I Don’t Know…
Tap…and I suppose. I’m just typing. My book (day 126 or something of the editing process) is at a rather low point once again. Inspired but tired. Bored but who knows what else. Getting better than not. The same but more words grow like a plant. Days go by and the spring, I guess it’s here. Went to bed got yelled at by pal to go to the bar. Went to the bar came home and slept for three hours. Woke up because I should be working. Standing up because back hurts. Lazy because the long hours are catching up to me. Perseverance is what it’s all about. Digging to find what’s already there. Days and who knows when I’ll be done. Almost may. Almost 32. I have to be done before the 15th. I constantly say that this will be the day that I get in some kind of roll. You can’t really get into a roll when you’re editing. He said he couldn’t breathe when he was editing. I feel the same. Makes me feel like my chest might collapse. Every day I say that this is the day but then I only get 1500 words done and cut 500 words out, time spent, five hours on four pages, and then the sounds are back and then I just have to go for a walk. I’m learning again and it’s strange as you get older. Strange feeling yourself get smarter and being able to sense this conscious life in ways that people much older than me never will. I said this before but writing can change you. I listened to a radio show about an old guy telling the damn kids what books not to read. I listened to Foster Wallace’s long gone voice and he sounded so passive, and he was so good, so down, and then he killed himself. He left his last book out on his desk for people to find. He was a postmodern writer and he knew it. He knew how the media drove his point home. He needed the media even though he hated it. I don’t need the media. I use it because it’s there and it allows a poor man to connect. But David was really sick and I know what it’s like to find strength in your depressions. It’s a circle for the artist who is nothing more than a human.
I don’t know. Tap. Everything influences me. I haven’t watched television since I broke up with my girlfriend. It’s strange. David was something else but he knew what he was doing and he was such a good writer and he was given as much time as he wanted. He would have helped writing and writers so much more if he was still alive, and really, he was a real sick fuck because he wanted people to talk about him even after he was dead. I don’t see the point of saying what should be done with all my notes and writing and manuscripts after I’m dead. I don’t care now if I lose most of it and I really won’t care then. You can shoot them to the moon if you want to or make something that floats out of all the paper I’ve made a mess of. Everybody talks about a point. Whats the point? Maybe the point is that there’s no point. That you have to make your own point based on what your evolution tells you, and humans don’t even want to be what they are. I’m sorry humans, you’re humans.I don’t know. Tap. Everybody wants goals but they don’t make the kind of goals that I’ve set for myself. The point? The point is not to seek death or the future but to live now as if you’re already dead. The point? I don’t know. Tap.People make life so hard on each other, and I do it too. My typing is second to none these days and I am afraid of writing. I’m afraid of who? Myself, that’s it. But it’s too late to be overly sensitive and aware of what I’ve already been invested in. You can’t quit now because you’re already underground. Not as crazy as I seem in my own head and not as smart as I think when I’m alone. There’s so much more that I need to see and read and keep getting wiser and tired, only tired but as I’m done with this typing warm up I think of the shadows of spring. The dirt and the yellow sun and the old crates down by the old wood boats now owned by nobody. I think about how looking at the lake makes me so happy and alive. I think about the daytime rabbits and the skipping stones and the feeling that the rocks weigh in my hands. I think about the ripples in the tides and the life under the water, and seriously, what were human’s ever thinking? Factories should never have been allowed to do what we have already done. I don’t know. Tap. I speak about my country. We always forget. We always think the old don’t know and the kids are punks. Who’s right? The adults. Who are the adults? I don’t get it. There is about a twenty to thirty year gap and maybe less when you are said to be able to control your own destiny, that you can take part in the world, but the rest of the time, the other sixty to seventy percent of your life you are said to be an incompetent fool. I think we need to let someone else run the world for a while, because really, the adults aren’t doing a very good job. Take even my town. Schools closed down. Lakes polluted. Spring cleaning means cutting down greens. People just yell random noises at all hours of the day. Almost fifty percent of the people can’t read or don’t care to read. That old man, that damn old man, and he said don’t read certain books, and he said don’t read Kerouac and Vonnegut and don’t read King and don’t read Hemingway and who knows who else you can’t read. I think that man must have had some kind of an agenda. He said don’t do what I did. I read those books and that’s why I never wrote the great novel, and that’s crazy. Just read. Read books. Read. Read. Turn off your televisions. Write and read everything, every book. Don’t listen to those who say don’t read because you will be influenced, and that if you are a writer you should just read…then…what? I don’t know. Tap. People need to think about the argument that their words form once in a while but not all the time. I don’t know. He said don’t read. Don’t read these books because you will try to steal their voice, and this is impossible. Nobody can steal anybody’s voice and really it doesn’t matter. Just do what you want but be nice and try to remain calm. I don’t. I’m learning. Trying. But the struggle is the point. Some people are losing and they don’t even know it, because they don’t care. Just another day. Another day of being an adult. I’m just typing. I don’t know. Tap…
Adventures In American Writing 