Sunday, March 20, 2016

Longtime readers will know the careful secrecy I've attempted to maintain as to the real-life events forming the seed of my writings, no matter how strongly the events in question long to be named. It may come as a surprise then that I recently took it upon myself to share a subset of these writings with someone patently outside the sphere of suffocation that produced them. What triggered this was, I think, two recent developments. First, the realisation that at the parade's end of the glorious 20's, there is only so much time one has to find a welcoming hand in the dark. Second, the insatiable curiosity, harbored since this blog's inception, to see how an ouevre borne of impossible longing and isolation would seem to an unspoiled pair of eyes*.

On the latter point, I might as well add to the reader's entertainment by mentioning that I have thought on occasion of selecting some of the works closest to me, and seeing how they would fare in something approximating the public marketplace. On this note, despite my confidant's protests to the contrary, I see that not everything makes the journey from my mind to the outside world unharmed. But a few slivers do. In the endless hours of darkness that seem to be my public life, this at least gives me hope that the Sun may yet rise.

* Oh, eh, right, and so what did those eyes see, you ask? Frustratingly, but in hindsight unsurprisingly, it's somewhat hard to tell. Receiving something so blatantly personal, I would imagine that the only non-sociopathic response is to profess how the work reveals only the deepest and most universal of truths. But at least the words, and the sickness that created them, have germinated elsewhere. Within one other mind are now fragments of the life I have led, a source of mirth if nothing else.

"I once thought that time
Accentuates despair
But now I don't actually care"

I spoke of the separation of concerns a while ago. This appears to be still in effect, with the consequence that I no longer find the desperate urge to put to paper feelings that would inspire any student of literature or psychology. To be sure, I'm frequently filled with the sorts of grim existential doubts that have made up the vast body of this outpost; but their nature seems frustratingly quotidian, and patently uninspiring as far as writing goes. As far as trade-ins go, it's a little early to tell whether this one is acceptable. On the one hand, I do like the normalcy of my new turmoil. But I can't say I don't sometimes miss drawing a bucket from a deep well of sorrow. It's just that these days, I find I'm just not thirsty anymore.