BELLOW FORTH!
chomp chomp info, unhand me! ensue chaos and gratitude. anyway, I'm generally having (and have been having) a postmodernist crisis.
These days, distilling information has been really difficult for me. It’s not so much that I’m bad at doing it, but it’s unclear to what end / how we should do so. There’s a whole story, and I must start it somehow and tell you some part of it and there are many ways I could do this, and I must choose. This runs somewhat counter (but also parallel) to this idea of an “information diet”—this phrase exists now because there’s such a massive amount of information available and to navigate it in any particular way (and choosing some subset of it is necessary) is to create a very different outcome. Do I select for “truth” and credibility? Feel good-ness? Things that motivate me and make me productive? Relatability and validation1? Novelty, expansion of the self? And this is understandably kind of stressful and underdetermined and gets at the singularity of life and the (arguable) uselessness of counterfactuals2.
I want to think about why people write.
As a reader, this is something that immediately stands out to me. Which is somewhat counterfactual, actually, in the sense that I have no real idea why anyone wrote anything but can project3 my own hypotheses based on my self and my worldview to evaluate what reasons to write might be more or less plausible based on the words I am reading. Most of my favorite authors became such because I felt I could understand where they were coming from, because they seemed (to me) to have a clear raison d'être. One subthought—some writers that I read feel like they just *needed* to write whatever they wrote, and I enjoy that needful feel4. And when I don’t like writing, a lot of the time it’s because I can’t figure out why the heck they wrote the thing, or I don’t like the reason I can perceive. I’ll repeat a quick anecdote from Vonnegut’s son5, who is also kind of a writer: before he really starting writing, Kurt tried some “normal” jobs, including writing for Sports Illustrated. The first day, they asked him to write a piece on a runaway horse (see horseracing). He sat there for half the day, eventually wrote the horse jumped over the fucking wall or something like that and then left. And an anecdote of my own, which is that I just read Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air, and really really despised it. The underlying story is heartwrenching, yes, but the way he wrote it, the sorts of things he focused on throughout the book just weren’t the right things (in my humble opinion). I felt like he ought to be writing like he was about to die, because he was, but instead he continually talked in a mostly emotionally detached way and commented on things to do with status and achievement and all, rather than death death DEATH. And so on.
I understand that it’s a bit of a conceit to claim to understand from whence someone else writes, and moreso to pass judgement, but I will do so. This is my way of engaging with a text/writer, and I allow myself it. And no judgements I pass, here or ever, are very serious. Or unchangeable.
I want to come to why I write. I think of this because I don’t often (these days) feel incredibly compelled to write. I thought of writing another blog post a few hours ago, and came up with a handful of things I could write about and no clear thing one way or another. And yet when I do write, I notice immediately that certain things jump to the surface whether I like it or not, intend to or not, and this is quite interesting for me evaluating and understanding myself. Which ties back to the info diet piece. From here, I’m going to just write and see what comes forth, both keeping in mind this topic but also letting myself just run free, generate, as it were.
I am sitting on the futon in my living room. It’s a faded dark green. I’m waiting for my steak to rest. I joke that being vegan has been too tough, but the reality is that I’ve just been watching too much of Uncle Guga lately. I have many questions and I shall have to go soon.
On the subject of writing: does novelty matter? Would you write something that has been written already, again, for yourself? Personally, I like to think that much of what I write is somewhat novel, at least in its specificity, but this is likely false. Writing this blogpost (and the one before it too) have felt weird in a sense—I don’t feel they’ve much value for their novelty, and I’m unsure they’ve much value elsewhere either. But when I don’t think about that, I can and do enjoy writing them.
On the subject of why we write, one of my friends loves to quote this line, something like Rusty, a writer is the sum of their experiences. Go get yourself some. from this terrible romcom called Stuck in Love in which the whole family is writers. I think he struggles with why he writes. But he also reminds me in some vague way that it’s okay to write garbage6 and of course the cliché something about the process. But yes.
