Somebody That I Used To Know

"You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness - like resignation to the end, always the end..."
"Somebody That I Used To Know by Gotye

I want to journal in earnest now. My spinning thoughts drive me out of bed. My grasping hands keep finding the lifelines set out long ago by all the women who came before me. The poetess locked in her tower. The novelist who feels damned by her own skin. Always searching, never finding. We're all locked into this endless dance with ourselves. Our lives disintegrate around us and all we can do is sit in the middle of the mess with a pen and paper, writing and writing and writing. Revolving around the moment of truth in which all of it ceases to matter.

I would say that my body is here, and here I must be, but it isn't true. I am in pursuit of time-events-spaces that will bring me back to this place. But I am sitting in the far corner of my own forever. Watching my life spin out. Scrawling across my chalkboards, and then simply erasing them again. Damn these inchoate thoughts.

But here I am. Tied to these stars. Seeking out my perfect moments with the passion of an addict.

I haven't thought of that in so long. Perfect moments. Perfect clarity. Perfect emotion. Perfect stillness. These things that used to mean everything to me, these things which haven't existed for me in ages. The last perfect moment I found came in the strength of shaking climax. The long, slow breath of shimmering existence. Something that teeters on the edge of not quite sanity. Putting my hand flat against a flannel pillowcase and watching my fingers come back to life.

I'm trying to crawl back. I'm trying to stand up. Smothered by thoughts of merciless fate.

What else can I do but apologize for all this repetition? These things happen. Time is cyclical and we're all fighting a losing battle.

He's in the best-selling show.

Okay.

Everyone knows I love David Bowie. And I do. Love him. I mean, he's still number one on my "celebs I'd do" list despite the age difference. It's more than just lust though. I think the man is a genius - even when he's denied it. He KNOWS music. He knows pop before it's pop. He has always had some weird prescient knowledge of what would describe a decade best during that decade.

So I naturally own nearly all of the music he's ever put out under his name. I have several books written about him. Photos of him and his wife and various cohorts over the ages take up a healthy portion of my harddrive.

(I feel the need to add that, no, I am not some addled fan who thinks The Bowie is the be-all end-all of my life. I just worship him for what he is. A brilliant pop-rock musician that figured in a great number of my formative years for figuring out my life.)

This evening, I decided to finally upload all of those wonderful albums to my laptop. (I know, how have I never done this?) In doing so, I was reminded of another great love of my life that I have not paid nearly enough attention to lately - letter-writing.

Believe me, these things are actually related.

When I was a teenager, we moved from Virginia to New York and I left behind a friend who at the time was a very good friend but who managed to become my very best friend. For whatever reason, we started writing letters to each other. Becoming closer and closer as those pieces of paper crawled up and down the east coast to each other. When I discovered David Bowie at fifteen, she was the first person I shared him with. It became a mutual infatuation and only served to strengthen our bond.

So the other thing I've been doing this evening if going through all those letters we used to send each other. And wishing with all my heart that we had never stopped writing them. (Our words petered out - not entirely but mostly - sometime while we were both in college.) And, honestly, is there anything more glorious than two teenagers pouring out their hearts to each other?

The written word has always been my choice way to communicate. (See my first relationship which was based almost entirely on IM conversations.) And letter writing is so personal. The ink and paper and waiting for the postal worker to come... It is glorious. And gloriously ignored these days. And perhaps destined to die entirely seeing as how underfunded the USPS is about to be! All I can say is, there is nothing quite like getting a letter in the mail. Try it and see. You'll make someone's day, if not week or month.

I have other things to report on, but this seems sufficient for now. I leave you with my favorite Bowie song.

From the National Day of Writing (Oct 20th)

Why write?

I don't know. Why read? It's amusing. It distracts. It transports. It reveals. Too many reasons and hardly any at all. There's very little in the way of logic about it. There's an embrace of abstract art, a sort of mysticism one wouldn't accept elsewhere in life.

Why write? Because it's endlessly surprising. I always shock myself with the things that pour out of my fingertips. Thoughts I didn't know I had. People I didn't realize I've met and studied. Situations that I would never have chosen to dissect or live through and yet here I am doing both.

It doesn't seem to matter much where ideas come from - be it some collective consciousness or higher power sparking inspiration. Even if it's only a product of re-hashing age old stories, nothing original, mere imitation of the basest sort... Writing always seems magical. Because with just a few words one can create worlds and people and ideas that never existed before. Because you can use it to communicate in a way speech will never let you (ink carries the promise of immortality). Because it seems to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once.

I mean, honestly. If you have to ask, it's obvious you don't do it. Or if you do, you don't get it. Even bad writers know that they HAVE to write. They get better. (If they don't, they probably end up making millions of dollars and getting movie franchises anyway because, hey, even poorly written stories tend to be universal in some way.)

I'm not concerned with literary quality - I'm concerned about the DRIVE to create. Why do we like to pen ourselves up with crazy thoughts and weird people we might not even like? Is this only a first world drive, to write? Does storytelling plague people without language? It transcends the ages of modern humanity, links us with our ancestors, passes on messages of hope against darkness, keeps people in line with other people...

Writing is a link to the past. It's a call to the future. It's a thought for the present.

Life must be so boring for those who don't write, who don't try to create, reach in and pull themselves out onto paper and screen.

In better news...

I decided to finally clean out my office. When I found this apartment on Craiglist, it was listed as a one bedroom. I was pleased and surprised to find out that there was a second almost-bedroom (only almost because the doors have glass panes in them from top to bottom. Back when I had just moved in, this is what that room looked like.

And then the boy moved in with me - and because we didn't have the wherewithal at the time to put his stuff in logical places, we piled it all in this room and shut the doors. And we left it that way all summer.

Me? I get the opposite of spring cleaning. I get autumn cleaning fever hardcore right around this time of year. I think it might be because I've spent the past six or seven years moving every August/September. So I opened the doors to the office yesterday and started moving stuff around.

Now I've got a beautiful space that feels like it could be a real writing room! Not to mention half a library. And sort of a sunroom. I'm hoping I'll have everything put away sufficiently in the next two days to put up some new glorious pictures to make everyone jealous.

Ohhh myyyy goddddd

There is TOO MUCH going on in my head these days. I keep trying to write it all day and I keep failing miserably. Someone kick me.

"Write, bitch, write!"