Viewing entries tagged with "writing"   //
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cause you're bored and you can doesn't mean you should

8

I always won­der if I’ll ever reach such a com­plete peace that I’d stop writ­ing com­pletely. One of the rea­sons I started this blog was to have a place where I could get things down and sort my thoughts out on a page, but I don’t need to do much of either nowadays.

I know so many peo­ple who’ve con­tin­ued writ­ing, even after find­ing that kind of hap­pi­ness in their lives. Unfortunately, hap­pi­ness has robbed them of lit­er­ary inspi­ra­tion, and now they have noth­ing inter­est­ing to say. It wouldn’t be so bad if they stopped writ­ing, but they post for the sake of post­ing instead of hav­ing some­thing to say or express or vent, and it reeks of des­per­a­tion and insecurity.

I used to worry that hap­pi­ness would make me a bor­ing per­son too, but now I wouldn’t mind as long as I real­ized it and gave up this blog. It’s so embar­rass­ing to write out of a belief that it’ll make you inter­est­ing. Or even worse, to be obliv­i­ous to the fact you’re writ­ing about the most inane things.

Date  August 15, 2011
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Categories  Thoughts

Protected: round my hometown memories are fresh

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Date  July 1, 2011
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

Dear Lisa

9

It was this suc­cinct wit. She could say so much in a line or two, and any­thing left unsaid would only serve to feed your curios­ity. You’d be given the punch­line, this blow that would knock the wind out of you, then won­der what cir­cum­stances could have led up to that. I’ve always been after that style, that abil­ity to move peo­ple with words the way hers used to move me.

Dolly and Lisa

Of course Dolly has to sleep on any­thing new in the house, regard­less of whether it’s your sweater or not. It’s part of the sass, and yet one can’t help but reward her with cud­dles and love.

For a few years, I lost her to the hap­pi­ness (where I hope to lose myself one day) until we spent a rainy day together, blissed out and hope­fully obvi­ous only to the check-out lady who scanned all our vari­eties of chocolate.

Dear Lisa believes in me, and that’s the only rea­son I believe in myself too.

Date  May 29, 2011
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

The Process (or why a tree is not a tree)

2

Take a leaf off a tree. Is it still a tree? Take a sin­gle twig off a tree. Is it still a tree? Remove an entire branch from a tree. Is it still a tree? Take off half of the branches. Is it still a tree? Cut down the whole tree, leav­ing only the stump. Is it still a tree? Many peo­ple would say no, it is no longer a tree, though the roots may still be in the ground. Well, where did the tree go? Removing a leaf, it remains a tree, but not by remov­ing all of the branches and the trunk?

In the real world, there aren’t any things as we com­monly think of them. A ‘thing’ as we refer to it is only a noun. A noun is merely an idea, a men­tal con­struct. These ‘things’ exist only in our minds. There is no tree, there is only the idea of a tree.

—Anonymous

I’ve been writ­ing here for almost a decade, pour­ing 10 years of my life into this blog. I recently con­sid­ered clean­ing up the con­tent by delet­ing a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of my old entries; I’m not the same per­son as when I wrote them, and I don’t even like who I was back then. Not to men­tion the fact that some are rather embar­rass­ing, like read­ing your old diary in high school when the biggest prob­lem was what peo­ple thought when you wore your uni­form cause you for­got it was a Civvies Day.

The prob­lem I was faced with was decid­ing what should be deleted. People aren’t sta­tic; they’re processes, events, evo­lu­tions, made up of cells that con­tin­u­ally renew them­selves on a daily basis. At what defin­able point can I say these entries are no longer me? It could be argued that even posts as recent as a few months ago aren’t an accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion, though there may still rem­nants of the old me in the habits of my thoughts.

Then I came across this pas­sage in The Tao by Mark Forstater, on the sub­ject of how using human lan­guage to encom­pass and describe a con­cept such as the Tao is log­i­cally sus­pect: “Reality can’t be enclosed and described by words. Symbols aren’t real in the way that a tree is real, and how­ever much we may delude our­selves that they are, we’ll even­tu­ally find that the word ‘water’ won’t quench our thirst.”

I came to accept that the things I write here have never been and never will be a com­plete reflec­tion of who I am, so I’ve decided to keep all the entries. The ones writ­ten by my old self serve as a reminder of who I was, and at the very least, they tell me where I’ve been and how far I’ve come.

