Slow Currents

If you bother to write, it’s probably because you think there’s something valuable to be said.

The trouble is, if you think it’s important enough to bleed over, it’s also important enough that you want to make sure it’s.

Completely.

Perfect.

So just put it off. After all, it’s better not to do something at all then to do something imperfect.

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea closes with a meditation on all the glory that must be given up in order to lead a real life.

The author took over a military base, in an effort to restore Japan to its Imperial glory.

When he failed, he killed himself.

I had a realization, just now.

As my life falls into place, I’m going to have the things I’ve always wanted. The things that before, I’ve only had tastes of.

That’s not the realization.

The realization, then:

What if these things were only alluring, when all I could have was a taste?

I know, I know, what is this, Creative Writing 101? Or Psychology 101, or Philosophy 101, or the fucking campus bar, where people solve the world’s problems? Really just insert a place where you’re bound to here the obvious, sophomoric takes.

Maybe it’s the kind of thing that feels profound whenever you experience it, because it’s a deep human experience. Experience being the key word here, since you can’t understand it based only on the idea.

Or maybe it’s the moment of clarity, when you can see, for a moment, what your future might be, see the dance between gains and losses, wondering if you’ll be able to move just right, to dance between the raindrops.

For years and years, Both Sides Now, sung by Neil Diamond, was my favourite song.

Talk about a moment, when, knowingly or not, you can see your future.

Something’s lost when something’s gained.

Or maybe I’m just a writer with a melancholic streak, spending ten minutes too long on something that should have been an idle thought.

You know what I really hate?

People who are against burning books.

…

Maybe I should start again.

The other day, I saw a post about somebody asking how to “ethically” dispose of books written by an objectionable author. They asked, because they refused to burn books. This strikes me as besides the point.

But it did get me wondering.

If you’re asking the internet message boards what the right thing to do is, I’m not convinced it’s about doing the right thing. It might be more about doing the “right” thing, which is to say the “ethical” thing, which is to say doing whatever is most likely to have the imaginary Greek Chorus in your head stand up and applaud.

So you wind up following rules that are more about optics than they are morality, which is how you wind up misunderstanding what morality is to begin with (don’t ask me, I’m not sure either), and instead of trying to do the right thing, you end up following a rule, because a rule is simple, measurable, and true across the board.

So instead of being concerned about the suppression and censorship of complicated or dangerous or nuanced or objectionable ideas….

You end up concerned about the safety of dead trees and ink.

Because it’s much easier to say “Burning books is an immoral act,” something you will never be called on to defend, then it is to deal with the real issue, the gray area around artists you aren’t willing to support, and the complicated feelings there. Artists who will always be available via the second hand market or online, artists who aren’t making financial profit off the books you’ve already bought, regardless of how you dispose of their books.

The burning of books is not the issue here.

It’s the symbol we grew to represent ideas of tolerance and curiosity. Then, because symbols are easier than ideas, it replaced them.

Now, so long as you protect dead trees, the people watching will know you’re a good person.

It’s so easy to fill the days with killing time, and forget just how it feels to read a good book, the kind you mow through in blocks and spare moments, because you can’t stop thinking about it.

We prepare for the apocalypse we want, as said by someone or other.

So I guess the question is, why do we want an apocalypse?

Fascists, the antichrist, blood drinking oligarchs, the singularity, capitalism, socialism, global warming, everybody knows there’s someone out to get them.

I guess it’s easier that way.

Look at the world, and repeat after me

Look at your life, and repeat after me.

The devil made me do it.

Isn’t it horrible how much writing advice is cliche?

Yes, there is the craft and logistical and rhythmic stuff that you use to polish whatever rock of words you end up with.

But first you stare at something blank for however long it takes, and look for a way to trick yourself into creating something from nothing, or something from something adjacent, or just to get words on paper, to get that rock that you can polish later.

So you end up with that first and most annoying piece of writing advice.

Just sit there, don’t get too distracted (stare at the wall if you need to), and put one word in front of the other.

I haven’t done this in years, not since university.