I’ve been wondering lately, in our interpersonal relations, when do we stand our ground? When do we take the learning signal? It seems we should stand our ground when we either 1) don’t trust that the other person has our best interests at heart, 2) when we are quite sure that things are good the way they are, 3) when we don’t think that the other giving feedback fully understands you/the situation/etc (similar to 1), 4) when we don’t have the energy/support needed to reevaluate and change. There are probably more. It seems we should take the learning signal in case 2 and whenever we are uncertain about our selves. My big gripe, in general, is that there are a million problems with the world and with me and with everything but so few of us who are willing to sit with them and try to help. In some sense, any problem is really just a question. We are often made uncomfortable by questions we cannot answer quickly/predictably. Myself included. I’ll leave this be, though.
Back on the topic of info diets—lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how the music and things I listen to shape what I think about. Particularly, I tend to listen to a lot of music that would probably be labeled somewhat depressing. I recently came across this wonderful recording of Ross Gay reading his poem, A Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, which I really really recommend a listen of. There’s actually a whole album of these, his playful voice and some musician creating an atmosphere behind it. I’ve been listening to it a lot and noticing how it permeates my thought processes in a way that I think is good.
In particular, there are many things that I am grateful for. I forget, often, that I have chosen much of the life that I live. I forget to acknowledge its goodness as I turn toward further improvement. I want to get to some gratitude thinking myself7, but first would like to deposit this thought that’s been running around my head.
Why must we be serious? because we suffer.
I don’t really know what to do with this line. I think of the joker, who is this weird case of pathological unseriousness given his suffering, but I think that’s why he was written. Something about defense mechanisms8. I’m going to write this next bit because my fingers want to, though I don’t think I fully believe it9. Everything numbs me. Everything except suffering—which hones me to an edge against the repetition of such suffering. In some world without suffering—why seriousness? I tend to believe that someone has suffered once I have seen them be serious about something. Which is not to say that I pass strong judgement about the others, but that I withhold until. Anyway, maybe I was weaned into consciousness by the great Russian writers a bit too much for my own good. I understand that suffering and seriousness are not all there is, and often not wanted. I understand that I probably focus too much on them, for whatever reason, and for however changeable this part of me is. I want to know if there’s a kind of seriousness that doesn’t require suffering. A kind of love that isn’t tinged by loss. These actually aren’t the same questions, but sort of encircle what I’m getting at. I wonder if there’s a way for me to be genuinely serious about the good and the neutral and the mundane the way that many poets appear to me to be, but I still can’t understand it and feel it myself yet though oh god I certainly would like to. Think of Radagast, here. Then again, in being serious are we just taking ourselves too seriously? I don’t think I’ll ever fail to take myself seriously enough. Living, joy, the kitchen sink are all quite serious matters.
I’m going to pause and go do my steak, and when I come back, I think I shall be ready for my gratitude study.
Gratitude Study Now, as Ross Gay's bird says, BELLOW FORTH! And who among us / could ignore / such strange and precise / counsel? My stomach is warm and full and the garlic remains of my ribeye lie, splattered, across my cutting board. Next to the sashimi knife I used to cut the steak, inherited from a relative of a relative whom I never met. There is something unironically profound in the buttery, meaty tenderness of a steak. This experience, not even being dramatic, is one of the things that makes me want to profess belief in a god. It is as close to heaven on earth as I am allowed to come, most days. I think it's quite possible that I like the average steak more than I like the average sex. How the meat fibers separate around my teeth and emit both warmth and buttery steak-juice, how I am allowed to chew it, but leisurely, not a chore, enjoying the healthy amount of resistance it gives me. My oldest best friend sent me a reel the other day about how physical kinks are really a device to put you into an *interesting and hopefully desirable* state of mind. The experience of putting a slice of steak in my mouth does this for me. It is perhaps similar to the feeling TKS tries to capture in this poem: The Good Life. This is to say, I am grateful. Thank you for putting it plainly: I eat myself dumb. I perceive a weird dichotomy when it comes to gratitude--oftentimes there is an impulse in me to speak only of the large, and of course its perhaps more frequent counterimpulse to speak of the small and mundane. I am not satisfied with either. I have begun to swim again, recently, and I love the way I feel afterward, walking home. I love the way my hair becomes just a little bit more stiff, such that I comb it and it dries into natural perfection all by itself. My motto this year (say it