Dreams

Though it might be an odd choice, my favourite book by Jack Kerouac is his Book of Dreams. I love the idea of taking stream of consciousness writing to that kind of ultimate extreme. Not only is it the flowing text of thought, it's thought about the most uncontrolled thoughts we have.

I've dabbled in writing down my own dreams, for my own interest, for therapy appointments, for the hope that others might be interested in the sick shit that happens in my head all night.

In all of this, there are some recurring themes: hotels, elevators, fire. I've consulted dream dictionaries -- everything from the hippie to the Freudian -- and often it seems that my dreams have no deep meaning to them, or have meanings that conflict with themselves.

So here are the bits I remember from last night:

• Going to drop off a writing assignment at my old office, walking to corner of 7th and 23rd, seeing big ad for french fry place, craving fries and hot dogs for dinner, seeing building closed, with tape blocking second entrance, which had big staircase into building. Walking under tape, scraping face, bypassing line of people waiting to get newspapers, going into warehouse room, where JT looking very old was sat on a table supervising. Went to elevator bank and waited for JT. Realised I had dog shit on the hem of my jeans, tried scraping off with shoe. JT finally gets in and doors stay open for long, we all laugh. Elevator begins to move, we have small talk. Dream ends.
• Walking to some sort of garden centre store, then on bus. See MB on a bike, recall conversation that she had just bought one, pass bike store where new bikes are all matte black painted, and used ones are battered but colourful. Get into store to buy a xmas gift for an office party, secret santa recipient is somebody who is dying and leaving, but I also know that I'm going to quit when I'm next in the office. Feel awkward about buying anything. MB comes into store to buy a book -- trashy mass market novel, which I find weird. She asks what I'm looking for, I don't want to tell her, so say a claw thing, and make gesture with hand. She makes comment about don't cats come with those still. Fluffy grey cat starts walking around in garden display I'm looking at. Rain starts and people come running in. NR is there, looking haggard. We discuss lack of sleep and he says he's been up all night because his twins are in the hospital. I feel uncomfortable because I didn't know he had twins, thought it was just a daughter. He tells of misdiagnosis... of local doctor not thinking anything of the boy's red teeth. On first visit to Dr. H, though, they did belly scans and found that both kids had some sort of heart and stomach problem. Thought it had been cured, but last night they started bleeding and having aneurysms or some sort of attack. He spent all night in the hospital and told me how sweaty he had been there, and how he had to remember to sleep on his side of the bed when he was under the covers there, and not try to sleep on top of the covers on his wife's side. NR wanders off, and I look at tacky frog lawn ornaments. Dream ends.

So those are the two I remember from last night. They usually trickle back into my brain as the day goes on, so maybe I'll add more later.

Identity

I'm not going to get into why I've been pondering identity over the past few days. Those involved in any of it are probably already having a snide laugh, thinking that they've inspired me, or fooled me, or god knows what else.

Everyone has multiple identities, and that's a simple fact. The whole best foot forward, meeting the parents, interview, wearing the dry clean only clothes version of you is a pretty different identity than the version where you're sitting on the couch, wearing the same underwear for three days, watching trashy tv, in the middle of what starts to look like an odd concentration camp for alcohol.

Yeah, deep down it's the same person. Sure. Not arguing there. But there are different parts to any person. Picture it how you want... devil on one shoulder, angel on the other. Id, ego, and superego. Whatever. Point is, everyone knows that there are these component parts that make us up, but nobody likes to think that they might have to deal with anyone else's parts.

Some people who know me will only know one aspect, and that's how I want to keep it. Maybe they know my political work, or my writing, or my health problems, or my sick sense of humour, or my work pimping art, or something else. Maybe they knew me when I was 17, maybe when I was 25. All of those bits come together to form who I am now, but it's only natural to protect yourself against anyone knowing everything.

If somebody else knew everything about me, that might just mean that I'd have to accept all those parts of me. I'd have to get to know myself.