I’ve got writing that needs to be done, and a deadline. I put it off till late. There’s a whole page in The Recognitions where Wyatt talks about painting at night, how by then you’ve finished everything you needed to do that day, or at least it’s too late to do it, so you can finally just sit and paint.

I’ve got a soft deadline that I’m pretending is a hard one. That way, I’ll be done a draft by the time it’s actually due, and still have time to edit.

I have coffee and cigarettes and beer, but I have to wait on the beer, at least until I’ve finished an outline.

Everything’s spread out and ready, and here I sit, waiting to find the perfect close to this little blurb. Another way to procrastinate.

Well, this is it.

Here we go.

I had a dream last night.

The dream takes place now, but in it, I discovered something from a long time ago.

My ex, apparently, had written two letters, and after we broke up, passed them all around. A good friend told me this. We didn’t meet until a year ago, but way back when, he’d been given the letters too.

The first was everything I’d done wrong, consisting primarily of things I hadn’t actually done wrong, things she’d assumed or exaggerated.

The second was a confession, that she’d been cheating on me.

I didn’t get either letter, and I didn’t know she’d been cheating on me. When I found out, I thought, Of course. Deep down, I’d already known.

The dream took place on a dream street, one I visit every once in a while. There are strange things going on in the buildings, thrift stores and small town school houses and a haunted house. One time, I was chased by a demon with a red mask for a face. It was the same demon who’d caused the holocaust. Another time I visited one room thatched houses that were placed high on stilts. I think they were book stores. Once, I went to a party in a building that was too dark, with ceilings that were too high. Last night, I crossed a bridge that was too narrow, and was lost in a house with too many rooms, some of which looked the same.

I ran into my brother, and him, and I, and the friend who was telling me about the letters, we went down a waterslide while we tried to smoke cigarettes, and wound up in a still lake that was the size of an ocean, just to the left of the street, and the too-narrow bridge.

I know I saw my ex, or she was trying to find me, but the dream-happenings became muddled with the dream-memories. Sometimes you really experience a dream-memory, the same way you really experience a dream.

I wanted an explanation, or she wanted to explain herself, or maybe I just wanted to let myself finally get angry at her, and tell her all the things she’d gotten wrong, the things I’d let slide out of misguided charity.

We stood together by the narrow bridge, but didn’t get the chance to talk. That’s when the dream ended, or at least when that part of the dream did.

Fourteen months ago was the last time I had a dream on that street, and they always feel important. I wonder when I’ll wind up there again.

I wonder if anybody’s written the horror story about the man who had too many books to read, and they just kept compiling, book after book after book, until eventually he was crushed (physically or mentally, I’m not sure which) by the weight of them, and all the things he’d never know swarmed about, tiny teeth bared, and they ate him.

Creative types talk about reading reviews of their work, and how they can’t.

They can’t read the good reviews, because if they believed the good reviews, they’d have to believe the bad ones too.

An article, I think it was from Hotel Concierge, has a line that describes years of my life. I still repeat it, a mantra to fight certain anxieties, certain beliefs.

People live their life following rules they don’t really believe in, then wonder why they don’t feel powerful.

There’s a series of old children’s stories, puppets who wander about their world giving stickers to each other, golden stars to those they like, black dots to those they don’t.

One puppet doesn’t have any stickers. Whether star or dot, they flutter off her to the ground.

This is because she knows the kindly old carpenter who made them, and because she knows the stickers are only a game, whatever shape they are. They don’t matter.

If, by Rudyard Kipling, is a beautiful poem, chock full of good advice.

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you…

And, of course, Nietzsche talked about this, saying that the superior man is not a means to an end, but an end in and of himself.

I think all of them are saying the same thing.

By the way, today there was a crazy lady at work. She had to be escorted out, yelling about being God, the end of the world, and ancient Egypt. It was a real problem, and I was there, and I helped walk her out. It wasn’t till later I realized how shaken up everybody else was. I couldn’t care less. I’d been thinking so much about other people, people I don’t know or care about. Imaginary people having imaginary conversations, that’s what shook me up.

The mind is its own place….

I think Milton said that.

Anyway, it fits nicely here.