This entry is lifted from a letter I wrote to Sam Thursday night at 5 am. A large portion of what I post here will be excerpts from letters -- though, given my respect for my friends and family's privacy, I will try to only include the passages I wrote about myself. If this results in my sounding unbearably self-indulgent (I'm smiling, because it will), I apologize.
I've been wondering, for the first time in my life, if I can write. Rereading an old chapter a couple nights ago, I was shocked at how bad it was. I didn't know until then that I wrote like a blind man drawing: unable to perceive the results. My precision, knocked loose of personal associations, becomes wordiness. My rhythm: the page by itself doesn't remember how sentences should sound. My thoughts: I now wouldn't call them that.
I don't feel depressed by these criticisms. Any flash of (what feels like) objectivity is comforting. And, anyway, most published writing is bad.
[five paragraphs ommitted]
People. Me. What other words have real weight tonight? Words. Frustration. Where'd that come from? Going on: Body. (I can feel the apple, cored on my desk, in my stomach. Apples always make me feel sick, but I forget to not eat them.) Breath. (Cigarettes make me feel each.) Here. (The fucking present tense of me at my computer.) More specific words don't register. I mean, they don't make me feel anything that helps me explain myself.
[two paragraphs ommitted]
The strangest thing about my time in Iowa is that I don't feel sadness. And it's only when I write something like this, or force myself to talk more honestly on the phone, that I think, maybe I'm wrong, and I do feel it, I just don't recognize it. Usually, though, what is, just is. I say depression because I don't understand how else I could be so unproductive, so socially withdrawn, so strange in my habits and negligent towards my responsibilities.
Oh, crap. I'm erasing paragraphs. This could all be rubbish. The more I write, the less likely I am to send this letter. And I want to go on and on, but the more I try to explain myself, the more I doubt the distinctions I'm using.
Words again: Self! Weight <--- the constant pull of arms on shoulders. Me. Such a weird knowledge, that this is the consciousness I'm meant to feel attachment to. I don't feel real attachment to anything this mind is feeling: it's blank, confused, and I am the solidity of words, not it. That's why I haven't stopped writing.
But if I don't stop, I won't send this.
Maybe I'll feel different in the morning.
Posted by nchicha at March 29, 2004 05:15 AM