i hope you’ll forgive me for writing

running around madly has never saved me an extra slice of cake, but i try quite hard and i’m almost proud of that. i’m proud of the words i write which are the oracle and i understand i am not, not the words so what do i matter now(?), i understand i am a scribe for something i am not part of; an easy separation between being and consciousness, and it seeks to undo my creative streak — my waking passions.

in the mornings i am slow. i tell myself be timely, be present. i have learnt to take breaks, to look into the mirror and straddle my hair into place awaiting dread. i have learnt this way i can manage the evenings without disaster, for the chaos has already consumed me by mid-afternoon. mid-afternoon, i’m scrubbing the floor of my mind and it is not terribly happy with me. it is not happy with the connections i make about the ceiling fan collecting dust and the courtyard of ghosts and their worksheets. when is my mind the most happy with me? post-chaos. late afternoon, tipping over into evening like flooding. i’m clean, i’m reconciled, i’ve learnt something sort of beautiful and sort of mediocre about the day and what it means for my soul, whether the expansion will cause bleeding or if the lack-there-of is worth more than it’s sold to me for. did i trade, bargain, steal? it’s sold to me for the price of a body in the bath-tub most days, floating, all limbs, which is where mine is when the calm is loud. have you ever dealt with a calm when it is not quiet? have you ever dealt with a calm which calls you by your first, middle, and last name? have you dealt with a calm which screams at you, “it’s time, it’s time, be ready now; they’re all waiting for you to show how polite you sit, how well you examine, how fleeting your glances are from watch to window. they know you’re lost, they know you want to leave, they know it’s time. it’s time, it’s time”. my calm is quiet when i tell it i have done everything, when i tell it i have meditated, done the yoga, taken the cold shower, done the breathing exercise, scrubbed the spots with cream, exfoliated until bone. then my calm says, “you’ve got time”.

i hope you’ll forgive me for telling you i am not excited to be alone any more than i am not excited to be with other people; neutrality is hard to attain but when you’re there, you’re there. you’ve felt the fear, you’ve climbed the mountain, you’re looking down at the view and you’re thinking, “that’s a view.” god, it’s nauseating.

when i cannot find anything to say i write about how angry i am to have nothing to say, and then suddenly it appears on the page; waking passion. it’s fucking brilliant to love it and i love it. knowing i have something special is considerably like sex, and as i move into my source of admiration and admission it tells me to lean in deeper, to really feel it, to just go all the way now we’re so close don’t you love it? oh, yeah, love it. and when i’m waking up from the dream-induced-nightmare, i remember all the great authors i’ve read and i remember that none of them were me, that they all did something different and complete and full-scale and they all sort of did nothing equally. does my desperation make me that much more unlikely for it? be it that buzzing success? i am hopeful to watch the watchers, those watchers that say ‘that’s going to be me!’ and ‘i’m telling you guys, i’m going to make it’. and i laugh. i laugh and laugh. i just love to hate on those things, because i love to say that could never be me. i love to tell you all how i am bigger and better than telling you i will be successful, that i will have it, gauge my audience’s eyes out and make them feel my crystal ball; make them say things like, “when i look into your future, i see love”. that turns me on. your affection, your praise, your enormous vulnerable hesitation to tell me i’ll be anything but good is mouth-watering.

at the end of the day, i know nothing of success. i know something of pity and fantasy and obsession and grace and trying, but they are small words. they are written over and over. i watch my list unfold in front of me and it has good and bad, it has naughty and nice. it has: started a blog, published a book, had my poetry published, breed content, love writing & do it always, be a writer. it has whit, actually. i’m prepared to sacrifice a great deal of things i think are important, conceptual or not, in order for people to tell me i’m good at what i do, and that there’s a reason i’m doing it. i’m hopeful they’ll tell me soon enough, “you’re lucky. you chose right. you made it.” and i live in fear others will do what i can’t not out of ambition, but out of luck. i am horrified at the idea of other people who want it as badly as i do. i am horrified of getting to the end of my passion and holding my hands up and looking at them and not being sure. i am very afraid i will one day not be sure of what up until that point, i have lived with as truth, not fiction or hope or sensitive revelation, but an honest and apologetic discovery of myself. that i can write, that i am a good writer, that i am good at it, that i am not mean or selfish or depraved, that it is just what my hands do. that i am washed clean by my greed, by a talent which walks the earth waiting to inhabit any body and it has asked for mine, that it is all right; i will do my best, that i am ready for a life i am wading through half a heart of rot and famine for. this is all worth it; this is all worth it; this is all what i wish for. all i wish for is to be on the nice list, to be told it’s true. it’s all true. it’s all true; you’re not a liar.

and sure, lies are one thing. lying down and feeling the grass and being thankful you are not a blade, you do not have thoughts of becoming earth and you do not have feelings of rotating a hundred times around the universe to remember what infinity looks like; it’s narrow. eternity’s a narrow scope of horror and compassion, bundled into a package. are you willing? it’s coming either way.