Hear/Say

in the Big Rock Candy Mountain, you never change your socks.

via veroniquekim.tumblr. I feel sleazy today; is that a mood? Because it should be.

Since I got my Google phone I’ve been over-utilizing the memo/notes app furiously. The problem is: I would type something down and have no idea what I wanted to do with it, or what it meant, or why I even thought it was relevant enough to note:

“Your breath smells like an old lady fart passing through an onion” — Dee from It’s Always Sunny

Districts of solid coloured artifacts, red green bluuuue yellow glove from blue district. Detextive of fantastical mini cartoon epic

Tara elopes with velvet

Tara jamming to compl diff music

What the meaning of life is monologue/speech inspired by life and monotonous spontaneity

Sarah starting car multiple steps unfamiliar car passage idea

Functions of baby hair Baby hair wind dar

Deluxe how luxury lost its luster

Its like they’ve opened up their entire life to you know– on ___ and discovering a fellow ____

He learned to fly a plane before he learned to fly a car

Fictional snippet #1: “You must realize,” she said. “The more precise you become, the creepier you are.”  “I understand completely,” Ms. Blank said in earnest. “…because the more details you begin to collect or obsessively notice, the more distracted you are with the irrelevent. The more neurotic your observations are with these infinite details, the more insistent on conspiracy and delusional meaning making …”

Tent for tools

Pig in crisis

Never trust a girl with overplucked eyebrows

Hairy chest shaved prickly

The protrusion of your meaning splinters into ragged ambiguity, its edges indefinably alarming

Lauren, my old best friend from 4th and 5th grade (Briar Glen Bulldogs y’all), recently sent me our first manuscript: SOULTOUCH. It is an epic fantasy novel that has the strangest, most obvious mix of wizardry from John Peel’s Diadem series as well as elements of Alice in Wonderland. We wrote the first part, and haven’t continued it– but it comes with drawings of magical Cycloptic centaurs and everything. Including a cat with a human nose. What were we smoking in 5th grade, right? Well, it started in 4th grade, when our love for books (specifically, Madeleine L’engle of A Wrinkle in Time) superceded any of our ability to socialize with other children. During recess we would crawl into a patch of trees on the side of the playground and pretend we lived in the wild. Moss was our bed. Anyway, Lauren’s always been the most talented out of both of us; she had people wanting her to read her stories aloud during Creative Writing. When I won a measly poetry contest in 5th grade, people were expecting her victory– and in no way am I negatively jealous of this; in fact, she’s probably why I love reading and writing so much. And why I want to do both better. She’s also a very talented artist; basically, I need to star on a MADE show to be Lauren S. She’s totally cool about being so cool, too.

On writing, though: last night I engaged in deep discussion with a student in the Evening Course I’m T.A’ing for. We were discussing his idea for a book, and epic novel, and I loved it. Amazed, how people can think of such extensive details while engaging in intangible realms… he mentioned something about writing, as an activity, or writing books, that really struck me: how writing is a way of confronting yourself, your deepest emotions and feelings, and how his obsession over the novel’s plot was like a drug drive, a constant freak-out of “What will happen next?”

This is totally true: I’ve met so many passionate, articulate people who have genuine drive in the subjects they talk about, and personable charisma– but somehow lack the tools to put it on paper, or into words. Upon my outraged “WHY?” they usually say “I don’t know how to *write* that”. Sounds ridiculous, but it’s really not. Talking aloud comes smoothly to some, but placing them on the proverbial paper forces a reflexive mode of thought. Instead of focusing on the passion being channeled into words, people have a trembling fear of the permanence of those words. Speech fades into the thinned atmosphere of sound– writing, however, is begging for intensive speculation. The words are signifiers for meaning, and the meaning is backed up by the author. And the author has signed their name on these collective meanings strewn together into sentences– not only are the words signifiers of meanings, but the order of words, the flow of sentences… a paper physically maps out your ideas, while speeches tend to invisibly poke and prod minds. For me, the anxiety flows the other way: speaking articulately is much more difficult that writing a logical flow. I feel like I have more control; more precision.

But WRITING. . . ! I don’t know how to get back into creative writing, or if I can. Where does one start? Because blogging is quite different, I feel… I’m not sure how, but it is.

Aaahh, where life takes us.

Graceee