1st April Dream
One aspect, which is important (maybe most important), is that at one point I had the sense, feeling, impression that I ought to be writing this down. The moment in the dream was (to my dream self) a moment of inspiration for a story. It’s elusive now exactly what moment that impression was in relation to, but I think that it had to do with a vibrantly purple tree. Or rather a grove of trees but with one at the forefront of my notice. Deeply veined purple leaves, abundant, voluminous, filling both the branches and the ground which was comprised (under the leaves) of a green grass. There was something about sex, about a “tryst,” in relation to this tree. I’m unsure whether it was an experience that I had or which I witnessed (or learned of) someone else having. I can remember moisture with an overall soft dryness and a sense of verdancy and coolness and secrecy and a perfection of the moment… a kind of now.
The grove of trees was off to the side of a path in a vast public space. The grove was next to some center attraction that my mind at the moment cannot define: a building (house), a lake, a vast field, a carnival. I cannot focus on it but I know that it was huge and of no small importance and a center of something significant. The grove was kind of at the foot of a path which came down from another place and continued on around this center attraction and then diverged in several ways and went on to… I’m not sure where. Somewhere important and/or back where it had began but in a different way. The entire thing was on a very large scale and yet of the most natural and simple character. Densely populated throughout but not crowded. There was too much space for there to be a crowd. It was all immediate and visible yet impossible to focus on, allowing for privacy amongst a throng of many.
The place where the path came down from was reached by a long, mostly empty road. Dirt but clean. An abundance of undefined life (flowers, trees, places) alongside it. The path was the main thoroughfare from the large, complicated place from which I had begun. This was a road that was simultaneously impossible, long yet very short. I think that it depended on your ability and the forces against you rather than the road itself. It was relative.
I remember waking up and immediately realizing that it was too late. I’m now not sure for what or why. I do have the sense that a lot went on and occurred before I fell asleep as well as while I was asleep. I remember confusion, fatigue, a sense of the need to do some kind of damage control and failing utterly because I couldn’t see well, had no balance, was so tired. (These last three are all recurring dream motifs for me.) I also remember a feeling of peace, a room of peace, and the sleep having been so good. I don’t know at all what was going on but it was very complicated and went backwards and forwards for a long time. It was a school, a jail, a play, a hospital, a vast hive mind complicated beyond compare. There was a balcony, a counter, stairs, a team, teammates, infinite details. The thing which I should note now/here is that I have a very strong sense that the “me” in the dream, the perspective I was witnessing it from, was not that of myself.
And at some point I left the place, went on the path, had the sense of an obligation to write in relation to the grove. A million experiences may have happened to me now I really can’t say or tell. I know that intermittently the sense of fatigue, blindness, disorientation came back but that it was interspersed with moments of startling clarity. There were many flowers, vegetation, and choices all nebulous and lost to me now.
The most significant aspect of the dream, however, is that I can see it now in vast panoramic ariel swathes. Bursts of terrible clarity and visual detail even for all the vague impressionistic quality of it. The thing is that I can see it. That it is nearly as visual as “reality” or at least reality with my vision uncorrected. Visual with a heavy, heavy emphasis on vivid color. My dreams are never this way. They are very physical, sensation based, with a heavy emphasis on thought/word/idea. It is very hard for me to think in pictures and in terms of spatial relations but these are (relatively, subjectively) clear elements for me in relation to this dream. Yet the other–the physical sensation and idea/word/thought–components were/are also there.
“Ideas are bulletproof.”
Do what you wanna do.
Say what you’re gonna say.
Do what you wanna do.
You start today. Start today…
I am constantly putting my life off. I have this (fluid) idea in my head about the manner in which I want to live my life. I constantly make resolutions, revisions that I plan to keep either immediately or as soon as X. I never stick with them, enact them. I am burdened by a constant sense of failure, of waiting.
Now there are several things which I need to consider here. Are my plans, my anticipation, all that important? And am I doing myself a disservice by feeling as if I’m not “really” living my life, or at least living/meeting my potential by not fulfilling them? Am I missing my actual experience? Probably, possibly. So there are two choices as I understand it. Either I cease to procrastinate or I cease to plan.
