Blogging The Unquiet

I mentioned travelling of the mind the other day. And while I enjoy travelling on my own, I sometimes ask The Gentle Author of http://spitalfieldslife.com/ to take be my the hand and guide me through his/her world.

Wondrous, wondrous walks we take.

There's this  interview with him/her I wish to keep in order to remind myself that indeed, "...writing is the outcome of an unquiet mind."

http://www.66000milesperhour.com/2012/02/the-gentle-author-of-spitalfields-life/

I sometimes wish blogging felt more like collaging or scrapbooking.
I miss that you can't really allow for creative chaos/messiness. At least I never have found a way. My notebooks look so different from the ordered entries with tags and neat lines and the occasional, neatly placed and cut picture.

More scribbling and doodling I say!

When speaking of the unquiet mind and the use a blog can be with that, I must agree but add that blogging seems to fail me at times.
I need the feel of pen on paper like I prefer to read my book in hand and not on a screen.
I am old-fashioned, I am clumsy in this world of sleekness. And sometimes I wonder whether blogging is the right medium for me.

Of course, you cannot argue about the immediacy and number of readers you may reach by just clicking a few keys rather than having it printed on paper which is pretty damn fast these days but still nowhere near fast enough for high-speed info-sharing online.
And I do like "fastness". I am terrible at waiting. I am, however, very good at impatience.

And so I take the very good and fast with the "not REALLY bad" in the guise of a lack of mess and will be happy in the knowledge that I can always choose.
Which is nice, I figure.

Talk About Over-Compensating

I leave this space blank for weeks at a time in order to pen - with tremendous effort, I might add - one big ol' lump of thougths.
Must try to be more consistent.
However, I have been struggling with yesterday's post for ages. Said lump of thoughts has been sitting with me, staring me in the face, stubbornly refusing to take shape. I kept writing and deleting ad nauseam.
So forgive me for feeling a little smug today.
Some people cure terrible diseases, I muddle through and finish a damn post that's been a long time coming. Results, clearly! On a different scale to be sure. But still...

So, Coop, what you say we be grateful for a moment here? You for all your big piles of money and I for showing some tenacity for a change.
Deal!

Translate You

When you re-read things you wrote, be it diary entries, poetry, stories, essays, you travel back in time.
You visit a younger you.
A you that you immediately recognise. An unspoilt version of you.
Innocence and beauty lost.
But loss makes way for the new. Brings in the change.

Words written in another time, meant for only you perhaps, have a very clear meaning to you, they make perfect sense, they bring back perfect memories of your story, of your past. They are code just for you. You may have written them with the utmost sincerety, they come from the heart - and sometimes that translates and is recognised by others who read your words. Pieces of the mosaic human experience.
Sometimes however, meaning simply does not travel. You are not heard. You cannot be. Because you speak code. You speak the dialect of you no one else may understand.

I just realised that for the first time, first hand.
It is odd. It may even have been blatantly obvious to others yet - what do they say - I was the last to know.
It is odd I say and by that I mean a strange understanding is taking over and changes my perceptions, filters everything, renders pieces of me inaccessible, incommunicable.

My language, my dialect does not suffice. It does not speak to others It does not touch. It is not spoken. It is not heard.

Freckled Cauliflower

I have decided to commit my poetry to the pages of my blog.
Over the next few days, weeks, months I will post a poem here and there.

To be honest, I have not written anything since those poetry-writing days in London circa 1997. And when I look at them now I feel a little awkward and also a little unsure of them. I ask myself whether I could have done better, whether I should have written more.

But that is the thing you see with me and things. I get wrapped up in them for a while and then it fizzles out as it were. Like an electric current that gets weaker and weaker until it eventually dies.

My writing has not died really - it comes out at odd moments and usually I stuff it back into wherever it was kept. In the back of my mind there is the nagging question of how many times can you refuse your inspiration until it goes forever?

It is similar with this blog. In the beginning I was thrilled with the idea.
But I realised it takes work, dedication and said inspiration to do this. (Don't get me wrong, I am not a complete moron. Honest. Even if I feel like one most of the time.)

Actually, I feel like I am a person with no goal.
No vision.
That is why I keep meandering. Often that is considered a good thing, isn't it. That saying about the journey being more important than the actual destination.

But to be completely clueless? Not being able to decide and stick to one thing? That is scary and it simply takes the wind out of me and my endeavours.

Is this what they call commitment issues? Yup.

I am rambling.

Let's get back to the writing.
It is very amateur. I never took a creative writing course in my life. I never discussed with others whether any of my work was any good. I have never exposed it to any criticism. I have always taken the easy way out.
Sure, there was the odd reading here and there. Open-mic session where anyone could get up on stage and flaunt their stuff as it were.
Some of my fellow writers were impressive, they drew you in. Some others were simply crippled by self-doubt and it showed. I myself was usually a mix of insecurity and arrogance.
If you wanted to you could have watched me decompose right in front of your eyes had you subjected me to your criticism. But in some part of my brain I sincerely believed I deserved to be heard. And more astonishingly, I also believed I deserved to be considered good. Talk about delusions of grandeur.
I am actually a bit ashamed of myself here, I must say.

But I often catch myself thinking - I can do THAT! Geez.
Well, maybe I could. But as mentioned before, THAT takes dedication, hard work. And I never seemed able to stick to anything. I wander here and there, nibble a bit from this, try a bit of that. But dedicating myself fully - naw, never gonna happen. In the crucial moment I pull back, even away. And I may even have muttered occasionally - Well, I didn't like it anyway.

HOW FICKLE, how superficial and self-absorbed can one person get?!

I am not trying to ingratiate myself here - Hm, spilling one's guts about how sad one actually is smacks a little of  "Please take pity and ...oh, look, here's what I prepared earlier. Now like me, like me. Like me, dammit!

I might just get away with it - because this blog is most likely to go unnoticed for all eternity.

No, I shall simply try - humbly - to send my words into the void. That is what this blog is for, after all.

So watch this space. Or not.