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.