So I don't want you to know everything about me (yet here I am writing all sorts of crap that's stumbling around in my head), but I get a bit offended when you don't tell me everything about you (see previous post about wanting to know you more than you know yourself, etc.). Guess what... we all do it.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm happier with people who openly hide themselves. Don't want me to know who you are? Fine. But don't make a game out of it. You can keep your secrets, and I'll keep mine. We can interact with those secrets tucked under our arms, hoisted in hobo sacks over our shoulders. The parts that we're happy to have public can be friends for what they have in common, not for what's dangling in that tatty hankie at the end of that stick.

So I'm ok with this. Now I just need to convince everyone else to be, too. I find that if you don't prod and pick the scabs of conversations, people tell you the most unexpected things. For most of my friends, the defining moments of confession and conversation came when the pretenses were dropped and that little glimmer of humanity came through. Maybe it dropped out of a hole in the hankie.

We all have things we want to keep hidden, and we all lie to each other and ourselves. There's no point in wasting time worrying about what lies might be out there.

Burnt

The sun fills me with anxiety.

Every year, around this time, we get a few sunny days that remind us that there's something out there other than gloom and cold. Of course, this is the weather I grew up with... SoCal, drought, blah blah all that crap I always talk about. So it's this weird sense of being a child again.

The sun is nice and all, except for my tendency to crisp up like a human slab of bacon. My problem is that it forces me to think about so many fucking things. Where I've come, what I've done. How am I different from that little kid running around North Long Beach, thrilled with her giant as fuck cassette Walkman?

I'm not.

My anxieties are different these days... dissertations, writing, money, other seemingly 'grown up' things. But the base of it is the same. How will I know if I'm actually happy?

Maybe that links back to all my brain fuzziness, the chemical imbalances, the abuse I've ladled on top of those. Or maybe, just maybe, that's fundamentally me. Maybe I'm just an unhappy person.

This isn't to say I don't enjoy myself, or like my life. I just always want... more. Better. The Best. It pushes me forward in ways others don't seem to be pushed. What I have isn't ever good enough, so I'm always fighting for more. That's behind my drive to get a fucking PhD for, really, no reason other than that I want one.

But it also causes these moments, where I can feel my skin burning, and want to run away from everything because nothing is good enough yet. Because I'm not good enough. These are the moments, sitting in the late Spring sun, that I become destructive.

Spring is the time for rebirth, according to all those legends. I'm sure we've all seen some Joseph Campbell shit about it. Late spring is my time. It's the time where I cast off coats, and reassess. It's the time where I tell the world to fuck off and make way for me.

It's a time of false bravado. It's a time of utter, crippling fear. I don't like change. It scares me more than most things. But... here it is. It's sunny and I'm thinking of ways to make it better. Ways to push things forward. Ways to be the fucking best.

Weakness

People are only interesting when they're weak.

I love finding those weaknesses. I love asking the questions you don't want me to ask. I'm still surprised, every single time, that so many people will answer. I think it's an unspoken Jungian shared secret: we all want to confess our sins.

The Catholics should be happy. Seems they've gotten something right. Of course, it's something they share with all of the Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalysts. Everyone is desperate to have their story told, but nobody knows how to do it.

It seems wrong to just shout it into the world. (Maybe that's why all of us writers are absolute cunts.) So you sit there waiting for somebody to be interested in that story. I think that's what most people take to be love. We all just want somebody to listen.

I like to be on both sides of it. I like to confess, but I also like to hear confessions. I like being the one people can tell their darkest secrets, their worst moments. Tell me about the bad things, tell me what scares you, show me your scars.

I'm drawn to weakness. Partially, this is a desire to make things better, to heal, to perfect. It's also morbid curiosity, something to make my fucked up life seem just ever so slightly better. Mostly, though, I think it's just how I connect to humanity.

