it's a day later. it's cold. the air sits on my back. and i can hear the rain punctuating the silence outside.
i hate myself, i hate my writing. i think what i've done is a terrible thing. i have no idea where i've been going with my story. i thought that if i wrote it incrementally, that somehow it would amount to something, but no. it just feels like an ingrown toenail, turning in on itself, and wounding the foot in the process... something wrong. i have been thinking that it reflects me, that there is something wrong about me. that i am not interested in the same things as other people. i think about some of the ideas i have had for stories. they don't arise necessarily from the richness of experience. they are usually just coincident things, things that i find make some sort of interesting connection. but there's no heart, and no blood, in such things. what is the point?
maybe that's all i am. an interest in these connections, these blurs, these overlaps. it is like a snapshot taken of a deep ocean, and how the alignment of the sunlight, and the water, and the fish beneath, maybe give some sort of impression of depth. but so what?
i am a terrible father. i just read another chapter in "girl in the shape of a cloud," and by gods, how depressing it is. olive kitteredge was also depressing, about an inescapable and impossible life... i am thinking about my son, in particular. and how, i don't do anything to form him. i feel, at this point, that he is his own person. but i am also worrying, in the background, that he isn't driven, and he isn't particularly heading to any known, good trajectories. and why am i not doing something about it? i suppose i want him to be happy, but i am not providing him with the tools necessary to make a happy life. in the present, i am just giving him free reign... i am so laissez faire with things. is that right? is that wrong? i am so uncertain about things in my own life, how could i define a trajectory for my son?
*****
my dialogue is wretched. part of the issue is: i don't know what anyone wants. it is all just "figuring itself out." maybe it is because what is wanted, what i want, i cannot say. so i am constantly muddling about. i want to kill my brother. no i don't no i don't no i don't. i just want to- maim him. (this reminds me of dobby from harry potter or something: dobby didn't want to kill harry potter. only maim or seriously injure). or maybe i just want his respect. or maybe i just want to be like him, to steal something of his, and claim it as my own. it is all these things. how can i distill it into one thing? why is everything i write so wrought with ambiguity? i hate myself for that.
*****
why do we do the things that we do? is it out of feeling, or compunction? or blind routine? a pattern established, decided upon... and followed religiously? why do i do these things that i do, in this order? what would i feel if i didn't follow this path? i would feel lost, cast off. and the self-hatred would leap into me like a - what were those dinosaurs called? with their bird-like talons? the hook-shaped claws? they would stab into me and disembowel me instantly... i know that that hatred pursues me. it pursued me from ever so long ago. it is my shadow, inevitable. i cast it off only through distraction and routine. distraction and routine.
and concern for what i should be concerned about.
*****
the rain is coming down harder, pelting the earth now. and my skin is chilled. i hear the distance in the rain. the curtains of it coming down.
*****
i wish people listened to me, and found a heart in anything that i was saying. instead, i always am left with the impression that there was something off about me, something lacking. and people won't say it out loud, won't mention it politely... but they fold back into other narratives, because whatever i say only leaves them with a feeling of discomfort. like a glimpse of a gallery of misshapen, hideous artwork. or a symphony played off-tune...
that's me.
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