Date  April 12, 2011
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Categories  Thoughts

Publishing Necessity

19

John asked me, “Why? Why do you write these things and post them, when it clearly shows that you’re not over things?”.

I told him I’d rather post them now than in a year from now, because they have to come out sooner or later. This has always been nec­es­sary, even if it’s a lit­tle embar­rass­ing at times, and I’ve never cared who reads, and who judges me. It’s my cathar­sis, my way of deal­ing with what can’t be changed. Sometimes, peo­ple find relief in know­ing they’re not alone in hav­ing painful emo­tions, in mak­ing mis­takes, or expe­ri­enc­ing unre­quited love. I don’t write for them, but if they can take some­thing away from my words, then it helps me know I’m not alone as well.

Date  November 4, 2009
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Categories  Random

I made too much about you now to lie

2

Sometimes, I write these entries in my head over sev­eral days, but when it comes to get­ting them on the screen, I can’t. Not because I don’t feel like it, but because the words come out with such difficulty.

So I sit in my room with the lights off, hop­ing for some­thing to give me courage, some­thing to move my mute fingers.

Instead, I pro­cras­ti­nate. I buy myself time by play­ing a game on my iPhone, or surf­ing the net. It’s like I’m stalling, I’m build­ing up for a moment that’s no more impor­tant than any other, like a ner­vous school­boy try­ing to ask his crush to the prom; pick­ing up the phone, dial­ing a num­ber, and hang­ing up again.

Maybe if I bury it after a bunch of incon­se­quen­tial thoughts — like how it’s hard for me to write about some­thing — then peo­ple will get bored and won’t bother read­ing the rest. I try to con­vince myself that every­thing will be for­got­ten much quicker than it took for me to write this. Nothing works, when all I’m try­ing to say is that every time I lis­ten to Letter Read by Rachael Yamagata, I imag­ine she’s lis­ten­ing to the same thing at the same time.

So some­times, you just have to say fuck it and write it any­way, even if you’re afraid and you can’t breathe, and put it out of your head that you’re left vul­ner­a­ble, that any­one could read it, that peo­ple know some­thing that you prob­a­bly shouldn’t share, that you’re still think­ing about her when every­one is telling you not to, because none of it mat­ters when it’s the truth, and telling the truth is what makes you you.

Date  September 26, 2009
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Categories  Random

Protected: The Continuation of Love and the Letter

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Date  September 18, 2009
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Categories  Random

Feather Fountain Pen

9

Feather fountain pen

Pat and Jen bought me this feather foun­tain pen set from their hon­ey­moon to Europe. It comes from an Italian sculp­ture store, Fabris Giuliana in Venice, Italy.

Feather fountain pen writing

The nib is super fine; I don’t think I’ve ever owned a foun­tain pen with such a small nib, which is per­fect, because I tend to have small hand­writ­ing. You can’t even tell which direc­tion the stroke is going. So far it writes a lit­tle rough and scratchy, but with enough use, the nib will break in to my writ­ing style.

I’ve always enjoyed writ­ing. Not just the con­cept of putting ideas into more a tan­gi­ble medium, but the act of writ­ing itself, whether it’s on a key­board by night, or flow­ing lines on a sheet of paper.

Date  June 4, 2009
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Categories  Photos Random

Revealing Words

8

A reader recently sent me an e-mail. This was the last paragraph:

Lastly and please don’t take this as being bold, I want to keep read­ing and one day read that you are noth­ing but happy and ful­filled. I would never post a com­ment because I am too shy and also pretty prone to being embar­rassed by peo­ple who are cooler than me (and I con­sider peo­ple who blog as peo­ple who are cooler then me), but many times when I read your entries I feel like I am watch­ing a pro­tag­o­nist in a favourite movie or re-reading Siddhartha. Does that make any sense to you? I’m cheer­ing you on and I’m in your corner.

It made me won­der: if she wants to read that I’m happy one day, does that mean that I’m not happy now? It forced the real­iza­tion in me that the answer is no. Obviously no. Life isn’t great. But do I only write about the bad stuff? I’ve always believed that you have to suf­fer to cre­ate. I’m one of those, so maybe this is the case. I imag­ine it’s the oppo­site with my Tai Chi or table ten­nis part­ners, who must think my life is per­fect, because of how happy I am when I’m doing those activities.

