The internet does not leave enough space to map a story. It must be three dimensional, like his sculptures. Lines that intersect and miss each other, the negative space defined in triangles and polygons; these are the people of the story. I loved her way back when. But I have loved since and so has she. I have forgotten her references (moles, eyes, voice) but I’ve stared so long at the space between us that it has become more substantive than our crossing ever was.
Use writing, I repeat, use it to create images and bring bile up from his throat.
I’ve been thinking a lot about precision without accuracy. The way I’m so rigid with numbers and measurements – I cling to madeup things. If I am spinning in space on a piece of something I cannot define, reaching out to other storytellers that only I know, cannot I at least measure time? The freedom of relativism is not freeing.
I can tell stories about love and people. But I cannot give you an arc. The trajectory is always changing and the line squiggles, falls apart, turns gaseous and drifts off. Maybe I’m drawn to fantasy because of its clear purpose. We are the ones, we have the tools and we know what must be done. What happens afterwards? Well, like life, the next adventure presents itself. Purpose is something only characters know.
Let this character (when I say ‘her’ or ‘him’ they have substance but it is not a creative substance but a tired one: old brain matter mashed with culture) not look down the telescope. Something happens something happens something happens…
“How does someone recover from that?”
“I don’t know… why is this so difficult?”
The brain is a metaphor. The way we think is just the way metaphor works. It is the only way I think. It must be different for others.
Love is attention.
Where do I get story? I listen, I make assumptions. I cut and paste. I repeat I repeat I repeat. I start spinning, unable to imagine a different story.
I actually have no imagination.
Love is attention.
Give it the attention. My imagination is metaphor. Describing what is inside with the objects of outside. I cannot imagine plot because I cannot imagine plot. What I imagine are the magical workings of things coming alive in the night. They are inside, like the whole world is in my throat. I cannot explain a conversation between two fictional people but I can tell you how the cut between my fingers feels just like poison ivy blisters (the ones that would leave me soaking).
All this repetition of “I” makes me ill. But even if I substitute the third person I cannot escape from an outsider’s view of me. The world is I-centric like the sun. If I can work on point of view, can I truly create new people? Am I God?
I’ll be home for you soon, she said.
That was a couple of days ago. I’ve been pacing, chewing my hair, caught in a manic idle. Nothing apathetic about it, it is a high-tension stasis.
This is the way she is.
She is lemon-colored and creamy. Her skin is dotted with moles and freckles. She is like baked bread.
My moral philosophy is self-serving and heretic.
I, too, long for my own self-destruction. I fantasize about that pain. Break me, tear me, throw me into the propeller, drown me/crush me in the ink of the Mariana Trench. My body is slight and fragmented from my position atop my neck. It is too large for the smallest of my self in this universe, it is too small for the immensity of my thought. I work it hard until it hurts and then I find myself handicapped by pain and without thoughts for anything else.
It is a spiritual destruction, then, not a physical one.
Am i at the stage where it all seems stupid? How often do I get to this point? I thought this would be the one I kept. But now, who am I writing for? If I write to the person, is it better?
I’ve always been draw to those scenes of storytelling. The young boys at university, bare-chested, the one telling the story of Sutpin’s Hundred to the other. The explanation of ‘the South” the homoeroticism between the boys, the creation of story through the act of storytelling.
It is magical, I believe.
PAPER PLOW FURROW 