About Face

"Sorry about the absence of posts" begins so many blogs. Why do we not blog? I don't know. The absence of post does not mean the absence of thought, or of thought formulated into what it will be written on paper. The trouble seems to be in the sitting down and the sending of the fingers across keyboards, and pressing all those spacebars. Etcetera.

For me, writing has always kind of felt like a pause. When I'm running around, doing my own thing, I kind of keep a running monologue in my head of things I'm feeling/seeing/experiencing. This feels active, and the wheels turn quite pleasingly in the brain. When the time comes to sit down and transcribe what all has happened, though, some of it gets lost between the presses of a key, or lost in trying to find the right word. Writing, to me, just doesn't feel like what writing should feel like, and what just plain thinking does feel like. Nevermind trying to sit before the blank page and write something out of thin air. Maybe with a pen or pencil you could drum up some interesting thoughts, but I'm a firm believer (or nonbeliever?) in the impossibility of true creative writing on a computer. Then again, my boss says that too often people get caught up in the trappings of the writing, when in fact the problem is their un-inspiration. I don't think she's right, but I don't think she's wrong either.

I think I get trapped because I want to get trapped. When the thoughts live with me, up in my brain, running back and forth like electricity, they keep me company and provide me with some of the best companionship (and some of the worst, so there is a balance of course) there is to have. When I write, though, I have to stop living life, and just try to remember everything it is I've been living to write it down. That's the first thing, the pause. I don't like to pursue activities which stop me from experiencing "life" actively. It's the same reason I have my hangups about photography--you have to constantly be on the lookout for the right frame, the right angle to show things. Stops us from being "in" the picture, literally and figuratively. (I swear to God the metaphors must stop!) The second thing--yes we're back to that--the second thing is that once thoughts are written down, they have the troubling tendency of losing the lustre of lightning thoughts and becoming just a series of black curves and lines connected together. They're not living beings anymore, these thoughts, but killed, flattened out, and pressed between leaves of a book. The butterfly's colors may be beautiful, but unless it's allowed to flutter in the wind the true essence of the butterfly will be lost.

I swear to God. Metaphors. That's something facebook has made me hate, in others and myself, which is the too-easy tendency to turn even the most mundane experiences into the grandest of fucking metaphors. Metaphors are too easy. Almost cliche. Yet why am I still drawn to them? Not sure I'm comfortable following this question all the way to its conclusion.

Which is why I should introduce the concluding thought which has caused you to sit through this long introduction. 

I'm picking up some physics and math classes at school.

And since this blorg has been a good place for me to deliberate over these kind of life changes, I figured it would be only right that I should document the change. I had a conversation with some Christians the other night that ended up being incredibly productive. One of the subjects was, duh'f course, the meaning of life. For me, I've isolated it down to two possibilities. One, to have meaningful connections with the people around us--friends, family, coworkers, etc. Two, to improve the world through the talents/interests (or are the two equivalent?) that many translate into a career. Maybe the two are completely separate, or not so separate, but these are what I want to pursue. There's another candidate for the answer to the meaning-of-life question, which would be to experience all we an experience, but that gets us into a whole other ballgame so perhaps I'll save that for later. For now, I'll just say that the whole connecting and helping the world thing is by its very nature going to gain us some experiences.

Soooooooooooooooooooo for this reason I think I'm going to give physics another go. I gave up on it too easily. Not for grades or difficulty or anything, but because I saw some research astronomers were doing and said "yeah, fuck that." Fucking clicking on black dots on a white screen all day. Also because I refused to become an engineer like my father. Well, folks, the time has come where I reconsider and perhaps reroute.

And I think this is best. I want to do everything, honestly. I want to write, I want to think, I want to love, I want to do math equations. For my life, who knows? Maybe this will be the most compatible combination.

Update

Blogging is out, print is in.

This summer I'm giving myself an intensive project to write (and not edit) a book form of my choosing. Knowing me it'll be primarily autobiographical-oriented nonfiction, (s)treetises, poems with apologies, and fiction centered around how they came to be in my head (and unfortunately not so on paper).

If this falls through then I've thus disappointed the "world." If it happens then I'll send you a copy.

Gee whiz fiz bang pop! A book!

