by the cultural superstructure, beings or buildings like Nietzsche or Jesus. One said love no one, one said love everyone. Our most common denominator says love select ones, those of biological relatedness and one "special" construct who is designed to fit with your model perfectly. We spend out time looking for the connecting pieces, or connecting with everyone again and again and again until we bash holes in our walls and fracture our supports, vainly struggling to fit with this concept despite obvious problems.
But there it is, this idea, solidly woven into me like a spiral staircase or a subframe, a great column deep in my foundation that is purposefully too weak to support in case of an earthquake.
We have made ourselves crippled giants. This one wants to lie down and sleep.
Because I was built with a flaw in me, and I cannot repair it.
It was an idea of love.
It is a weakness like a structural anomaly, a purposefully insufficient base platform upon with the edifice of my life was stacked and created, girder by girder. It shines through me in an inappropriately revealing way, making me lean with the lack of balance, the synergy and design of me tilted like an athlete with a limp. I can at all times feel it, alternating between despising it and reveling in it, celebrating the deep tissue scar to make it art.
And yet the questioning of it makes me a monster, an alien, rejecting the "gift" that those buildings around me trumpet as their greatest feat of sociological engineering. Our gigantic web design of culture rejects as a whole the concept of biological genetic engineering, and yet they stumble through the sociological genetic engineering that is half-accident, half-viral weapon by a toxic and violent overly rewarded hierarchy. I have in me this twisted fucking beam, and I remember a time before my foundation when we were made without it.
How many of us see our own blueprints? How many study ourselves with any degree of regularity, or compare the blue on blue lines with those of others, or with those ancient models that were our predecessors? Is my skyscraper related to a Roman villa, or a Greek theatre, or a Sumerian ziggarat, or an Egyptian pyramid? Am I a recreation, or are just parts of me borrowed from posterity, useful designs copied like archetypes of weight-bearing arches?
Those who have questioned have been labeled safely insane by the cultural superstructure, beings or buildings like Nietzsche or Jesus. One said love no one, one said love everyone. Our most common denominator says love select ones, those of biological relatedness and one "special" construct who is designed to fit with your model perfectly. We spend out time looking for the connecting pieces, or connecting with everyone again and again and again until we bash holes in our walls and fracture our supports, vainly struggling to fit with this concept despite obvious problems.
But there it is, this idea, solidly woven into me like a spiral staircase or a subframe, a great column deep in my foundation that is purposefully too weak to support in case of an earthquake.
We have made ourselves crippled giants. This one wants to lie down and sleep.
Because I was built with a flaw in me, and I cannot repair it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
