1/2/2020

wow, it is already the second day of the year!?

i was thinking of people in my life, of opportunities, and imagining if those opportunities had been fulfilled. it is so difficult to conceive of such things. my mind goes all soft and vague, and there is no clarity of feeling. it seems all "made up." which, i suppose, is the death knell of all my stories. this feeling like they are all solipsistic. they are the shape of waves, instead of the shape of authentic feelings. this is why i question myself. maybe i am not authentically human. maybe i cannot bring my feelings into focus, and therefore, it is impossible for me to convey them to the world authentically. i am always an approximation. even my art is such. i need a living model, a photograph, and i copy it by means of the shape of the details. the irony i have found in art is that it is only through fidelity to these inanimate and particulate details that you reach an approximation of life. if you have no fidelity to the actual details, then you have something that looks hideous, especially when it is almost right. maybe it's the same with life, but i don't think so. i think to write an authentic story, you have to have strong feelings, and those, in me, are noticeably absent.

when was i angry? when was i sad? when was i happy? when was i scared?

i write stories as though there is an emptiness. it is almost as though i need to report what i felt to someone else to gain some authenticity. without someone appreciating the feeling, maybe i am nothing. there is no "in itself." maybe that's why the art conundrum arises within me, because that is the self-same conundrum related to my own identity. always trying to snag someone's eye so you can attain authenticity. i think, in a sense, this is the trap of the modern era of social media shit too. but i ALWAYS felt this way.

a danger for me has been this feeling of drowning in myself. that i am only repeating false copies or approximations of reality, over and over, and not actually confronting or dealing with the world... and yet, ironically, the world is really scary and damaging to me, it wears me out. so i oscillate back and forth between wanting to confront the world to find authenticity within it, and wanted to conceal myself and be "self-sufficient." i've often imagined an oasis of sorts, maybe i fashion my home on this model, to be a place where i can access the world at my leisure. to not be pushed around. but then again, maybe it is hiding from the world? the feeling that you are bound by your play list. that the play list after a while simply represents you, and does not represent the world that you want to, that you imagine you could be, open to...

how can i discover me? how can i "have fun being myself?" that is the essential question.

*****

here are some ideas for short stories, not in the plot-heavy sense, but more like vignettes or snapshots:
- two teeth, how i made my brother hit some kid so that he knocked out two of his teeth, and traumatized him forever.
- rectangle of sky. about my sister.
- about the time when my sister nearly drowned me. and about swinging on the swings, and reciting that thing from thundarr the barbarian, in the hopes that some girl would pay attention to me.
- bloody nose. dishonor.
- the cinders from the sky.
- the lightning blast on the gravel.
- the floating plane across the mountains.
- bird watching.
*****