A woman I know recently had a baby. She described her labor as being “present.” I agree with that phrasing. And then I think of the mental state I had while in labor with Alice versus the one I have most of the time and… I need to change the way I think. I wrote a phrase once, “potential is what’s killing me.” I’m not sure that I understood it at the time, but I thought I did in the same way that I believe that I do now.
I start today. What does that mean? (This composition will probably start to come apart more here, be less ordered.) It means doing things rather than thinking about them. It means avoiding more of the things which encourage me not to think. It probably means sleeping less. It means maintaining more of a schedule. It means doing the things which I know are right. It means eliminating the superfluous. It means not letting this be just another abandoned attempt at reformation. I put off and I half-heartedly pine for ideals. I cause myself greater aggravation by trying to avoid mildly unpleasant activities. I need more discipline. I need more doing. Huh?
I need to write more. I’m not sure exactly why except that it seems important. The quote from Burroughs haunts me, “dying animals on a doomed planet.” But what else? I may try some other correspondence now because I think that I have said all that I can on this for the moment. The real test is action.
“Little Sister’s Not a Virgin Anymore”
What fear I? Where dare not look? It seemed like I was on the cusp of naming something (earlier) and now I am back where I always am. Complacent. A little too safe. Tired, achy, content to wait. Why am I this way? What is there? What do I know? Why should I fear?
I can list the rational, obvious, surface things. Even the irrational, subtle, surface things. BUT? Sigh. Begin there then I guess. ALF’s death. Separation from ALF. Breaking from “reality.” Madness, incarceration, death. And then… I don’t believe that I fear ridicule. I don’t believe that I fear failure. I don’t believe that I fear non-action either although I think that I SHOULD. There is more to this, more just on the edge there, more that I will not focus on. Frankie has gotten up and ran out of the room. Does that mean that the others are home? They’ve been gone less than 1 hour. I should check on him. See if he needs to go outside. (procrastination)
The dogs peed. It didn’t take very long and I am back now. Control? Is that what it all comes down to is a lack of control? Is that why I put off, put off, put off my marvelous control-tinged plans for self-improvement because if they don’t go as planned then that means that I have less control? Doing nothing is the ultimate form of control, but it’s NOT. It’s giving in to entropy.
And if you’re giving in, then you’re giving up, and in your sad machines you’ll forever stay, lost inside the dreams of teen machines. I want to say what I’m afraid to say. And I want to say what I am compelled to say. And I want to say what I thought Billy Corgan said but didn’t really. I want to be every moment I ever misunderstood. I’m not sure how to do that within the context of my novel. I’m not sure why it seems necessary to do it within the context of a sexual relationship. It’s just that I have this dark, driving, “thing” inside my head and I…
I am afraid of infinity. Because I am afraid that it does not exist. I am afraid of writing about a character who is young because… youth is wasted on the young. I think that I am afraid of being over-the-top, contrived, preachy. Why am I afraid of this? Why isn’t this something like bad grammar that I can go back and fix later? What is it that is so perfect that I have to be true, have to be right?
The answer is nothing. Right? Nothing is sacred. Nothing is shocking. I need to get back in the mindset of 1997. Ok, I am going to end this now and go and try to write a synopsis of what this story is so far (isn’t that all I do?). After I put the clothes through the dryer again.
What Jungle?
I hate J. Alfred Prufrock.
My problem is that I have at most, at best, at worst, five hours remaining in which to sleep and I have not really slept and I am… here, writing, wide blinking not moving, doing nothing wrong but much much less right. My problem is that I think in terms of phrases like “my problem.”
And ALF is sleeping fitfully tonight and I can’t even write (or sleep) without “fear” of being interrupted. Oh poor, poor me. This is a metaphor (a contingent, a weird association) in my head alone for more than you might think. On edge, full, edgy, can you say in how many ways anxious?
Picking at the skin of my face, the edge of my consciousness, conscious of each of my flaws. I need to do something to iron this all out. I need to do something so that I don’t constantly find myself in this brain, in this place, doubting doubting thinking.
Right, but the crux is never doing. At least it can’t be undone then, interrupted, woken up. Bad metaphors trundling along (no one connects them but you or maybe me): even coitus interruptus can lead to a fetus, stillborn or otherwise.
