good gas ain't cheap, and jealousy is a shit perfume
on writers and non-writers
in the fall Dr. S asks me whether i ascribe any extra importance to numbers, to which i say no, but i have played this game since elementary school wherein i take any group of numbers i see (those comprising license plates, house numbers, etc), and add/subtract/multiply until they end up in another number, usually a larger one, and always ending in zero.
Okay, he says, his eyes on mine, And was this ever distracting to you?
No, i shake my head and laugh, Never, it’s just something i can do in the corner of my mind when i’m bored etc. But i can’t say it’s ever been distracting.
he nods, scribbles a note onto his pad, and says Alright, and how would you react if you couldn’t do it? If it was taken away from you, say- if you couldn’t rearrange the numbers this way, what would you do?
i pause. i’ve never really considered this. i look away from his eyes to recede a bit deeper into my own and turn the idea of losing this game over in and through my head.
when i’ve got it i fidget a bit on the oversized couch and say Well, if i’m being honest, i’m having trouble imagining a scenario where that would happen, so i can’t really say.
as i finish saying this i look back up to meet his eyes. he is smirking. just slightly, but i notice.
he nods, the smirk hanging still, almost bridging the space between us.
Not a bad game then, huh?
i smile now, and i agree. Not a bad game.
a lot of readers want to become writers. a lot of readers fail to become writers.
which is terrible, but like… inevitable?
lev was one of those readers. he had a degree in english, a desire to write creatively, and several submissions oh so sadly rejected by the new yorker poetry editorial team.
when he let me read some of his work, it made sense, considering who he was. in writing, in life- he followed the rules. and so the things he wrote were fine.
but just fine. not good, not great. just fine.
which, again, made sense. it’s hard to write anything worth reading when one’s entire life has consisted of checking box after box after box ad infinitum with one’s own well-earned and very clearly pedigreed pen. the thought of using such an instrument to stray outside the lines tends to be very nearly unconscionable to its user.
not just anyone can be a writer. clearly.
beyond the innateness of it- the mind that never slows, that picks up more details than probably anyone would need, realistically- there is, to me, a very clear separator between those who Are and those who Are Not. this being of course the most essential ingredient of writing that speaks, that lasts:
pain.
deep, rotting, putrid pain.
the pain from which you try to distract yourself until you realize you can’t; pain with which something must be done.
i remain convinced that great writing cannot exist without great pain. in the way that comedy cannot exist without tragedy- you must know one to know the other.
a great amount of agency, creative or otherwise, is presented to you at the same time you realize you have very little left to lose.Â
23 october 23, philadelphia, four days post
the sadness is silky today. delicious and luxurious as long as i don’t allow myself to fall deeper, to want more.
and yet i reach further.
i can’t help it. i’m greedy. there’s something to be revealed here, as horrible as it is. and so i ask the harmony to harm me. take me where i need to be hear it. to feel it.
and here i yearn for the aching solitude of Salt Lake. i was always alone there. always. here i feel encircled. i don’t feel free, floating through the wind. i’m necessarily grounded- and thank god. but when the melancholy comes, when i want nothing more than to stand still still still and answer to no one for it, i miss it there.
there the sadness wasn’t sweet. it was bitter, overwhelming. to romanticize it was nearly impossible. it wasn’t a beautiful place in the way i had come to understand beauty.
the city felt always empty. always precarious. a place without roots and without the desire to preserve any that might’ve begun growing. i’ve never been happier than i was pulling into my parent’s house at the end of the drive across I-80 and back from there. it was over.
so many days spent there, and i barely remember them. it’s a blur of pain, of suppression, of feeling profoundly lost and unrooted. ripped from the earth by my own volition.
it was on the night of my worst fight with lev that i knew it was time to leave. i sat outside on the porch step to cry without disturbing anyone, but when i sat down, the tears stopped. 1:30 am- the street had been empty since 10. i looked at the darkened houses across from me, the lamps giving off half-hearted light, and laughed.
Where are you? i asked myself. Where have you been? Where have you gone?
it was then that i decided i wanted to get out of the tunnel, to stop having everything decided for me five years in advance
for the walls to evaporate and the pinhole of light to expand into my entire surroundings. my future again something malleable: everywhere a path to veer, everywhere outlines of what could be.
writing often feels like extracting a tooth that really had no intention of ever leaving. the extraction hardly ever feels good, and the throbbing afterwards tends to linger longer than i’d really like.
but it’s become increasingly clear to me over the past year that i am a writer. and as much as that sucks sometimes (or a lot of the time, depending), it’s who i am. it’s what i have. and who am i to waste it?
when i sent lev my writing he responded with the heart eyes emoji and said This is very good- and the lack of proper punctuation- i’m assuming it’s intentional?
very shortly afterwards i said goodbye. it’s hard for me to take seriously people who profess to know something and then so very clearly do not.
but that’s not to say i will ever discourage them from creating. bad art is necessary to understand its opposite, and sometimes (often) bonding over art that is bad is way more fun than bonding over art that is good.