(no subject)
I stare at the page but words wont come.
This happens often, I have a lot to say, but words are evasive, tiny things; Every time I think I have some way of conveying what I'm feeling the words slip off the page and suddenly feel trite, or half conceived. It frustrates me, and it's the same frustration that wells up every time I try to put up some part of myself.
This is normal though, writing is not easy, painting is not easy, drawing is not easy. Conveying human emotion is actually one of the most difficult things in the world. We all exist in our own heads, and it is only other people's interpretation of what we put forward that people actually experience. People attribute great writers with depth, and the ability to peer deeply into the violent soul of themselves. In actuality almost everyone has a maze of complex emotional difficulties that would make even Oedipus pause (if he could actually see what was there) but it is only the talented that can manage to get that across without sounding like they're painting depth into a puddle.
My puddle is slightly deeper, they say.
Perhaps.
I'm confronted with a series of emotions that hits me often these days. It's a kind of listlessness, a weird void. My home has very many nice things. Bric a brac from around the world, not nearly kitsch, but remnants of adventures. Cloisonne coasters from workshops in Taiwan and China, hardwood furniture, antiques gifted to grandparents from business partners in the forties, old knives from Nepal and Iraq, 19th century Kurdish and Iranian rugs, a collection of extraordinary books, teas, and ceramics. All of them have stories.
I have stories.
I've passed the footsteps of Miyamoto Musashi's last duel while exploring temples in Japan, and passed through the lush curated gardens of Kyoto. I contemplated Rome from the Garden of the Medici, and ran my hands along the worn and faded faces of the nameless kings who seemed to melt from the wall on the way up. I studied the petroglyphs in Chile, as mysterious images, as large as the mountainside, rose out of the desert before me (highlighted by the rusting monoliths of the defunct nitrate factories jutting from the desert, alone and abandoned since world war two). I've seen cities carved of ice, ridden the trains north, east, west, and south all across China. I sat in the Forbidden City as the army marched through the gates. I saw the city of Shangrila before it burned. I drank tea in Huangzhou in the old city, after walking to the broken bridge where Lady White Snake and her lover were separated. I dove in the reefs of Taiwan and hiked to the top of Snow Mountain, where I watched the sun come up above the clouds.
I went swimming in a hurricane.
I watched a thunderstorm rage across the Iraqi plain, and a blood red moon rise over Iranian mountains.
I am only 30.
I sit at a desk in a Boston suburb drinking whiskey and I am deeply, thoroughly, and totally lonely.
and I'm hoping the answer isn't because I'm a prick.
This happens often, I have a lot to say, but words are evasive, tiny things; Every time I think I have some way of conveying what I'm feeling the words slip off the page and suddenly feel trite, or half conceived. It frustrates me, and it's the same frustration that wells up every time I try to put up some part of myself.
This is normal though, writing is not easy, painting is not easy, drawing is not easy. Conveying human emotion is actually one of the most difficult things in the world. We all exist in our own heads, and it is only other people's interpretation of what we put forward that people actually experience. People attribute great writers with depth, and the ability to peer deeply into the violent soul of themselves. In actuality almost everyone has a maze of complex emotional difficulties that would make even Oedipus pause (if he could actually see what was there) but it is only the talented that can manage to get that across without sounding like they're painting depth into a puddle.
My puddle is slightly deeper, they say.
Perhaps.
I'm confronted with a series of emotions that hits me often these days. It's a kind of listlessness, a weird void. My home has very many nice things. Bric a brac from around the world, not nearly kitsch, but remnants of adventures. Cloisonne coasters from workshops in Taiwan and China, hardwood furniture, antiques gifted to grandparents from business partners in the forties, old knives from Nepal and Iraq, 19th century Kurdish and Iranian rugs, a collection of extraordinary books, teas, and ceramics. All of them have stories.
I have stories.
I've passed the footsteps of Miyamoto Musashi's last duel while exploring temples in Japan, and passed through the lush curated gardens of Kyoto. I contemplated Rome from the Garden of the Medici, and ran my hands along the worn and faded faces of the nameless kings who seemed to melt from the wall on the way up. I studied the petroglyphs in Chile, as mysterious images, as large as the mountainside, rose out of the desert before me (highlighted by the rusting monoliths of the defunct nitrate factories jutting from the desert, alone and abandoned since world war two). I've seen cities carved of ice, ridden the trains north, east, west, and south all across China. I sat in the Forbidden City as the army marched through the gates. I saw the city of Shangrila before it burned. I drank tea in Huangzhou in the old city, after walking to the broken bridge where Lady White Snake and her lover were separated. I dove in the reefs of Taiwan and hiked to the top of Snow Mountain, where I watched the sun come up above the clouds.
I went swimming in a hurricane.
I watched a thunderstorm rage across the Iraqi plain, and a blood red moon rise over Iranian mountains.
I am only 30.
I sit at a desk in a Boston suburb drinking whiskey and I am deeply, thoroughly, and totally lonely.
and I'm hoping the answer isn't because I'm a prick.