My problem is that I know too much, do too little, and thrash, twist, burn (but none so dramatic) at the mercy of my own mind. How can I untwist when I’m hesitant to even blink?
The dilemma of the moment is, as usual, a false one: National Novel Writing Month. Do I do the “easy” genre? Do I do the mess I cannot comprehend? Quite literally (huh huh? bad pun approaching) risks versus benefits. No one else can follow the associations I’m making because I write just enough to settle my itch at the moment, my feeling for the words, but no more.
Words are like that for me. A kind of physical crutch. A becoming. Somethings which keep me up at night and cause not literally connected physical manifestations in the material world. (And I am a material girl.) OW.
So what is it, what is it? I think it must be something in the words themselves. Them not me. Them in me. Them in relation to me. It must be something in these constant specters (not being dramatic here) right inside my head. As in, listen to this PLEASE so I can finish and finally go to bed. (Because it will all fall apart for me if I begin to not get enough sleep.)
I’ve been living in words/stories since the concept became unclear to my mind but fully formed. As is since my first memories. I’ve been in words… I’ve been in an existence filled with tactile dreams based on the things I heard, was told, experienced in that day. And worse, on the things I feared, felt, later found as true. I’ve been in words and these have taken the form of constant narratives in my mind, a constant talking to myself, a noise that it is very difficult for me to shut up. These have taken the form of me struggling, not knowing how to write, barely knowing an alphabet, and putting together cryptographic sentences with not enough characters: IMSRE.
New paragraph. The thing about these sentences, narratives, both the outside manifest and inside, is that nobody else is ever usually understanding them. Like my baby sentence, IMSRE, oh the pathos of the tale (back story omitted here), but the real problem of it is the FORM. The words, constructed with infant art supplies and formed when I didn’t know how to form them. That uncomfortable force, that compulsion, towards WRITING when the “burden” should yet not have been mine. Do you see my complaint? My gripe? The words were there before I knew even the least bit about them so how can it ever have been a fair fight?
When will I get the best of this? When will I not let… backing up. ’cause you see words must be the problem. Something is the problem. Something is the matter with my mind. Even if it is nothing more than a persistent, hysterical conviction that “something is the matter,” something is. I want to think that I can just say “stop it” and “no it is not” and walk away from this whole Question with a capital letter. But it can creep back then and the creeping is the worse and now I have this innocent as of yet (ALF) asleep beside me and I think in a melodramatic way I owe it to her to sort this thing out.
Because my neurosis poisons everything. HA! You see! That’s what it is. The word choices I make. Poison. Problem. And it is the fact that I end my sentences in ways which are not orthodox. It offends my sensibilities. All of it. The thing is that I need to do something to be able to sleep at night because this insomnia is creeping back and this is cheaper than running.
So where was I? Oh yeah, the words. I’ve been in them from–what is as far as I am concerned–the beginning. At first I’d purposely live stories. Inside my head. That I wrote (not knowing writing) that weren’t “true” but more where I wanted to be. That went away from me somehow. And then the badly constructed sentences, trying to spell, and then… And of course there were these images of the words I heard daily in my head and homonyms caused confusion. “What a whore.” Segue to a four year old mind: Halloween? Scary? h o r –slow motion– r o r. Vocalize some of these questions to my mother, incomprehensible answer: “A bad woman.” So then I can only think: “She must be scary. It must be bad to be scary.” What am I saying with this?
I remember stumbling to learn to write my name but it didn’t matter. They were already there. In my head. When the patterns come and I had to tap my toe, squeeze my calf, clench my jaw, breathe in one way, out another, twirl a hair (this is simplified dramatically, it was all infinitely more nuanced) these patterns, patterns, patterns, these tactile formless things were nothing but words as well. I don’t think that you could possibly understand.
So the words were there. Are there. They’re the impetus behind all of my bad ideas, bad choices, lame inactions, ineffective actions. Because I’m always talking in my head, talking or writing, and trying to figure out how things are and because of this I act, or speak verbally aloud, or send letters to living people. And what happens? Nothing so dramatically dark, but things do happen and they have this kind of symbiotic reaction to my physical body and my actions and emotions and often it goes spiraling beyond any kind of… I want to say “predicted control” but I’m really not such a maverick as that (bonus points for a zeitgeist word).
