I have been completely stumped writing this week’s blog. I started a few pieces but not finished one. They start off strong with heartfelt anecdotes, hyperbolic metaphors and sarcastic protestations before they drift and fizzle out. My blogs have found a structure of their own. They grew into a framework the way a toddler grows into an oversized jumper. Soon they will outgrow that jumper until it confines like a straitjacket. I wonder if being stumped this week is already this process in action; I just can’t see it yet. Change happens a grain of sand at a time. It seems that one day you were one way, writing one way, telling stories one way, and the next you are another. It’s only when we look back over our shoulders that we see the vast sand dunes that these minute shifts have carved.
My blogs began as messy, unedited pages of raw thought. If you go back to the beginning (please don’t) you’ll find grammar and spelling errors everywhere. In time and practice they morphed into what they are now. Now they start with a thought, an anxiety or worry. They blend a relevant (or irrelevant) anecdote into the middle. They end with a question or a conclusion. Usually this is a commitment to be better; better at seeing my friends, better at giving compliments, better at going with the flow. The train moves through the scenery and lands at the station precisely on time. My problem with this week is that I couldn’t quite make them do that. Sometimes you simply can’t tie up all the loose ends. Not being able to conclude a thought or an idea is a likely indicator of its complexity. Besides, anytime I have drawn conclusions from my life the circumstances change or I change, and so I brandish the sledgehammer and bring it swooping down into what I only thought was concrete.
In 2016, The Met Breuer held an exhibition titled: Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible. The exhibition showcased 190 unfinished works of art and;
“Includes works left incomplete by their makers, a result that often provides insight into the artists’ creative process, as well as works that engage a non finito—intentionally unfinished—aesthetic that embraces the unresolved and open-ended.” 1
The exhibition features Alice Neel’s Black Draftee (James Hunter), a portrait of a young man drafted for the Vietnam War and due to leave within a week. When the subject didn’t return for the second sitting, Neel signed the back and with the flourish of her signature proclaimed it finished. This unfinished piece of work has since been hung on the wall of many prestigious galleries. Unfinished is therefore not synonymous with unmeaningful or unthoughtful. Instead it can mean open, up in the air or undetermined.
All of this is to say that here are two blogs I started and never got to the end of. They have the sketch lines showing and no definitive final picture to take away. Despite being unfinished and inconclusive, they have something to offer or offered me something in writing them. My blogs are imperfect, they draw conclusions that are right and wrong and not definitive at all. They hide terrible first drafts under their surfaces. So, with these unfinished thoughts, I kick up a pile of dust and let the particles stay unsettled in the air forever.
- My Gigantean Ego is the Sun
My gigantean ego is the sun around which whole civilisations rotate. It is the anchor of a 2,000 ton cruise ship, a peeled orange to a fruit fly, it is the magnetic force that summons the needle north. Sometimes I come down from my bullish orbit and cower under my enlarged sense of self.
It is as though it’s so ballooned that I am no longer tethered to the ground. I think of myself, my dreams, my fears, my hunger, my boredom as often as I breathe. It’s not good for the soul. In all of this interiorising, I miss out on the things that are good for the soul; I stare in the mirror while I should be in the garden doing cartwheels.
I believe this is also known as main character syndrome. Google tells me the symptoms are; an exaggerated sense of self, difficulty accepting criticism, attention seeking, behaving as if you have an audience and disregarding the feelings of others. I’d like to think that this doesn’t completely describe me, but in some ways it does. It’s plausible that I dip in and out of this ailment.
I’m not entirely sure what causes it. I am inclined to think it’s due to living in a big city where everyone is incredibly individualistic and exists as if they are their own universe. The times in my life when I have felt the least self-centred is when I have been somewhere untouched. I would like very much to live somewhere where no one owns anything. Where you look out the window and see a meadow or a forest that is completely free. I want to see swans without tags suffocating their ankles and trees that haven’t been planted but just grown, by chance, from a fallen acorn. I want to see snowy mountains go on for so many miles it’s like nothing else exists. I want to be realigned with the reality that I don’t matter very much.
- No Title
It is strange how people influence you. Strange the way they tug on your coat, pull you to the side, drag you under their tide. It happens so simply, so quietly you don’t even notice. I forget how malleable I am. Not that people try to bend me but that I fold so readily, sway so easily, warp at the tilt of a head. I feel as though I have no set way of being. When the people I surround myself with are calm, I too grow calm. When they’re chaotic, I thrive in the chaos. If you’re doing it, I’ll do it too. Whether ‘it’ be scrapbooking or jumping off a bridge.
I find myself at the ripe age of twenty-five being far calmer than I ever imagined. I actively say no to plans, I make excuses that don’t exist, I enjoy missing out. I prefer to sit here and write my blog than to go to the pub on a Friday night. There was a time when I would have looked at this picture and thought it terribly sad. I don’t know how it happened. One minute I was partying until 4am and the next I read my book and went to bed at 9pm. Time slips away and before I know it I’ll be ninety and no longer able to have a pint at the pub, dance at the club, or bring a soup spoon to my mouth. I’ll sit in an armchair writing all day with the text on my computer at size 36 and force feeding it to the few friends I have left alive. “Here’s the draft,” I’ll rasp as I pass over a wad of trembling pages. By that age my skin will be thinner than the paper printed with my stories. Like a vine, I’ve grown this way from being surrounded by calm, solid people; people who are good for me.
I do have some hedonistic friends. They terrify me. They make me jealous. They’ll do anything at a drop of a hat. They smile with audacity twinkling in their eyes and tell me ‘It’s fine’, and ‘Come on!’ and ‘What happened to you?’ That question delivers a rare sting. I don’t know how to answer. I do wish to be more free. It is a wish I express in my life and my blogs so often. I am sorry you have to hear it again.
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