aloud): naturalness, naturalness, naturalness and flow. I hope you paired the last naturalness with flow in your syllabic rendering. I wonder if you let it roll off your tongue the same way I do, if you will enjoy it as much. I find that I don't care. I am awfully grateful, of lateful, for Clarice Lispector. She Sees me and in doing so, Frees me in a way almost as delightful as steak, though less tasty and much less easily earned. I think she may be helping me wash of morality. For the longest time, I refused to kill a living thing, in large part following this poem, Allowables, and something in one of Ocean Vuong's books. But I find that I am actually animal, no better for pretending to be above the fray. See CL's The Passion According to G.H. in which she slaughters a cockroach, gorily, for her massive self enrichment. Today a flea kept buzzing around my steak while it was resting, landing on my leg hairs and such and so guess what? I stomped it out of the air because I did not like it. I smote it and wiped it remorselessly off of my kitchen floor. And I was free. See the way J. M. Coetzee's main character says to the paparazzi, in Disgrace, of his affair with one of his students: No, I do not regret it, I was greatly enriched by it. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm grateful but I don't want to fit into any one form, I'm tired of modeling myself off of people I can see. As Diannely Antigua says, a long life is avant garde. I'm trying to lay my shoulders bare but I keep getting slapped for it. Yesterday, we talked GRE vocabulary for a minute in the office and I felt glad, all the words and ways of expression I possessed as we scrolled through a list. It strikes me that I am indeed intelligent and powerful, much more than I give myself credit for regularly. That it's not so much a question of if, but how, how to Pavlov the animal of my brain into whatever shape pleases me most. Which, of course, relies in part upon me paying attention to myself, which, wow, I never fail to do. Go me! And perhaps this is self absorption but I prefer to consider it self wonderment, I am overwhelmed with the self! How good! And I don't think this means that there's any less to go around for you. I love you much the way I love myself. In some funny manner, eating this steak is reminding me more firmly why I decided to become partially vegan--where meat tastes this profoundly, okay, yes, I will sacrifice you, but the random chicken in my pad see ew that adds nothing to the experience but protein, I can do without. In fact, I don't even like it that much. This is now reminding me of the Blacker grill nights Aileen brought me to and Joaquin's unbelievably juicy chicken thighs, certainly to die for. And Nico's idiosyncratic voice that somehow makes me (and seemingly many other people) feel comfortable, this is an attack-free zone, how did they do it, how did they construct such a space able to keep itself even as me and random outsiders permeate it, I've only been able to construct intimacy one on one. Perhaps people frighten me too much. I am learning, little by little, to be less self-conscious. I don't know if it's better to solve this with *lots of love* or with *clearly nobody cares*, but I dose myself with both. Thank you, really, for all that I can see, and touch: my kingdom. I don't mean kingdom in an excluding or dominating way. Just that I may engage with it, exist within it. Of course, all the wonderful people in and out of my life, and those that I will* meet soon. But more than that, for this stimulating environment I have been loosed to run around in, confused, joyful, serious and considering, but sometimes content all in the same breath. For my energies, which, though certainly foolish and folliful, are fine all the same. Thank you Keats, and thank you Dan Simmons for this idea. And Richard Silken: I'm still green. I'm still green. I guess / what I'm meaning to say / is / I'm grateful / for how free I am already / and for how / free / I intend to be.
I will leave off any disclaimers regarding this ______ piece and slap my brain on the wrist, bad, you are free to write and do and be whatever the heck it is you want regardless of quality or worth or any of that useless crap. From the former follows: GO FORTH! I am not wedded to anything I write, anything I do, anyone I am. As such, do not try to use me against me. James, signing off.
cue echo chamber?
See, perhaps, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Kundera) and apan blog post (much shorter than the former, fortunately)
Heavy side note: projection seems to be one of my most frequented actions, and it’s still unclear to me whether it’s good or bad or reasonable or exorcisable or what. I guess projecting and being wrong is quite bad. But it also seems somewhat key to empathy responses, and really to narrowing communication by being able to draw inferences based on the visible circumstances, assuming some similarity to an other being. Something about this assumed similarity to an other being is actually quite comforting to me. I like it on a moral level.
perhaps a form of validation for my own needfulness.
in the foreword to his posthumous collection of short stories, Armageddon in Retrospect.
that’s not an insult, genuinely
which my mom has been telling me to do for ages
Which, by the way, did you recognize the metaphors in Howl’s Moving Castle? I didn’t the first few times, but now cannot not. It is easily one of my favorite movies, perhaps for how Seen it makes me feel.
which of course, reminds me of Sujai, don’t pin me down, I contain multitudes, grr!