posted on August 23, 2010 at 8:32 pm by Khali
They say there is a novel inside everyone. I think there are hundreds of stories inside of me. They live under my skin; squirm and multiply in the dark recesses of my mind. I wish I could get them out of my head and onto paper in a manner that didn’t seem, afterwards, to be crap. I suppose my greatest enemy here is doubt. Self-doubt and a deep seated belief that I’m not really that good at much. Even with the evidence (hello acceptance to the Master’s Program I wanted at the school I wanted) staring me in the face.
I haven’t written anything in months.
Lie.
I’ve written a long letter, or two and not sent them.
I’ve thought a lot about what I should write.
I need to write about a few things, work out my inner workings first before I can pour this novel out onto paper, from formless shapes and feelings in my gut into real living scenes on the page. My life feels like a template, a storyboard or even a metaphor for something better. Maybe that’s wishful thinking?
I was sorting through my reams of crap this weekend. I have so much of it… but I found one of the last birthday cards that Dean sent to me. I haven’t been able to put it down and it’s sitting in my purse at this very moment. It seems kind of silly that I’m so attached to this piece of paper that I’ve not seen in a couple of years, but it’s become a kind of symbol. It was when he was strong enough to remember, to care. I know it was him because he was the only one who signed it. There was no one to prompt him to send me a card, he just remembered me and sent it to remind me that he loved me on my birthday. It’s things like this that make me wonder if I did enough. I torture myself that I could have done more to help him get back to his old self. I guess I feel like I failed him. I never seem to be where I am needed most.
I never seem to be able to think outside the box when I need to; to step outside of myself and see beyond the immediate. Why is that?
Why?
Listening to: I have the Touch - Peter Gabriel
Posted in journal | No Comments » | Tags: anatomy of pain, family, inspiration, moving, rambling, woosh
posted on April 22, 2010 at 8:54 pm by Khali
How can I begin?
So many skin
of silence upon me
Not that they blunt me,
but I have become
accustomed to
walking like a pregnant woman
carrying something
alive yet remote.
My thoughts,
though less articulate
than image,
still have in them
something like a skeleton,
a durable beginning
waiting for
unpredicted flesh
and deliverence.
I would ask
you: learn as I learn
patience with mine
and your own silence.
~Pat Lowther
Posted in Poetry, Quotations | No Comments » | Tags: inspiration, quotes, things that make you go hrm, woosh
posted on August 15, 2009 at 12:11 pm by Khali
Sometimes I wish I smoked. Then I would have an excuse to go out and just sit, staring into nothing. Thinking.
I feel sometimes like my entire universe is contracting inside my head, like a prelude to a massive explosion. I’m overcome with nostalgia, with anxiety, stress… things I used to think myself free of. Things I used to disregard as something for weaker people. Bit of a wake up call to realise that these things are breaking me down, piece by piece. I suppose this is the kind of thing people mean when they talk about existential crises. I mean what the hell am I doing here? Sometimes I feel like everything is so fucking pointless and that we’re all running around like chickens throwing out emotions and fucking up with no idea what the big idea is. Heh… ok, that’s exactly what’s happening, but it’s frightening to think that no one on this planet has any self-assurance, or any idea at all that there is actually a direction to go in. Maybe I just feel like that because I’ve lost what self-assurance, confidence or conviction that I once had. I know what I would like to believe. I would like to believe that every thing happens for a reason. Not in the sense that everything is predetermined, because that’s the opposite of chaos in that there is no room for chance, change, art or individuality in that vision of the universe… and that is almost as terrifying as there being too much of that. I suppose we all want to feel like there is order in the universe, and even more so when there feels like there is none in our lives. But it would be nice to feel that and not feel so fucking adrift.
I find myself holding on to the walls, walking slower, laying on the floor, anything, to make things less likely to slip away from me. It’s a little like vertigo in reverse: I’m not falling down, everything else is threatening to fly up and away out of my reach. WHOOSH.
I keep thinking to myself: if only I had some time to think about things, to sort them out in my head… and then I think, even if I make time I’m going to get distracted with all the pieces that fit in, or should fit in and don’t. There really is no way for me to lay everything out and take a good look at it. In other words, I do not have the luxury of falling apart. By that I mean that life makes its demands on me. Rather, I let life make demands. I don’t have control of it, in other words. What I’m not sure of is whether other people feel the other way, like they do have control or if they know it’s an illusion and that they are just holding on to the pretense that everything is just fine. Wearing the mask, doing the dance.
Well, it’s not fine. I’m not fine, I’m overwhelmed. I’m managing, but I’m overwhelmed. The world is not fine: people are rude, ignorant, self-centered, and obsessive to the point that the pretense of society, of communities are stretched into incoherence. Everyone is disconnected and don’t know how to communicate; giving too little or too much of themselves and struggling to find a balance. Playing mind games when there’s no reason to second-guess thier opponent, who is in fact not an opponent but a fellow in the insane rat-race in the first place, someone who should be counted on, not suspected or mistreated or held at arms length. Imagined enemies, tangled intrigues from one level of society to the next - is any of it even real in the face of the fact that people go home every night and have to look at themselves in the mirror? How many people can do that and be reasonably happy with what they see there, literally and metaphorically?
whoosh…. I close my eyes and wait for the spinning to stop just long enough so I can take a deep breath.
I’ve stopped reading the news or watching TV, again. I stopped for a while before and then felt I should be more informed for whatever reason, but I don’t want to know about the killing and dying and general douchebaggery that seems to make up “the news” these days. I want to find something in there that makes sense. I want to see people getting something good because they deserve it. I want to read about someone rescuing someone from some nasty fate, I want to know that people, somewhere, are not self-absorbed assholes. I want to know that my fight to remain sane in this insane world is not futile or even unique. I want a damn success story.
But I say nothing. I can’t tell that story. Not yet. I have a long way to go, on many levels. Right now I’m workin on this reverse vertigo. I just need to sort my personal pile of crap into more manageable pieces. So if I seem a little strange to you people in the next little while that’s what’s up. My head’s in pieces in a way it’s not been for nigh on ten years, though there is no single thing that has caused this particular mass of little black rainclouds. They just seemed to blow in on me all at once and in a great hurry. Now I’m just waiting for the storm to break so I can let the rain wash my brain clean.
listening to: Kosheen - Cover
reading: A complicated kindness - Miriam Toews
Posted in fiction maybe, journal | 1 Comment » | Tags: life, little black raincloud, my brain, nescience, thinky, woosh
