I'm experiencing this phase where I get frustrated by my own words. I'm so fed up with them, they sound so...pretentious, pseudo-philosophic, fake, to me.
I don't know, I guess I really want to find that balance where I don't give too much away and yet really, really capture what I'm feeling in a simple, honest way. And it ends up being neither, maybe. Some entries I've made private...but they are the most raw, the most truthful of them. It's a shame we feel like we have to hide our own truths. Or dress them up until they are unrecognizable.
I'm starting to wonder if a blog is the best solution, but I really like typing things out, it keeps up with my thoughts better than the old fashioned way, plus I can edit them later however I want, though perhaps this is not a virtue so much as a way of deceit. What compels me later to change what I have written? Is it a drive to reveal what's underneath, or a desire to veil it?
**
Sunday, February 17, 2019
ramblings
We think we are the ones who know our life best. But when it comes to it, we are so blinded. What we like, how someone feels about us, how we feel about them. How important they are to us. What we see, what we don't see, what we remember, what others remember of us. All these relations to ourselves, yet we are more muddled than ever.
I thought maybe there was an arrow pointing to you, now there isn't, someday that arrow might come back, maybe not in the Form of Cupid's, maybe in something else. When conversation flows, gentle and easy, we are never in a better state of clarity, but these crystal moments are so rare, and when they come we don't do anything with them anyway.
That's not true. Maybe we do mold them in some way, hold them in our memories maybe, with our biased feelings tinging over, like a sticky syrup that never quite compares to the freshness of what was.
Looking back, (or is it looking forward, or looking at what is not here?), that is all I do. To live in the present is so hard. To truly live and not think, to think and not overanalyze, to do and not talk about doing. These are such struggles.
Struggles I've hoped to find elsewhere, yet when I do, find them so hideous, and they me. It's such an ugly mess. Turn yourself away from what is not Beautiful. Is that the solution to such a cycle? To what extent does the psychology of your actions matter in the face of such forces, forces that feel outside your power.
Or maybe they have always been in my power to stop, but somehow I've found something attractive in wallowing in it.
I wish these thoughts could articulate themselves better. (They take the action here, not me, because once they come here, their existence no longer belong to me.) These fingers just type, and the stream takes over when I'm not sure I make sense to a society outside myself.
That is all, I think, so for now, I turn away from nothingness.
When philosophers enter a forest, there are no more trees.
**
I thought maybe there was an arrow pointing to you, now there isn't, someday that arrow might come back, maybe not in the Form of Cupid's, maybe in something else. When conversation flows, gentle and easy, we are never in a better state of clarity, but these crystal moments are so rare, and when they come we don't do anything with them anyway.
That's not true. Maybe we do mold them in some way, hold them in our memories maybe, with our biased feelings tinging over, like a sticky syrup that never quite compares to the freshness of what was.
Looking back, (or is it looking forward, or looking at what is not here?), that is all I do. To live in the present is so hard. To truly live and not think, to think and not overanalyze, to do and not talk about doing. These are such struggles.
Struggles I've hoped to find elsewhere, yet when I do, find them so hideous, and they me. It's such an ugly mess. Turn yourself away from what is not Beautiful. Is that the solution to such a cycle? To what extent does the psychology of your actions matter in the face of such forces, forces that feel outside your power.
Or maybe they have always been in my power to stop, but somehow I've found something attractive in wallowing in it.
I wish these thoughts could articulate themselves better. (They take the action here, not me, because once they come here, their existence no longer belong to me.) These fingers just type, and the stream takes over when I'm not sure I make sense to a society outside myself.
That is all, I think, so for now, I turn away from nothingness.
When philosophers enter a forest, there are no more trees.
**
Today I saw a slow flurry out the window, it was sheer perfection. The kind of snowing you only see in films but never in real life, never so perfectly paced, in thick, fluffy chunks, spaced between each other just right. I debated drawing it to my companion's attention, then decided not to. Was I being selfish in keeping the perception to myself? Maybe. I just didn't want it to be ruined, I told myself. The thing about beauty is, at least for me, subject to change given the opinions of others. If others don't find much in something, then I feel silly for being drawn to it at all, and what was once bright dulls. You have to be really careful with who your audience is when it comes to sharing beauty. Happiness is more egalitarian. But the former is a less temperate mistress. If I so choose wrong, will the whole scene be shattered? Besides, was I really withholding anything from her by remaining silent? The picturesque reel was still playing outside, wasn't it? Would my comment even add or change anything about it? I decided to err on the safe side, and look down to gather my bags as my companion comes up behind me.
"That's really pretty." She says.
I look up in surprise. Someone told me that when someone else finds the same thing beautiful as we do, especially if it's a rare preference, we feel as if some deep heartstring's been tugged. It connects with us on a really personal level. And I had held my comment because I didn't think she'd share it, and thus ruining not only the white flakes outside but also the relationship between us somehow, cut one invisible strand among many between us. But it was said, and it didn't.
**
"That's really pretty." She says.
I look up in surprise. Someone told me that when someone else finds the same thing beautiful as we do, especially if it's a rare preference, we feel as if some deep heartstring's been tugged. It connects with us on a really personal level. And I had held my comment because I didn't think she'd share it, and thus ruining not only the white flakes outside but also the relationship between us somehow, cut one invisible strand among many between us. But it was said, and it didn't.
**
I want to post a caveat to these writings, in case anyone I've so carefully tried to mask should piece together more than I hope they would. The caveat is: sometimes I lie. For the lack of a more nuanced word.
Because it is not that we remember first, and then write it down. Rather, we write to remember. Sometimes we remember wrongly, in the bluntest sense of the word. The paintings of Monet are not the most realistic of paintings, but they capture an essence of the scene truer than a photograph could. I think that is the goal for me, and for all writers of memoirs. I realize that this rings dangerously close to a certain disgraced author, who said: memory is subjective. People flatfootedly rejected his work after that. I want to make a case for not being so quick to judge. Is the pursuit of accuracy in the details more important than the pursuit of light? Monet didn't think so. Neither did the writer of A Million Little Pieces. Neither do I. And neither should anyone else who felt touched by a work of art. Because the "truth" is not one-dimensional, to make it so would be to shut out a smidgen of inaccuracy, but also, the light.
**
Because it is not that we remember first, and then write it down. Rather, we write to remember. Sometimes we remember wrongly, in the bluntest sense of the word. The paintings of Monet are not the most realistic of paintings, but they capture an essence of the scene truer than a photograph could. I think that is the goal for me, and for all writers of memoirs. I realize that this rings dangerously close to a certain disgraced author, who said: memory is subjective. People flatfootedly rejected his work after that. I want to make a case for not being so quick to judge. Is the pursuit of accuracy in the details more important than the pursuit of light? Monet didn't think so. Neither did the writer of A Million Little Pieces. Neither do I. And neither should anyone else who felt touched by a work of art. Because the "truth" is not one-dimensional, to make it so would be to shut out a smidgen of inaccuracy, but also, the light.
**