It also made me won­der how much of myself is revealed here. Someone once told me that she sees two dif­fer­ent sides of me: one who is seri­ous and intim­i­dat­ing from the things I write, and another who is easy-going and relaxed over the phone.

So what comes through in my words? Certainly not every­thing. But it’s the same as any­thing else, because it’s hard to get a total pic­ture of some­one, unless, per­haps, you spend an appro­pri­ately uncom­fort­able amount of time with them.

Date  April 29, 2009
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Categories  Random

Jump Right In

0

The about sec­tion of my site has always remained some­what spar­tan. Even though blog­ging gurus say you should have a blurb about your­self so your audi­ence can “iden­tify” with you, it’s always seemed point­less to me.

I’ve never been one to describe myself. I pre­fer to let my writ­ings be my descrip­tion, espe­cially since I’m evolv­ing all the time, and it’s reflected even more in the changes to my writ­ing style. In English class, you learn “say, don’t tell”. So instead of writ­ing, “Tim was scared”, write some­thing like “Tim’s fore­head tight­ened as a bead of sweat fell across his trem­bling face”.

About sec­tions are the telling, but entries are all about the say­ing.

I also tend to write with­out explain­ing things. Like the fact that Dolly is my cat (although I don’t think many peo­ple are named Dolores nowa­days), or that John is my best friend. Entries are a stream of thought, instead of stop­ping to make sure that new read­ers are caught up. That means any­one who fol­lows me here is jump­ing right into my life. Sure, it’s prob­a­bly hard to fol­low with­out all the con­text — like try­ing to watch 24 by start­ing in the mid­dle of a sea­son — but I’d rather assume that peo­ple already know what’s going on.

It doesn’t make me very acces­si­ble, but the things I say prob­a­bly aren’t that acces­si­ble to begin with.

Date  April 25, 2009
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Categories  Thoughts

To Write And To Remember

8

I admit that I not only save other people’s posts, but entire blogs.

Sometimes, there are entries I like to read over again. Other times, I just like to be reminded of how right I was. But more often than not, it’s the ephemeral nature of blogs in gen­eral, com­bined with the fickle nature of ado­les­cent writ­ers still try­ing to “define them­selves” on a free medium, that gives me the itch to save. So many writ­ers I used to fol­low have changed domain names, started pro­tect­ing their entries, or deleted their blogs.

Some things are garbage and should be for­got­ten or thrown away — but some things deserve to be kept too. Word-for-word, exactly the way it was spo­ken, because that’s the way it was expressed.

Fortunately, or unfor­tu­nately, depend­ing on your point-of-view, our words do last. Just because they aren’t there any­more, doesn’t mean they were never spoken.

There are con­se­quences to the things we write, whether we want them or not.

Date  January 27, 2009
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Categories  Random Thoughts

A Change In Writing

5

There’s so much to say, and not enough time to write. It’s obvi­ous that I haven’t been stick­ing to any kind of post­ing sched­ule lately. The ben­e­fit is that I don’t feel the pres­sure of hav­ing to write some­thing every day, the draw­back being the fact that things I want to get down are often lost. When I do get a chance to write, it’s like I’m per­pet­u­ally writ­ing about thoughts, feel­ings, and events that are a month old.

Perhaps another evo­lu­tion in the way I write.

I used to write my thoughts quite often. Things I had to fig­ure out or get off my chest. Now, it’s mostly things that hap­pen in my daily life, and some­thing ran­dom here and there. It’s like I’m mov­ing beyond my con­fused ado­les­cence into some sort of reflec­tive dotage.

The entries from the first year were writ­ten with so much more fre­quency — roughly three times a day. Then that changed to once a day, then every other day. A few times, I tried to write less fre­quently, with­out a set sched­ule, but that never really worked. The writ­ing itch was always there. At one point I took a month-long hia­tus.

Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m try­ing to say.

The thing I par­tic­u­larly miss are the entries writ­ten late at night. Spilling my soul out in words, with the music, the sky, and the empty streets guid­ing me. As tired as I would be (I swear, some­times it was the exhaus­tion that brought it out in me), I always went to bed after feel­ing satisfied.

Now, I’m not sure what this all is.

Date  October 17, 2008
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Categories  Thoughts

Restless Writer

7

I have 106 unpub­lished drafts in my database.

Things I don’t feel like say­ing. Parts of myself I’m not ready to reveal.

