Is it coming back to what it was before? Another round of the same old shit. Something you begin to notice when you write regularly over a long period of time is how the focus of your writing changes and shifts from certain vectors and carries along new ones, and even returning to old one’s every now and then, trying to find a footing, some stability, a certainty. I felt like I was on to something interesting last year, at least for me, when I began to write about nothing in particular, writing about wasting time, wasting whole days, weeks at a time – wasting my life away in inescapable inertia, trapped inside myself, wanting desperately to change that self, for no particular reason, really; not because I don’t like myself or because my life is particularly horrible, nor because I wasn’t happy with the way things were going… On second thought, it wasn’t that I wasn’t happy, I just wasn’t satisfied. Always restless, but never quite sure why. Looking and groping, slowly, hesitantly, tentatively, reaching out in the dark, and knowing all the while that some veil is right before my eyes, but I didn’t know how to remove it. Or maybe it wasn’t a veil; maybe it was a prism, distorting the view and disorienting me. I had no good reason to be restless. All I knew was that I wanted out, anyway, anyhow, shatter myself and smash my life to pieces, just so I could remove myself from myself, look outside the senseless, confused and paralysed mess that is my consciousness; I’d forgotten how to breathe.
What’s happened since? Too much. So the writing has changed; stopped, really. Too many things, too hectic a year.
That bloody cat is in heat, and she’s driving me insane. All I can think of is squashing her fragile little skull in my hand. Just watching her rub up against me, presenting her behind and hearing her constant pleas for some cock, my skin begins to burn, like a horrible itch I can’t scratch and that’s growing worse by the minute. It’s making me restless and horny, and I resent the cat for it. When it comes to the crucial moment, I have no sympathy for anyone. All my purported understanding and compassion – no, fuck that word. I prefer ‘empathy’, though that’s not quite right either. Anyway, whatever it is, it goes out the window; I forget all my lessons and understanding, and lose my temper. My patience fails me. I forget, I forget. I forget all too often. It’s always a disappointment, a failure on my part. I can’t even have sympathy for a cat in heat; how the fuck am I supposed to have sympathy for a human-being? What, just because I’m human too? That’s not the answer. I feel I have a much better understanding of what it’s like to be a cat than to be human. Cat’s are easier to forgive (not this cat, though. I want to squash her fragile skull in my hand).
How can I go back to writing the same stuff as last year? Has my life really changed that much that I can’t bring myself back to that state of mind? No, not really. This year has, in many ways, been one of change. Lots has happened. I started the year writing more than ever, then making the decision to cut down significantly on writing; a conscious decision. ‘Let yourself breathe. Let your ideas breathe.’ And in many ways I feel like I’m breathing again, like I’ve torn down some walls, smashed some mirrors. Not as suffocated as I felt a few months ago. Things, I feel, are going somewhere. But have I not missed the lesson? Things never really go anywhere. Maybe that’s all I meant. Yes, that’s all I meant. Things are becoming just a little bit easier and a little bit lighter every day. Yet here I am again: I have deadlines. I can see opportunities being lost again just on the horizon. ‘Next year, next year, I’ll change. Next year it’s serious’. And once again I’m not stressed about any of it, except for the odd jolt of panic here and then, but those are more like unpleasant farts or trapped wind than a crisis. And now I feel myself going back to writing about nothing and about wasting my life. And, strangely enough, at the same time I’m regaining my will to write. I feel as though there’s much I have to let out of my system, much that I might not have realised was building up. So I’ll go back to writing about wasting my life – it seems to be the only thing I can do at the moment. I’m looking forward to it.
Thursday 26 June 2008
Wednesday 11 June 2008
A life about nothing
What? What the fuck is life about?! The kind of thoughts that go through my head, I can’t make any sense of them. I feel stuffed after my dinner, and I feel my bloated belly and think about my dad; I think about his slight stature, his bald scalp and his droopy belly. What kind of physique did he have when he was my age? Am I doing well compared to him? I’d like to be fitter than he is when I’m his age. It’s hard to get fit though; I’m not a naturally athletic guy. Or at least, I didn’t have the right habits instilled in me to be more athletic and have more of a tendency towards it. Because potential, that may be in almost anyone, but potential means nothing without the right habits, and without the desire and dedication to achieve something. But first habits, mostly habits.
I think about my dad, and how he didn’t instil the right habits in me. And why not? Because he didn’t have those habits himself, and it seemed he never learnt their importance, or if he did, then he never managed to instil them in himself. Was it a question of strength? Was my dad just not strong enough to overcome himself? Would I be strong enough to overcome myself? Oh, but that’s surely not all it comes down to. To say that a man is or is not strong enough to overcome himself – is that not to answer the question with its own presuppositions? If we say a man is strong enough to change himself, then we are not talking about true overcoming, but about a gift he’d been endowed with by nature. Overcoming always appeared to me to consist of cultivating strength in oneself. How, then, may we ask whether a man can be strong enough to make himself strong? How are we to even phrase the question? Where are we to find this strength that precedes strength?
