Confessions of a... Writer?

[bennie2]

I have a strangely morbid or morbidly strange fear of opening the folder marked “my work” on my E drive. Not that I think the contents will disappoint me. Rather, that the contents will give me away; give away my pretention, show me for what I really was: an unlived-in boy wanting to be a tortured poet without having the skill to poeticise or the claim to anything nearing torture. In fact, my one true torture in life has been my knowledge that I am no more a poet than I am an athlete – a knowledge that I have tried to ignore, push to the back of my mind. I’m a poet at heart, in thought and spirit, but in action merely a limbless, languageless actor.

An inability to feel love other than a love of something sublimely beautiful would surely suggest a lack of ingredient? I fall in love as an aesthete, not a lover, not a human falling in love with another human being. I fall in love with the shadow a tree gives to the grass and the way a bird casts a dancing light on its flying partner in street and country and beach skies. I’ve come close to loving one girl. I became very fond of her, liked her a lot and felt a warmth in her presence but what I thought was love was maybe comfort; a comfort at not being alone for that time. And this is where I reach my conclusion on love. I simply don’t know what it is to love someone. I don’t know what love is and don’t think I’d recognise it if I saw it.

My appreciations seem to be shallow. I read poetry and love the tingle of words together, or the image thrown into my head by the craftsman who wrote the words. Meaning often escapes me, to be honest. My joy of life is in seeing small moments of beautiful alignment rather than the significance of social shift or job promotions or finding out you don’t have cancer.... Today I admired two artists selling their work on Buchanan Street. Lovers they looked like. Dreadlocked heads and practical clothes, rows of drawings, paintings and artworks all up for sale. She, the velvet-lined vocal-cord to his guitar string laced with softly diffused amber light – two musical strings singing and dancing the same song together. As perfect a unit as I’d seen. So perfect in fact that I didn’t feel a bit of jealousy as I usually do when I see someone with someone else. Being jealous of these two would be like feeling envy at a leaf that caught the sunlight. A leaf can’t help being the perfect mirror and cup for the sun.

I should let go of writing. I should give it up. I want to be a good writer, much like I want to be a good guitarist and a good photographer, and I’d like to be able to paint the insides of my head, and while we’re at it, I’d very much enjoy having a more palatable face, oh, and my wrists are too thin.

I can’t decide if it’s healthier to absorb goings on around you and be Zen about the changes taking place (everything just Is) or to write about them as a poet should (or I feel a poet should). A poet should be a documenter. He should document the world as filtered through his own head and fingers. Each poet gives the world a taste it’s never known before; the taste of the poet. These documentations may be wars and openings of parliament, or they may be failed relationships, pet dogs dying, the feeling of the first cup of tea in the morning... multiple meditations... I absorb all events and can’t or merely forget to note them. This could be depression or apathy. Maybe it’s just a sign that I’m not the poet I wanted to be but simply a dreamer with not enough words.

Of course, maybe I just don’t know my own “taste” yet. What does one taste like? One may never know! Perhaps one should find a two to ask or a two to mirror the one more clearly. Allen Ginsberg said he didn’t find his voice until his William Blake hallucination shook it to his surface. Hallucinations scare me. Hallucinating (seeing something not there) is a loss of control. Fear of losing control of my Self is the main reason I don’t take drugs – a fear of the unknown quantity. But seeing things that are there but usually lie unseen... I’m good at that. I see infinite light in autumn glowing leaves ready to hatch the dust at their core and rebirth a newer generation. I see sunken valleys on the backs of gentle breezes as they caress the pale blue lines between their atoms. I hear non-notated symphonies in the rush of shore, roll of child’s laughter and staccato stutter of a dog bark in a distance still close.

[judih]

hey bennie!

too thin wrists

the ode to wrists that might snap
they hold my first cup of coffee
at least that

(really, i just made that up. and i'm not a poet either, but too thin wrists inspire me)

by the way, my folder on my computer is called 'playing' and that's far easier to fill up.

so fine to see you. i like your leaf cupping the sunlight line.

[tarbaby]

Dam straight you are a writer bennie. Nice piece of work.
I ran it through MS WORD just to see what it looked liked
Not a sentence fragment, run on sentence, or any other error in it. A small point I suppose.

Thank you.

here is a snap shot of my documents folder
I don't think there is one proper sentence in the lot.

Size 2.17 GB (2,332,146,114 bytes)
Contains 8,299 files in 576 folders

[mnaz]

confessions are all about a writer.

"i fall in love with the shadow a tree gives to the grass and the way a bird casts a dancing light on its flying partner in street and country and beach skies."

Seems I've been there.

[Shem]

I admit that in my drunken stupor
I read but the first two lines. BE NOT AFRAID! The only way we can achieve pure honesty (and what else is the prospect of an ARTIST!?) is to solidify the MOMENT! The aspect matters not. To record that split second between ideal and realization is the curse of the true ARTIST. Medium matters not. It is the record of NOW! (I cannot stress this enough) that makes the difference.

[Arcadia]

well, at least you have a folder when the name "my work"!! I don´t have the costumbre to save what I write except school-work (at least in the last years!). But sure it can be an interesting exercise to re-read from time to time (in my caso not for applying for the nobel prize, of course! )

[bennie2]

Thanks for the comments, people. I'm slowly trying to start writing again... just for the hell of it.

[mnaz]

Ahh Zen.... Everything Just Is. Including the struggle to find one's voice. Including the captured moments, the taste, the protest, the whole long road.

My it was a busy day on this board yesterday. Lotsa traffic....