honesty and me cont'd (a reply)

the more figurative response is that you might have to think about the more esoeric purpose of why you right? Do you just need to let the written word flow and whoever recovers the text recovers the text?

It seems like you like honesty working as a two-way street. Rather than, as gil scott heron says, "turn your sick soul inside out so the world can watch you die", you want a space where you can mine the intra-personal and not interrupt your various communal connections.

I guess that leads into another question: why do you write? and, attached to that, who do you write for?

part of writing is realizing that you can't reach/write to everyone. It's gonna be process that will inevitably reach some and alienate others.

- free like driftwood

word.

i mean, isn't that what life is (among a few other things)? a process and a project that will reach some and alienate others?

(writing a life if you will)

lately i've been thinking about the role that writing plays in my life, and that i want it to play in my life. thinking about it so gently that i only noticed it fairly recently, now that the din of academia has quieted somewhat.

which is one reason why this blog came about. (that and a vain assumption that someone somewhere cares what i think cough cough)

yesterday i was talking to a friend about writing to recover ("from some bearable blow" as the poet says), and writing in the midst of recovering (and how the writing inevitably echoes the blow).

at this moment i am not interested in dying (although i have been in the past), and i am not interested in having folk watch me die.

i am interested in evolution and that over-used yet sincere word, growth. i am deeply interested in what comes next.

now, concerning the intra-personal and my communal connections, and the simultaneous preservation of both.

FLD, yes, you nailed it. that is exactly what i want. and i think my anxiety arrives because i know that may not always happen. in fact i know it wont.

and im talking about my writings period, not just as far as this blog is concerned.

thinking about family-gathering times
thanksgiving and such
and thinking about my status as the golden child of my immediately extended family
cousins and such
and my status as only child
and the only twenty-something, everyone else is either much older or much younger
and how all these things isolate me
how i allow them to isolate me

thinking about how my parents decided to come up today instead of tomorrow
and my panic over my cluttered house
and unwashed clothes and dishes

thinking about how someone who i love says something
like why would you
or does something
like take a phone call
that cuts to my core

thinking about James Wright writing
"Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom."

thinking about all of these things.

and my body being my tongue
my blood-filled mouth
my body being only the parts
skin tooth and smile
that i've allowed others to see

what i am interested in is breaking. (in fact it's been what i've been doing for some time now)

breaking from this skin
breaking into blossom.

i believe that my writing is integral to this process of breaking.
especially at this juncture.

when im beginning to
understand
heal
leave
reach
return

would it really be that bad if people saw who i really was? who i am?

(the middle-school angst of that last statement made me throw up in my mouth a little bit.)

i guess at this point, and in this space, i'm writing primarily for myself.

not that im not aware that there's an audience. in certain writings i will actively seek them (my fiction work for example).

but im opening the two-way up to the possibility of disruption.

of someone that i know and care about not liking something that i've written
being angry
being scared
being anything else but approving and supporting.

because this is about growth
this is about exploration
this is about what's necessary
this is about recovery

and in my recovery people may recover what they may.