Old notebooks lost and found
I was cleaning my room the other day, trying to make moving out easier on myself later, and I came across an old composition notebook, the black and white splattered kind, and found this blog-worthy stream-of-consciousness writing exercise/journal entry:
10/9/05
I have decided to write about my family. I need to write something to force myself past this writer's block, and they are as good a subject as any because they are crazy, and crazy people are pretty interesting. I am inspired, because I am sitting in my cold and bright room with its turquoise walls with my favorite music on and I can feel the lights and sounds and commotion going on downstairs.
My mother is probaby side-tracked, wherever she is. Probably in the basement, moist air and dim lights, moving back and forth between her piles of belongings and neatly carved pathways. Undoubtedly she is smoking a cigarette with the butt damp and flattened from her restless teeth, and she is looking for something--a book, a rose petal with an image of Jesus in it, a garden tool, a piece of jewelry, a housedress from the 1940s, her lost sense of romance, the house she never bought, the life she never lived. She might find what she is looking for, but probably not because her body is as cluttered as her mind and will ache soon and need to rest. She is a prisoner of herself; her only restraints are mental and she simply refuses to do what she really wants. It is as though she is desperately treading water because she doesn't realize the pool is only a few feet deep.
She and I are opposite poles. I am sitting in my bright and cheery room, above them all, haughtily dreaming of the life want and might already have. She is below us all, in the cavern, feeling focused and defeated. We are the parenthesis.
M, the youngest, is in her old bedroom, staring at the computer screen with her back turned to the mural she painted when she still wanted childhood, all the members of our family standing on a bridge over a river and under a rainbow. She is avoiding AR, the middle child, and her boyfriend who are always necking right in front of her like she isn't there. Tired of being disregarded, she enters the vortex of the internet, where she will use capslock and cuss and be noticed, all without making an audible sound. She tried coming up here to hang out with me, but I was absorbed in Kerouac and Tom Waits and this was no fun at all. We were talking, and I noticed my calendar was a month behind; I crosses the room to fix it, and the dog woke up to lay at my feet. She admires me openly, M, because I am calm and casual and just treat her like anyoldbody. It takes little to be well regarded around here.
AR is absorbed and in love with her short and bald boyfriend from Ashtabula, who is at least 6 years her senior. He has alternately been napping and tooling around on an old keyboard all day, obviously exhausted from a stress I have not cared to discover but AR knows intimately. They smoke cigarettes and talk about Jager-bombs and AR is 16. She is as old as I am in experience and is more scarred. I would like to think she admires me as well, although she might just think I'm naive and wish she was too.
I am sitting here, writing to practice my future and live above the mainstream, while my family is swimming upriver. I don't want to make a difference right now, I just want to live. Stagnancy is poison, and poison kills you. I read books and write vicariously through other people's profundity, hoping to be admired for what I do differently. My god, I am America.
10/9/05
I have decided to write about my family. I need to write something to force myself past this writer's block, and they are as good a subject as any because they are crazy, and crazy people are pretty interesting. I am inspired, because I am sitting in my cold and bright room with its turquoise walls with my favorite music on and I can feel the lights and sounds and commotion going on downstairs.
My mother is probaby side-tracked, wherever she is. Probably in the basement, moist air and dim lights, moving back and forth between her piles of belongings and neatly carved pathways. Undoubtedly she is smoking a cigarette with the butt damp and flattened from her restless teeth, and she is looking for something--a book, a rose petal with an image of Jesus in it, a garden tool, a piece of jewelry, a housedress from the 1940s, her lost sense of romance, the house she never bought, the life she never lived. She might find what she is looking for, but probably not because her body is as cluttered as her mind and will ache soon and need to rest. She is a prisoner of herself; her only restraints are mental and she simply refuses to do what she really wants. It is as though she is desperately treading water because she doesn't realize the pool is only a few feet deep.
She and I are opposite poles. I am sitting in my bright and cheery room, above them all, haughtily dreaming of the life want and might already have. She is below us all, in the cavern, feeling focused and defeated. We are the parenthesis.
M, the youngest, is in her old bedroom, staring at the computer screen with her back turned to the mural she painted when she still wanted childhood, all the members of our family standing on a bridge over a river and under a rainbow. She is avoiding AR, the middle child, and her boyfriend who are always necking right in front of her like she isn't there. Tired of being disregarded, she enters the vortex of the internet, where she will use capslock and cuss and be noticed, all without making an audible sound. She tried coming up here to hang out with me, but I was absorbed in Kerouac and Tom Waits and this was no fun at all. We were talking, and I noticed my calendar was a month behind; I crosses the room to fix it, and the dog woke up to lay at my feet. She admires me openly, M, because I am calm and casual and just treat her like anyoldbody. It takes little to be well regarded around here.
AR is absorbed and in love with her short and bald boyfriend from Ashtabula, who is at least 6 years her senior. He has alternately been napping and tooling around on an old keyboard all day, obviously exhausted from a stress I have not cared to discover but AR knows intimately. They smoke cigarettes and talk about Jager-bombs and AR is 16. She is as old as I am in experience and is more scarred. I would like to think she admires me as well, although she might just think I'm naive and wish she was too.
I am sitting here, writing to practice my future and live above the mainstream, while my family is swimming upriver. I don't want to make a difference right now, I just want to live. Stagnancy is poison, and poison kills you. I read books and write vicariously through other people's profundity, hoping to be admired for what I do differently. My god, I am America.
Comments
And as I was describing your writing the other day, I did explain it as you did at the tail end of this blog. I admire you for how you are different. I cherish you for how you are the same. I notice that you are America, and I love you for all of it. x's. btw...the stagnancy line is not lost on me ; ) oh, you blessed girl of mine. doe! thurs...work...you, me...YES!