droughts

i would like to become a sharper object

12 nov

you do a thing over years and you improve. rote repetition, seeking out others, inspiration, melding, tutelage, whatever. that's the nature of 'craft,' of a 'skill.'

i suppose the closest thing for me iis 'poetry,' insofar that my word-association dredging can be called such. and that amounts to a year or two of consistent effort. an unformed youth, a drought where i shrunk away from the thought of existing, a little dalliance with meter and structure in college, and now, half a decade on, building monospace sand castles. most everything i write curls in on itself. most everything is left undone.

perhaps i'm being too harsh: comparison is a trap, attention is fickle, and even thinking about success is poison! i rather enjoy the things i make, personally, as i assume most people need to to continue doing them. or at least i enjoy the process of making them, even when i fall flat. and by my own fuzzy metrics of rhythm and texture, i'm generally satisfied in the end, for a short while. where does my defensive posture come from? it's boring: tempering others' expectations by denigrating myself allows me to eke by in my little corner.

no more poor self-talk then (i swear, this time i mean it, i swear)! i am a creature of the world who breathes and walks and wants quite badly to live and make things of beauty and intensity, and i get so darn sleepy and i get distracted so easily and i am surrounded by giants on all fronts. the things i read, the sounds i listen to, the art i watch, the friends i cherish and admire; everything is so lovely, so formed, so built over years of life and taste that i've only quite recently realized i've tried to hide from.

how do i develop taste? how do i read and consume and process and analyze and reflect on enough art to recognize in others and in myself those qualities that make things appealing? how do i understand any thing, let alone many? how do i speak with confidence on what i do know, or know that i can speak on a thing? and how do i do this fast enough to make up for half a decade of lost time when i have to build a bookshelf and check in on my friends and maybe go for a run and put away some laundry and oh fuck i forgot about the dishes and go to bed at 10:30 on a friday night?

i will continue anyway, because i think it's good for my imbalanced humors, and it's the thing i guess i've been doing longest, and even if i freak out about quality or efficiency or the imaginary mountain of time between me and everyone (whose work) i love, i still enjoy it. and hopefully i'll keep getting better, and if i don't, that's chill too.

25 october

something happened recently which should not affect me much, being that everyone involved was uninjured, and, all things considered, was not particularly scary. and yet i am afraid to go outside, and afraid of honking cars, and afraid of the twinge in my side that echoes back my death a decade prior. and i don't have much to say about it, and i cannot yet channel the ambivalent muck into anything, and so it sits there in my veins like a layer of grime. i don't know whether i hope for it to fade, or to coalesce into something i can drag out of myself. likely the former.
i worry i only decide to start things when i am already falling out of them !

18 october