morningtown

[morningtown]

I want to be good. Better.

That is true.

That must be enough. 

[morningtown]

I must be here somewhere.

[morningtown]

On Depression and Celebration

I was going to write about the power of celebration but it turns out I’m depressed. 

That’s something I knew intellectually and hazily but that I hadn’t really registered, like how you know you’re shivering and if you really thought about it you’d realize the room is very cold, but nobody else at the party has a coat on so you feel like you’re being very dramatic and maybe you’re really not that cold after all and you can just suck it up. But when your girlfriend with clinical depression listens to you describe how you can’t feel the love you know you have for them, like it’s a puppet show, like it’s behind a screen, like it’s shadows on the cave wall, and they say “that sounds like depression,” then you go, “oh, yes. Right. It’s very cold in here.” 

I can talk about truths, and how they don’t sound like anything. All the truths I have told have been wrenched out of me by the gut, and they made no sense at all, but they ached true. “Tell me the truth,” well that’s about the hardest thing you could ask of someone. It’s easier for us to echo the truth. If the truth is a bell struck in the chest, the rings of sound shiver up the mouth. And those echos are good; those echos are no less valuable than the truth itself, they’re just different. They are a liquid vs. a gas; no moral judgements can be made on either substance, but their difference is essential. So we echo the truth and that makes us smile and cry and act one way or the other, and when we tell the truth it sounds like nothing at all. It hurts to cough up a bell. The most recent truth I told was “and I love you,” and I was crying.   

It strikes me as funny—not amusing, but funny—that during depression, when my capacity to act, or do, anything, feels nearly outside of me, that that’s when I double-down on my ideas of human sovereignty. When I feel stuffed into a very small hole, like one hole in a pumice rock, or a thimble stuck in concrete, that’s when I look out and say “We can make anything important based on how we celebrate it. It is the act of human celebration that shapes value. Is there any culture in the world that does not celebrate? We celebrate through many different forms; some celebrate through stillness and silence. The Quakers refuse to acknowledge holy days because every day created by God is holy—thereby celebrating every day. On Pride, we riot. We celebrate the lives lost, and the lives earned. On Winter Solstice we celebrate the dark, and the return of the light. We make our own world. That power lies in us—in our human joy.” Such a faith in joy from a place remote from it. That thought does feel like a lifeline.

#reading: annie dillard #tw: depression #non-fiction #thoughts

[morningtown]

Oh no

I have a sense that the people closest to me don't think I am a good writer. Now, this sense could come from 

 a) projection of my own insecurities (very likely) 

b) the fact that I don’t accept positive feedback on my work readily, especially when it’s just someone saying “i like this one” 

c) the fact that I’m so mysterious about what I’m working on (because I’m not working on anything and I’m constantly ashamed) so people don’t know whether or not to ask me about what I’m working on (probably because they can feel the shame) 

d) a desire on my family’s part for me to choose another career (very likely) 

or e) I’m actually not a good writer, and nobody wants to tell me.

It’s probably a combination of some or all of these options, and others I haven’t thought of. It’s probably mostly in my head. But this is one of those instances in which it doesn’t matter what is true, because I need to be able to cope regardless. So let’s say it’s e).

Let’s say I’m deluding myself, and everyone can see it. Let’s say they don’t want to shatter my delusion because they suspect it’s all I have. Let’s say that in everything I write the voice is too vague, the images are cliché, the subject matter is detached from reality in a way that alienates a reader, let’s say I’ve never given anyone pause to think, let’s say that when I like a line or a thought I’m the only one to say “that’s new, that’s good,” that when I have new work (finally, eventually) and I trot it out like a proud pony it’s exhausting for people to keep their smiles on, let’s say they talk about how to let me down gently, let’s say my work is offensive, racist, ableist, objectifying, trite, worthless, let’s say it makes no difference whether I write or not, let’s say I’ll wake up embarrassed in five or ten or thirty years and finally realize, and then what?

It’s been 23 years thinking about writing. It’s been at least a couple of years of actual writing. I have already invested so much, at this point there is no such thing as cutting my losses.

I want someone to tell me I write good. That I, once, wrote in a way that saw something. But if that person never comes along, do I wait forever and turn to dust from all the unwritten thoughts because I saved them for a time that never came? That’s an undoing. That other shit, the waking up and realizing "oh no," that’s just a Tuesday.

