(no subject)
I've been thinking about fiction, as opposed to poetry or what might be loosely-termed critical, interrogative writing, and wondering what the reasons are for my current reluctance/ inability to satisfactorily complete any form except the third. My thesis progresses, to the apparent satisfaction of my supervisors and, more surprisingly, myself, but I have written nothing else, not even many letters or emails, for the last few months at least. Communication, in general and even of a non-virtual sort, has been minimal, except for a somewhat noisy weekend at a conference in November, at which I was so overwhelmed by the sudden, actual presence of kindred linguists that I lost my voice even before returning home. I haven't been teaching, or working in the communal Celtic library, but sitting mostly in my new(-ish) office, basement-bound - I seem to have a strange affinity with basements, probably fortunate! - from which only railings and the occasional ankle are visible from beneath. It's rarely warm, so I seem closed in a tightly-focussed cocoon of icy, somewhat brittle concentration, and time passes more slowly than in even the upper levels of the same building. I would be unsurprised to discover that things written here do not actually exist once transmitted to another, less subterranean context, or that drafts of text submitted to the Upstairs-Folk read differently to the text when it was written below-ground. There's a poem there - there have been poems in many recent dreams - but they appear to be waiting for something, more conducive conditions for revision, perhaps. Conducive - so not Christmas, with too-thin walls and familiar tensions in a place that is no longer home to more than part of me, and by no means the largest.
How we change, to ourselves, and how it is concealed - and through no conscious process. Those familiar with former patterns may continue to respond to these as they are remembered, not re-perceived, in lieu of questioning whether they are altered or if only the perception itself has altered, temporarily. Whose eyes do any of us view others through - most probably not those of the perceived's own gaze.
Is this an excuse, alone. It should create, not impede fiction and the use of language to describe even the processes of this kind of thought. I should not write nothing. Dreams make me afraid that they are prophetic, portentous, involving friends who cannot be told of such vague and flimsy notions, but too-closely entwined for comfort. A man sits in a large room, at an empty desk, where there is nothing but white light; no words, no pieces of paper or other means to create them. His current life depends on words. A man is thinner, painfully so, and does not see why his altered state is greeted with such scarcely-concealed horror. He has lost more than weight, through his own fault, through a violence which someone else, only a day later and in the waking world, passes comment upon with regard to the same man's existing relationship. I have seen him since, still fit, still healthy and patient. It makes me afraid, when the practical response is surely to ask why we go to such places in the sleeping-world, and to resolve that no heed be paid to them. Perhaps I need only give up cheese again.
*
With reference to my St Patrick's day entry, I recently re-encountered, not the wool-loving Viking, but his companion, the man with the sunburst-tie. He regarded me with a vaguely-puzzled expression as a different friend ordered a book, but if he recognized me as the girl who once instigated such a strange conversation, he gave no sign of doing so. I have to confess, I would have been amused to learn whether the Viking himself had been left with any memory of the exchange!
How we change, to ourselves, and how it is concealed - and through no conscious process. Those familiar with former patterns may continue to respond to these as they are remembered, not re-perceived, in lieu of questioning whether they are altered or if only the perception itself has altered, temporarily. Whose eyes do any of us view others through - most probably not those of the perceived's own gaze.
Is this an excuse, alone. It should create, not impede fiction and the use of language to describe even the processes of this kind of thought. I should not write nothing. Dreams make me afraid that they are prophetic, portentous, involving friends who cannot be told of such vague and flimsy notions, but too-closely entwined for comfort. A man sits in a large room, at an empty desk, where there is nothing but white light; no words, no pieces of paper or other means to create them. His current life depends on words. A man is thinner, painfully so, and does not see why his altered state is greeted with such scarcely-concealed horror. He has lost more than weight, through his own fault, through a violence which someone else, only a day later and in the waking world, passes comment upon with regard to the same man's existing relationship. I have seen him since, still fit, still healthy and patient. It makes me afraid, when the practical response is surely to ask why we go to such places in the sleeping-world, and to resolve that no heed be paid to them. Perhaps I need only give up cheese again.
*
With reference to my St Patrick's day entry, I recently re-encountered, not the wool-loving Viking, but his companion, the man with the sunburst-tie. He regarded me with a vaguely-puzzled expression as a different friend ordered a book, but if he recognized me as the girl who once instigated such a strange conversation, he gave no sign of doing so. I have to confess, I would have been amused to learn whether the Viking himself had been left with any memory of the exchange!