(no subject)
"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world": wittgenstein
for any of you who have followed this journal even remotely, you will have figured out that i'm obsessed with language. let me explain why. i guess the reason for my fixation on words is principally because i like to write and yet i find that i can't do it adequately. words, you see, are the only tools i have to work myself out, and yet they just cannot seem to do the job i need them to do. before i even set them into print, i find they have become detached from me, maybe in the same way that a photograph develops separate from the camera. basically, i am unable to locate or create myself in the words that i use.
this might be my own problem, of course. i'm only too receptive to the idea that it's not language at all that is at fault here but just me and my own lack of talent. i mean, there is no doubt in my mind that i am a poor writer consumed with sad and vain aspirations. but even if that is true, and it is a personal deficiency rather than a systemic failure, the predicament is still the same. whether for lack of resources or lack of ability, i cannot express myself to myself without misdirection or deception. none of the metaphors i make can chart my exhaustion with justice; no conjunctions can supply me connection or clarity. representation becomes a tailspin.
so why do I bother writing at all? why this journal even when my words are just broken substitutes standing in for answers that were never there anyway? i don't know really. maybe it's a compulsive habit. maybe it's because i'm an idealist underneath my cynicism, and i think i can accidentally write myself into some enchanted answer. or maybe it's simply the fact that when you are drowning, you take hold of the first shattered plank that floats by. but sometimes, in my self-indulgent moments, i think that all of this is useless and that i’m just an abandoned astronaut adrift in the deep space of language. there's nothing more lonely than being out there, or colder. the oxygen is finite and the darkness is manifold. and writing is nothing more than a final and futile cry for help, a phosphorescent wink in the night, seen from earth as the sputtering light of some far and fading star.
...this will be the last time i post on this topic.
for any of you who have followed this journal even remotely, you will have figured out that i'm obsessed with language. let me explain why. i guess the reason for my fixation on words is principally because i like to write and yet i find that i can't do it adequately. words, you see, are the only tools i have to work myself out, and yet they just cannot seem to do the job i need them to do. before i even set them into print, i find they have become detached from me, maybe in the same way that a photograph develops separate from the camera. basically, i am unable to locate or create myself in the words that i use.
this might be my own problem, of course. i'm only too receptive to the idea that it's not language at all that is at fault here but just me and my own lack of talent. i mean, there is no doubt in my mind that i am a poor writer consumed with sad and vain aspirations. but even if that is true, and it is a personal deficiency rather than a systemic failure, the predicament is still the same. whether for lack of resources or lack of ability, i cannot express myself to myself without misdirection or deception. none of the metaphors i make can chart my exhaustion with justice; no conjunctions can supply me connection or clarity. representation becomes a tailspin.
so why do I bother writing at all? why this journal even when my words are just broken substitutes standing in for answers that were never there anyway? i don't know really. maybe it's a compulsive habit. maybe it's because i'm an idealist underneath my cynicism, and i think i can accidentally write myself into some enchanted answer. or maybe it's simply the fact that when you are drowning, you take hold of the first shattered plank that floats by. but sometimes, in my self-indulgent moments, i think that all of this is useless and that i’m just an abandoned astronaut adrift in the deep space of language. there's nothing more lonely than being out there, or colder. the oxygen is finite and the darkness is manifold. and writing is nothing more than a final and futile cry for help, a phosphorescent wink in the night, seen from earth as the sputtering light of some far and fading star.
...this will be the last time i post on this topic.