Then I think about my future children. Do I have the right habits to instil in them? God, no, I’m a mess. What kind of person thinks they’re ready to have kids? People who don’t feel any trepidation about the possibility of offspring horrify me; to become a parent is to be guilty of the greatest arrogance, and the greatest harm towards one’s children. Our origin sin was against our Father, when we ate from the tree of knowledge. But we commit another original sin, an original sin against our children the moment we bring them to life; did not God himself commit the original sin when he planted the tree’s seed in the ground?
To return to your question, no, I do not have what it takes to be a good parent. When will I get there? Have I not been striving for this my whole life? To reach that point where I can finally say – I am fine, I am complete, I don’t need to change anymore. But that point will never come, and I’ve accepted it long ago; so why can’t I just live with it? Why do I keep racking my brains about what it is I’m doing with my life? My life, my life; what does it come down to? Philosophy is great, but sometimes I wonder if my life goes beyond this kind of meaningless, sporadic thoughts, these little niggling anxieties and uncertainties that go almost unnoticed through my mind in never-ending loops, unable to break out of their own vicious cycles; breakthroughs come when these cycles exhaust and spend themselves. And I wonder if my preoccupation with philosophy doesn’t miss the point sometimes? Is there not something behind philosophical questions which is obscured by those very questions? Does my life not consist in precisely those little anxieties and niggling uncertainties, regrets and accusations, that are so common-place we do not even bother to consign them to our memory? I will sooner remember a trip to the local corner shop than give a second thought to the thought I had about my dad earlier.
If this was a story, a ‘proper’ narrative, would I not be recounting to you my trip to the shop, how I bought a pack of tobacco and the huge Asian man behind the till who looked ready to crush me for interrupting while a game of football was being shown on television? Some people call this kind of story ‘stories about nothing’, and tell us that those stories are about real life, as though the role of literature was to be as true to real life as possible, and as though life could be ascertained or pinned down to one quality or tendency, as though is was the tendency of life? So is life about nothing? It seems to me that this nothing, even in the most banal and repetitive of daily tasks, is a loud, noisy grind, an endless stream of thoughts and struggles, always taking form, shaping up, looking like culminating, but always disappointing, always failing.
So what is potential? Potential is nothing without actualisation. Potential can only be claimed in retrospect, after one has exerted one’s potential.
I think about my dad, and how he didn’t instil the right habits in me. And why not? Because he didn’t have those habits himself, and it seemed he never learnt their importance, or if he did, then he never managed to instil them in himself. Was it a question of strength? Was my dad just not strong enough to overcome himself? Would I be strong enough to overcome myself? Oh, but that’s surely not all it comes down to. To say that a man is or is not strong enough to overcome himself – is that not to answer the question with its own presuppositions? If we say a man is strong enough to change himself, then we are not talking about true overcoming, but about a gift he’d been endowed with by nature. Overcoming always appeared to me to consist of cultivating strength in oneself. How, then, may we ask whether a man can be strong enough to make himself strong? How are we to even phrase the question? Where are we to find this strength that precedes strength?
Then I think about my future children. Do I have the right habits to instil in them? God, no, I’m a mess. What kind of person thinks they’re ready to have kids? People who don’t feel any trepidation about the possibility of offspring horrify me; to become a parent is to be guilty of the greatest arrogance, and the greatest harm towards one’s children. Our origin sin was against our Father, when we ate from the tree of knowledge. But we commit another original sin, an original sin against our children the moment we bring them to life; did not God himself commit the original sin when he planted the tree’s seed in the ground?
To return to your question, no, I do not have what it takes to be a good parent. When will I get there? Have I not been striving for this my whole life? To reach that point where I can finally say – I am fine, I am complete, I don’t need to change anymore. But that point will never come, and I’ve accepted it long ago; so why can’t I just live with it? Why do I keep racking my brains about what it is I’m doing with my life? My life, my life; what does it come down to? Philosophy is great, but sometimes I wonder if my life goes beyond this kind of meaningless, sporadic thoughts, these little niggling anxieties and uncertainties that go almost unnoticed through my mind in never-ending loops, unable to break out of their own vicious cycles; breakthroughs come when these cycles exhaust and spend themselves. And I wonder if my preoccupation with philosophy doesn’t miss the point sometimes? Is there not something behind philosophical questions which is obscured by those very questions? Does my life not consist in precisely those little anxieties and niggling uncertainties, regrets and accusations, that are so common-place we do not even bother to consign them to our memory? I will sooner remember a trip to the local corner shop than give a second thought to the thought I had about my dad earlier.
If this was a story, a ‘proper’ narrative, would I not be recounting to you my trip to the shop, how I bought a pack of tobacco and the huge Asian man behind the till who looked ready to crush me for interrupting while a game of football was being shown on television? Some people call this kind of story ‘stories about nothing’, and tell us that those stories are about real life, as though the role of literature was to be as true to real life as possible, and as though life could be ascertained or pinned down to one quality or tendency, as though is was the tendency of life? So is life about nothing? It seems to me that this nothing, even in the most banal and repetitive of daily tasks, is a loud, noisy grind, an endless stream of thoughts and struggles, always taking form, shaping up, looking like culminating, but always disappointing, always failing.
So what is potential? Potential is nothing without actualisation. Potential can only be claimed in retrospect, after one has exerted one’s potential.
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