Aug 26, 2015

Some days...

Some days writing is easy.  Not flawless, but effortless.  The words tumble out, bouncing off the page, some falling right into place, some needing to be shaped and slotted into the sentences.  The end result still needs polishing and rearranging; furniture moving into a new configuration in a brand new house.  But it works.  Somehow, it works and the same words you've heard or said before, magically assemble on a page to form something unexpected and different.  It's so easy, it's practically cheating.  So easy, you ask yourself why you don't do it more often. And then you wonder whether this truly is your writing or whether, without meaning to, you've just recreated something you've seen.  It can't be this simple, can it?

Some days writing is painful.  The words hide under the cushions or in the cobwebbed crevices.  You persevere, dragging each one out; a resisting toddler, bent on doing the opposite of what you want.  They are slow, surly and moody and they shuffle along, muttering to themselves, mocking you and jeering at your efforts.  They don't cooperate with each other and they certainly don't cooperate with you.  And still you keep at it, coaxing and pleading, and finally offering bribes in the form of new writing prompts and journaling ideas, but it's all for naught.  The sentences come out crooked, the paragraphs in need of an axe not a soft cloth.

You find yourself glancing at the clock, refreshing the lukewarm cup of tea, staring at the candle that you lit with hopes of inspiration hours ago.  You look anywhere and everywhere, except onto the page where a silent mutiny is taking place.  You ask yourself why you bother.  Your ear catches the distant sound of a TV in another room and for a moment you imagine yourself stretched out on the couch, lost in a numbing bliss of someone else's life.  You look at the page again, weighing your options.  It's not too late to scrap the whole thing.  Two keystrokes and the page will once again return to pristine whiteness.  And who would know or care, anyway?  These are your words, you dragged them out, you can obliterate them.

Is it your imagination or has the grumbling ceased?  Is there a chance of recovery?  Your eyes scan the awkward sentences, lingering on the half-developed phrases, tripping over pretentious adjectives and tired adverbs littering the page like leftover confetti after the party is over.  There's no use pretending this is salvageable.

Some days writing just isn't.

Aug 25, 2015

Hate

Fiction alert...
___________

Nobody has ever hated me as much as I have hated him. 

The mere mention of his name would send an involuntary shudder through me, culminating in clenched teeth and tense shoulders, leaving a sour taste in my mouth.  The depth of my hatred frightened me and yet I stoked it.  I allowed my brain to play out endless scenarios with him as a participant, fanning the heat of the disgust and revulsion.  Uncontrollable and barely suppressed under the veneer of forced politeness, the hatred was forever bubbling under the surface, ready to spew forth as so much pus from a festering wound.  I couldn't stand to be in the same room with him.  I couldn't bear the sound of his voice.  Every time he opened his mouth, I wanted to scream at him to shut up; scream until I was hoarse just to drown the sound of his voice. 

Avoiding him became a grim game of wills, but for each success, there were numerous failures and the hatred ballooned inside me.  When I had to endure his presence, I tried removing myself mentally, pretending that he wasn't there, but his presence filled the rooms.  I would catch a glimpse of him and the bile would rise in my throat, poisonous fumes of loathing pulsing through my blood.  When he invaded my personal space, my skin would crawl.  The enormous effort I had to expend to not recoil, to not lash out and hit him, when he got too close made me resent and hate him even more. 

I wanted him gone.  Not just from my presence, but obliterated.  In my happiest fantasies, he was gone from my life; not just the present, but wiped from my memory.  I wanted my life washed clean from the residue of his existence.  What I wouldn't have given for our paths to never have crossed.  It's too late for that, but one can hope.  And hate.

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Disclaimer: This piece was written purely as a writing exercise.  It is not based on any specific person, past or present.

Feb 15, 2015

Before and After


Imagine that something happened, some major event, one of those monumental moments of change that split your life into the before and after.  Now imagine that you're in the after, looking back at the before and thinking about how much you failed to appreciate it and how it's much too late now.  Eventually you'll adjust to the after and it will become the new normal, but you'll always remember that moment of splintering and you'll always be able to look back at the before with a mix of longing and perhaps regret.

These days I feel acutely that I'm living in the before.  No, I'm not psychic and I don't know what's going to happen, but I find myself picturing with great clarity the various afters before being drawn back into the present.  I don't know why it's happening now with such regularity, except that I'm under a tremendous amount of stress and perhaps that's the single creative outlet that my exhausted brain found to release some steam.  I think we can all agree that it's a rather morbid outlet, but one can only control so many things in life and controlling my brain has never been my strong suit.

I am not sure what's worse, living life in the constant see-saw between the possible future horrors (because of course the mind never paints a rosy after) and the relief of returning to the before or living in the present without ever acknowledging that it can end in a matter of seconds.  Perhaps I should prefer ignorance, but my desire for control is of course screaming that knowing the future is better than being ignorant of it.  

Except, I don't know the future.  Of course I don't.  I don't know which, if any, of the horrors that my mind is painting for me will come to fruition.  Perhaps all of them.  Perhaps none.  Perhaps a disaster that I haven't even tried imagining myself living through.  Does it matter?  Is picturing them now in all their gory detail and bloody aftermath better than being surprised?  Let's face it, we're all surprised by things every day, even things we imagine happening because even as we're picturing them happening, we are thinking and hoping and praying that they won't happen to us.  As if by imagining ourselves getting that diagnosis in a doctor's office or watching our car careen off the road we can somehow ward it off.  Magical thinking at its best - if I imagine it, then it's not a surprising catastrophe anymore and therefore life won't throw it at me because the whole point is to be horribly surprised by bad things, isn't it?

So, what am I imagining as the possible afters?  It doesn't matter... What does matter is that it's forcing me to appreciate today just a little bit more and maybe that's what my brain is trying to tell me.  To stop, take a breath and allow myself to experience today because the splintering will come whether I'm too busy for it or not.