I make and unmake myself every morning. I bring myself to myself every day. I hold myself up to my body in the mirror and I could say no, but I don’t—or at least not so vehemently that I don’t get up the next day.

Each person needs a reason for living, else we cease to exist. Either by our own hands or something else’s, by time or by flood or by fire. “Good” doesn’t enter into the equation.

Let’s be mediocre. Let’s be shitty writers. Let’s write nothing good. Let’s write nothing useful. Let’s change nothing. Let’s not write about anything, at all. Let’s write a blank page in lemon juice and burn it while it’s read. Let’s write in chalk on sidewalks the word “profiterole” over and over, the word “sponge” graffitied 50 times on a brick wall. Let’s not look at each other. Let’s avert our gaze. Let’s take three years to stare at nothing, then vomit once onto the ground. Let’s not smile as a response to anything ever again. Let’s say our names.

I have gotten carried away yet I’ve written myself into the point I was writing to discover, which is this: I won’t be good. And now it’s mine.

#rant #thoughts #thoughts on writing #writing through my problems

[morningtown]

Tonight

I play dress-up in my own clothes 

We toss squares between us — the mirror and I 

it giggles as I braid its nothing hair it sings

There are many kinds of darkness, and some of them are yours

Mother is here, gliding  She crosses the living room 

dressed as fir trees in a melted lake.

I am to be painted naked in a field 

of golden grasses, dark brocade 

and my bare ass in the sun  The light 

would like it known the light 

would like to ice me like a cake. 

There is thimble and thread, I think 

glowing in dust from the firelight

As velvet nears I wind and wind 

the thread I think around my sewing finger 

until the tip turns blue I tap it and 

pray over the grooves it unwinds 

and takes with it as tracks in the snow.

In the mirror the crone takes me up 

where I stand in ivory lattice knuckle and 

bone  She says Here, pet: life is sweet and

slips a ruby through the skin of my palm.

#poetry #stoned #inspiration: #tonight by ladan osman

[morningtown]

September 18 - Scraps

I lived in one house for my whole life. I painted and painted; I couldn’t stop. Sometimes I’d think “that’s enough, time to live,” but living led me to paint again. I had to get it all down, get it all inside me.

I painted as I grew old. It’s possible I had children—there were children around to stare at the walls and live according to their angles. I died in one room. The children watched the walls vanish and bare themselves to eggshell white and limplettuce blue and nothing, nothing of me remained.

The bees built a nest in the corner of my ceiling,  

and prospered. Soon the ceiling bent 

with the weight of their hive. Honey made 

a slow stain on the plaster… it dripped through to the floor. 

I stood daily under the stream watching the light 

favor one tiny air bubble, then the next 

letting it drip onto my forehead

smelling the warmth and sugar, wondering

if this was for me

if it mattered 

if it wasn’t, 

if it would last. 

#from the phone #poetry #prose poetry #reading-inspired #alice notley #the descent of alette

[morningtown]

I think the only mugs acceptable in a cupboard are chunky handmade ceramics (but the nice ones from women on islands) and souvenir mugs

#high thoughts #while my girlfriend showers

[morningtown]

This is my first piece of writing.

Ever.

These are the first words I have ever written and they aren’t even by hand which is probably a disappointment or would be if it were true, which it’s not. These are the 10,548,722 to 10,548,792 words I have ever written, and I can say that with absolute certainty because you can say anything with absolute certainty whenever you want.

Feels as if I should smash a bottle into my laptop or maybe the bedroom wall or the shitty siding of somewhere, maybe a concrete wall in the middle of the woods that nobody knows what it’s for. But we are trying to be less precious, which might include not making elaborate send-offs for a fucking blog. Yet on the other hand we are trying to be kinder so we shouldn’t call this a fucking blog at least until we write about fucking. 

It is a grand blog. Behold the crown moulding, the mahogany panels, the piles of pigeon feathers and bird shit on the floor. The rusting iron beams. I do love a rusted bit of iron. Doesn’t have to be a home, I guess; not everywhere has to be a home. And not everything needs and ending.

#writing #thoughts #firstpost #nonfiction #ramble