Another paragraph. I think this is helping the ability to sleep come along. I hope ALF stays that way too and that I don’t defeat myself only to be kept awake by a baby. She’s gorgeous. I worry that she’s dead, could die, that something I do, don’t do will kill her but oh my god that is another tangent. Where was I?
Words. Ha. So there they are in my head and I’m constantly writing, mostly letters, or talking to myself, thinking, unthinking, mostly annoyingly aware and so then I lose my cool and swing out clumsily. Or else I gain a false conviction. Or else or else I could go on ad nauseam.
My skin feels infected, clawed at, inadequate. Can I blame that on the words? Can I blame everything? The problem is that my life isn’t so bad, that I’m not so unhappy. The problem is that it can all seem pretty good, pretty looking up, but if I don’t do something like this (and phrase it in all of these negative terms) that I start to come apart and then what? I spew, spew, spew. Uncontrolled emails to my friends. Boring (it is clear from his reaction) babbling at my husband. And this monologue always inside my head. Where can I go with it? It’s clear that I gotta go somewhere. I think I’ve done enough that I can sleep although I fear I’ve wasted the better part of an hour.
“I would prefer not to.”
I’m unsure where to begin. I don’t want to expose myself, my vanity and delusions, but I see no other way out. The grandiosity of the last sentence kills me, but I can’t come up with a concise explanation that scans any better than that. A way out. Of what? I’m in no danger, under no duress. It’s possible that my current mode of life is the best that I have ever experienced, so what then? A deluge of words to avoid the real question. A self indulgence and, as I wrote, a vanity. This isn’t living up to the title, but I know nowhere else to go.
I am twenty five years old. My (only) child (a girl) will be one year old on October 13th. My relationship with her is the most straightforward and least dysfunctional interaction with another human that I have ever experienced. So much so that it causes me to question the basic premises with which I have approached life. A quarter of a century gone and I’m not sure where I’m going with this.
I have always been obsessed with myself. There are going to be a lot more sentences beginning with “I” unless I can avoid it. Other people have always told me that I am a strong/good writer. I have done nothing to prove this and much (in my opinion) to disprove… It is very easy for me to lie, both to myself and others. That statement in and of itself is probably worth several pages. There have been periods in my life during which I have written a lot. It is unlikely that I believe in god. What bothers me is that I’m not sure why. I admire Henry James more than I should, more than I have read by him… as in, I don’t deserve to admire him to the extent to which I do. I used to be a solipsist. I no longer think that this is true.
I will stop and say that I do not have a lot of time during which to write. There are years which I wasted in which I could have been and didn’t, mostly because I was drugged (unwillingly, later willingly). Fitting this exercise into my life with ALF will be a challenge. I also intend to write a romance novel for the month of November (Nanowrimo). I plan a lot of things which I never realize.
I feel slightly panicked. Not enough time to be eloquent or even thorough. This is no proper beginning. It says nothing and is hackneyed. Not even worth the content of an email. It is going to be very difficult for me to a) keep up with this b) not delete what I do write. It seems to me as if it is important that I do although my reasons as to WHY it’s important aren’t quite clear to me.
I will explain a William S. Burroughs reference. After he killed his wife, he said that he “had no choice but to write [his] way out.” I would like to do that before I take an action of that magnitude. I’m not sure exactly what I’m writing my way out of. I used to be certain. I used to be sure that I was a solipsist (which I have already said that I am not) and that I had some kind of existential dilemma. So many of my “problems” have been alleviated, made irrelevant, or at least mitigated by ALF’s existence that none of my prior statements hold completely true for me. That’s a big change for me. Words are important to me. I’ve repeated the same words in my head over and over for years. I used to describe “it” as a Chinese finger-trap. The obvious solution to a puzzle of that sort is to stop pulling, maybe that is what I did but I have to figure it out. I have…
This is really bad, imprecise language. I know now that I am going to have to try again and again to explain what I am/was doing in order to get it right. I have to make an effort not to delete. Not to even reread to any great degree, but to soldier forward in the hope that something will unstick.
I have years of self-preservation to undo. I have my whole life in front of me and that is not very long. I have a lot of other things going and it’s going to be hard for me to take this seriously. I am going to try again later. It will be badly put.