We all have weaknesses, and we spend so much of our life trying to hide them. That's boring. I want to know you better than you know yourself. I want to find that tiny little memory that makes you look into nothing for a split second, rolling something around mindlessly in your hand, before you give a slight cough and carry on with your sentence. That's when you're human. That's when you're interesting. That's when you're weak.

So go on... tell me a story.

And Jonny... you can steal this now. I won't tell.

Blocks

I think most of the time my writer's block is self-imposed. It's not a lack of things to write, or desire to write them, or even ability to write. It's fear of what will happen once I put that writing out into the world.

Words are so easily misinterpreted. It's a great bit of ass-covering if you're a lit student... there is no wrong answer blah blah blah. But if you're the writer, trying to field questions from people you know, or people who think they know you... it's a bitch.

Whenever I've put myself fully into writing, it's always been the same... People mutter, look at me sideways, then slowly creep up with queries and concerns. Do I really feel that way? It'll be ok. When did that happen? Is there anything they can do to help?

What people can do to help is to accept that writing is writing. Yes, there are some reflections of me in there, but it's like a funhouse mirror version of me. On one page, I might have a big head, while on another I have elephantiasis-infested cankles. It's me, but it's not.

So what do I do? How the fuck can I get over this block? It's self-imposed, but not. Maybe this is why so many authors are faceless hermits. Maybe Pynchon and Salinger got it right.

But that's the deep dark secret behind it all... I don't want to be faceless in this. Writing is all I have to get attention, and I want that attention. I don't want it in the form of pseudo-concern about my welfare and whether this that or t'other was true. I want praise. I want pats on the head and people loving me for my talent.

I want the same affirmation of my talent that I've wanted since I was a kid. The same damn drive that has given me ulcers and mental breakdowns, trying to be the best, being the best, thinking the best isn't enough. I don't know whether all that genius kid bullshit caused it, or whether it's just part of the mentality that we bring to the genius kid stuff. Either way, I'm an overachiever and a show-off. I do things well and I damn well want some recognition for it.

But... there's the sad little person behind all that. I can talk the big talk about genius and rewards. Under it all, though, is the crippling fear of not being good enough, and of having all of this crap be absolutely meaningless. It's a deep, dark fear that all the pain and suffering was just pain and suffering. It's such a fear, I can't even think of it in passing without being stopped, the wind knocked out of me, tears coming to my eyes.

I'm scared.

It's cold with the window open

Bank Holidays suck ass. Maybe if you work in a regular job they're nice and fun and woo fucking hoo extra day off. I don't, though. Day in and day out, I do the same stuff. Bank Holidays just mean I don't get mail, stores close early, cab companies charge fare and a half, and more people are out to annoy me. Television schedules are also usually fucked with.

The only thing that was getting me through this one was that it was supposed to rain. Thunderstorms, even. Still nothing. Just a wind that freezes my arm with every gust.

I feel like doing something creative, but don't know what to do. Anything I do isn't good enough, at least by my standards. The only thing I do well is write, but there's so much potential failure to get past. I can't write doodles, I can't write snapshots. If I'm going to write, it's going to be proper writing and it's going to be some of the best strung together words you've ever read. If, that is, I ever actually fucking write them.

Calendar

Saturday 23 May - Bristol - Calm Air All Ice @ Room 212 (closing party) then drinks
Monday 25 May - Bristol - Drinks and fun with Americans and a few Brits
Wednesday 27 May - Arts Festival promotion meeting
Friday 29 May - Deadline for Royal Academy decisions
Tuesday 2 June - End of Weapon of Choice group show
Saturday 6 June - Bristol - Upfest
Sunday 7 June - Bristol - Upfest
Monday 8 June - Arts Festival meeting
Tuesday 9 June - Bristol - Weapon of Choice @ Mr Wolfs
Wednesday 10 June - London - Roehampton Postgraduate Conference

So... Not sure how many of the above I'll be doing, especially the week after Upfest (other than the conference).

I also have a few deadlines in the next few weeks: writing, brochure design, and getting the presentation ready for the conference.

Going to be fun, though.