I’ve been looking forward to this one for a long time. It feels strange writing in English and immediately peeking over my shoulder to see how my voice sounds. Is it as easy-going as I’ve imagined? The writing has been easy so far, probably because the words come from the opposite hemisphere, drenched deep in the ubiquitous connectome of their own. It’s a bit like a dream. You don’t really know what you’re doing and all sorts of things keep popping up at random.
Actually, I’m not recording thoughts, just giving myself in. “Empty words,” Chuck Schuldiner would scream. Disenchanted, I completed the next couple of letter combinations. Pretty hollow. Thought I would enjoy it more. Thought words and half-sentences would be pouring down, now the rain is easing off outside. What did I expect at the end of the shift?
I could probably play around more with the language, introducing some foreign elements, although I originally wanted to replicate what I’ve already absorbed. I don’t know; my not knowing has come pretty fast. Good I can add some Slovak to the previous page instead.
Added some Slovak over there and above. Whipped cream emerged like the sun above the tides and shadows of outrageous fortune, so to say. Other than that, torrid vocabulary unleashed upon the innocent passers-by. Blobs of haddock have flummoxed those bothered to decipher tangled weeds suspended mid-air. A wry smile of unscathed self-indulgence slithered down my face. I was listening to the sound of myself, inside myself, surprised by the meaning.
This whole paragraph is half-paraphrased (whatever that means) as I don’t want to use quotation marks so much. I feel the same about writing. I’m just postponing the inevitable, the day when I won’t do it anymore, when I sink into a depression so profound it will be indistinguishable from perfect bliss. The breakthrough has been to arrive at a tone that enabled me to move between comic, almost slapstick scenes and quite serious discursive or analytical passages without any crunching of gears. The freedom to juxtapose the highs and lows with the broads and narrows (and, indeed, arrows), and, at a stretch, with the random or deliberate mines or aliens has been relieving. You can convey certain general truths, things that would ring true for many people, by remaining absolutely faithful to the minutiae of your experience and the vagaries of your own nature. Can you imagine something else that would somehow work as a summary of whatever it is that I’ve always been moving toward or circling around?
(Courtesy of a Geoff Dyer interview)
Coming back to the office after lunch, having read the lines above, I saw myself in the mirror. I looked like a fucking Jehovah’s Witness. Scruffy, with a smirk behind my eyes. What does it matter that I’ve honed this gaze to perfection now I’m splashing what is to become black ink around like a child on ADHD. Let’s see what John Berger has to say about that. “To separate fact and imagination, event and feeling, protagonist and narrator, is to stay on dry land and never put to sea.” Same shit over and over, even inland.
Moving on to the last paragraph, I first wanted to write about dissatisfaction creeping up my ass, about an opportunity missed, potential wasted. I tend to lament and enjoy it. An ongoing moment later, I tend to enjoy myself and lament about it. There is one final line to write and read, protecting you from the ramblings of the previous-next.
Where does this ultimate line — and our ultimate second chance — come from?