The writ­ten word has always been my medium of choice. Photography is only an exten­sion of that, when I need to express myself bet­ter than words can let me, and video goes one step further.

I used to be a ter­ri­ble writer. During a parent-teacher inter­view in grade 10, my his­tory teacher asked my par­ents when we came to Canada. They were quite embar­rassed to tell him that I was born here.

Aside from pick­ing up a use­ful word here and there, I’ve never made a con­scious effort to improve my writ­ing. The things I say are taken from my mem­o­ries, expe­ri­ences, and thoughts. How I say it is inspired by snip­pets of Nabokov (when I’m feel­ing lyri­cal or ver­bose), Cohen (when I’m feel­ing sad or roman­tic), Herbert (when I’m feel­ing dry), or Irving (when I’m feel­ing quirky or hon­est). The only way I’ve been able to gain any sem­blance of a writer is by mim­ic­k­ing to the best of my abil­ity the lyri­cal styles I enjoy the most.

Sometimes I won­der if I’ll ever stop. Writing is often a need, not a want. I do it when I’m feel­ing rest­less, when I have some­thing to say, when things are unset­tled, when I have things to fig­ure out. And the case most often is that life is filled with these moments. Perhaps if I ever find some sort of per­ma­nent seren­ity, I’ll be able to stop.

But I prob­a­bly wouldn’t want to.

Date  July 24, 2008
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Categories  Thoughts

Questioning Happiness

9

Last class, Mike asked how I was doing, and as a some­what phatic response, I told him I was doing well.

He told me, with a chuckle, that if he didn’t know me any bet­ter and went only by my writ­ings, he would imag­ine me to be like Joe Btfsplk, with a per­pet­ual rain cloud above my head.

So I went home and read through the last cou­ple pages of my entries, and found that they painted a some­what lugubri­ous picture.

I’ve always con­tended that hap­pi­ness is too hard to write. When I feel like express­ing myself, it’s often because of a prob­lem of some sort, inter­nal or exter­nal, that I need to fig­ure out. Writing has always been a way for me to get my thoughts in line, and off my chest. Not much of a peace­ful, detached, care-free Taoist, am I?

Perhaps I’ll always lead a Cohen-esque life, where love, sex, phi­los­o­phy, and depres­sion are the dom­i­nant themes.

The funny thing is that my life has improved tremen­dously after ther­apy. I used to be a very dark per­son. After gain­ing the sta­bil­ity of a house and a career, along with sep­a­ra­tion from my mother, not much else has changed. I’ve come to real­ize that it’s not so much the things in my life that’s improved in the last few years (aside from the strug­gle with anx­i­ety), as my atti­tude. To be hon­est, I have noth­ing to com­plain about.

That doesn’t change the fact that my entries have been some­what depressing.

Perhaps I’m still not truly happy yet.

Or per­haps I’m still not look­ing at things the right way.

Date  July 17, 2008
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Categories  Thoughts

Bittersweet Paradox

2

bit­ing keeps your words at bay
tend­ing to the sores that stay
hap­pi­ness is just a gash away
when i open a famil­iar scar
pain goes shoot­ing like a star
com­fort hasn’t failed to fol­low so far

and you might say it’s self-indulgent
and you might say it’s self-destructive
but, you see, it’s more pro­duc­tive
than if i were to be happy

—The Dresden Dolls, Bad Habit

I was jit­tery and ner­vous all day.

Several new devel­op­ments have left me with a lack of res­o­lu­tion. People to meet, presents to give, pic­tures to take, respon­si­bil­i­ties to ful­fill. And as much as I try not to think about it, it’s in my nature to do so.

I still haven’t got­ten passed this feel­ing. Still don’t know if I want to. Still don’t even know what it is. All I know is that it’s mak­ing me manic.

Until I fig­ure it out, I’ll wal­low in it.

I can only write this at night. When I’m falling asleep and off my guard, sit­ting on my chaise, with the cur­tains drawn and the win­dow open to the win­ter air.

Now I feel like writ­ing, but I don’t even know what to say. Everything’s too jum­bled for me to decide whether I’m happy or sad. Maybe it’s both, maybe it’s one because of the other. Life, at the moment, is so bittersweet.

Wonderfully bit­ter­sweet, that’s what it is.

Date  December 12, 2007
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Categories  Daily Life
Viewing entries tagged with "writing"   //
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