New Blog Soon

Get excited.

It's about love. The sequel to my birth.

I put my pants on to go the bathroom

and I shouldn't have to.

Let's write a poem

Let's call it something inspirational
or unique
or mythological
or traditional

Let's make it about
the insufferability of modern existence
simple contentment
love
things that are outrageous

Let's put it in meter
like Shakespeare and them
or invent our own
and call it something new

Let's abandon all rules
like we know what they are
like they repress us
and craft our own

Let's create a whole world
of meaning of words
of desolate love
and tragedy-comedy

Let's finish the thing
stuff it in a drawer
then pull it back out
and sign it like that

The Paradigm Shift

So I thought I should post an actual blog, as opposed to my self-serving pieces of fiction. But it's fun, is it not?

Okay, so let's talk. Future. What is the future? My mom keeps pestering me about this abstract concept of having a "job" after college. First off,  such things do not exist. Fairy tale. More likely to find a unicorn after college. So of course I keep trucking in my absolutely esoteric academic focus: writing.

So let me validate myself a little. I'm not going to be so vain as to say that I think I'm just damn good enough to make it on my own, off the written word. It's hard to get people to pay you for what you do with a pen, or a computer keyboard. Like everyone else who wants to make a living off this type of stuff, I'll have to secure myself a "real" job (pfft. unicorns) and just write on my off time. This most likely won't relate at all to what I'm doing in school now, but I think I like the idea of that. I want to spend a few years, maybe a decade or two, pulling my head out of my ass enough to look at everything around me and gain a sense of what the grounded world looks like. I think if I just nosedived into writing as a career, I'd get completely lost in my interiority. I've been in these places, and it's kind of scary to just keep falling into that pit of contemplation.

I don't know. I think I saved a boy's life. He was this sixteen-year old at a Halloween dance party, and he had that hallowed look in his eyes. And me, on some kind of high of happiness and feeling the thrust of life, I gave him this speech. He probably affected me more than I did him, actually. This was probably the first time I'd actually felt like I'd touched someone. I'd removed myself from myself and actually listened to someone else. All night he'd been very annoying, and I'd been telling him to bugger off or whatever. Then I entertained the thought of listening to him, and I don't know. It felt good to just be totally about someone else for once.

Words! I touched him with words! Words aren't really anything in themselves. Once you start giving them agency you lose the ability to manipulate them. You become their slave, and you fear doing them a disservice. Words are really the bridges we build. Like, I have these thoughts in my head, and I want to convey those thoughts to other people. So what I do is I sit down and I write my thoughts on the page, and maybe, hopefully, someday someone out there will happen upon this bridge. Even if we're far removed in space and time, there will be a connection made between us. This is the "meaning" of life, in my book. We're here to relate to each other and form deep relationships with people. Life itself is so full of tragedy, and so we build these connections to each other as a way of creating our own meaning. We define our own "meanings" of life by the relationships we form.

I want to do this. I ramble a lot, and I tend to be redundant, and I can't ever really articulate my thoughts out loud, but I feel like I can connect to people, or maybe just learn to connect to people, through writing. I feel like both of my parents had all this energy boiling up inside them. From what I can tell they both have this intense interiority. It's beautiful and passionate in one way, but sometimes I think they kind of self-destructed because they never found an outlet for this. Instead they tried to fit themselves into social molds they felt comfortable with on the front end and just boiled over on the inside. Even if I just end up telling the story of my life and of the people around me, and this just sits on my bookshelf while I go on forming a family and hopefully starting a career, I think I can be happy. Writing is often tormenting, but I've found the pay off to be so much greater than the pain on the front end. Interiority on the page becomes beautiful, where on the inside it holds the capacity for ruin.

I think these are the reasons I'm telling myself it's okay to take years of very expensive school to craft something that's not strictly utilitarian. It's a process of self-aggrandizement, sure, but I think it's necessary. It's the reason I started this whole blog thing to begin with. To call it therapy would kind of dust at the top of the iceberg, but I think it's a worthy summary. What's the end of this writing? I'm not sure.

I do know that it feels right. When I finally admitted to myself that this was what I was going to try and do with myself, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. I remember the night I decided this. I was walking over to Fido's to have some coffee with Ellen, and the world suddenly felt full of purpose and brightness where before it had just been a burden, a forest that I had to wade through and cross my fingers that I'd taken the right path. Paths, paths. It's not a path thing. It used to be a path thing. Now? It's fearlessness. The future's hazy and more unpredictable than I can imagine, but I don't fear it. I feel like I have a sense of purpose, and that no matter where I go or what I do, I'll do just fine because I'll be happy.

I do feel happy.

The Girl and the Book and the Ice Cream Truck

Don’t listen to the birds. Don’t smile at the wind when it brushes against your bare arms, or when the sun warms your face just to the degree that the boundary between you and the outside disappears. Don’t laugh at Katie’s joke, her eyes lingering on yours to see if you thought she was funny. Pretend you don’t notice as you continue reading, brandishing the cover of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to Katie. Maybe she’ll get the idea.

“How’s your book?” she asks you. Guess she didn’t get the idea.

“Good.”

“What’s it about?” She grabs a finger-full of her hay-blonde hair and stares at it while she twists.

Put the book down and fold your hands over your lap. “The beauty of literature is that it can’t be summarized, you see. Sam Clemens—I mean, Mark Twain—he’s a genius author. He creates this world in only so many words, and it pops up in my mind. I don’t see words running around each other, I see trees, and a river, and a young boy and his friend.”

“Sounds neat. What do the boy and his friend do?” She’s involved her other hand at this point, creating intricate twirls around two fingers on each hand.

“I guess since you’ll probably never read it, it wouldn’t be bad to summarize it. I won’t do this for every book I read though.” You raise your eyebrows at her. After she nods, you continue. “Basically, it’s about a boy named Huckleberry. And he frees himself from people who are trying to control him. And he goes down a river, just him and his friend, looking at the world and having fun. It’s on a river.”

“Sounds interesting, I guess. I don’t like to read much though. You know who I like? Beverly Cleary. She’s a wonderful author too.”

You grin to yourself and pick up your book again. In the corner of your eye you see your mother approaching the back door.

She pushes open the back door and leans her head past the three little steps between the kitchen and the patio. “Dinner’s about ready, Lainey. You enjoying yourself? It’s much nicer out here than it was in your dark, stuffy room, isn’t it?”

The leaves in the sky are shimmering with the wind, and the sun makes everything a golden-yellow color. Yeah, mom, you say. Great. Beautiful day.

Now she turns to Katie. “Dinner will be ready soon. Why don’t you girls go wash your hands.” Katie pushes out of the chair. But before she goes in, she pauses. Her ears perk up. She jerks her head around.

“You hear that?”

“No? What is it?” You look up too, and the wind pushes the pages of your book together in a slow fan, but you don’t notice. Five kids that look to be about your age run through your yard to get to the street out in front. You finally hear what they all must have heard—some notes carried by the wind. You didn’t hear it before, but now you listen. The ice cream truck. Last time he came it was the beginning of summer, but you only know this because Katie ran to your house after the USA red white and blue ice cream had already dried sticky on her hands. She turns around to you, her eyes wide and her smile growing ever larger. “I’ll pass,” you say. “I’m coming up on the end of this chapter and I want to finish it before dinner.”

“Come on, Lainey. Don’t be boring.” She runs around the corner of your house along the same path the other kids took.

You force a loud sigh, but Katie’s too far away from the house to hear you. You close your book and rush around the corner of your house. You see Katie and the rest of kids crowded around the ice cream truck parked five houses away. They look silly out there, jumping and screaming for something that’s probably not even as good as the ice cream in their fridge at home, but you run faster toward them anyway. You run and you run and you’re getting closer to them, and the closer the get the faster you run. The wind is whipping past your ears now, and the music is even louder. A smile breaks on your face. And you cough up a laugh. In fact you can’t stop laughing. Even as you skip up to Katie you can’t stop the laughing.

And now you’re running back to your house with Katie, the marshmallow eyeball melting on your tongue. Katie’s dripping her ice cream all over her hand, the blue running over the red running over the white. You might have scolded her, or you might have suggested that you walk. To savor the flavor of the ice cream.

You lift up your strawberry-chocolate fist and slurp up the bits of ice cream melting across your hot skin. You take it all in.