Magdalena O!

The morning table ritual.

The sun tilts onto the wood table. Its sharp rays reaching north. A shadow of birds swoops over Sophticleas, the alpha-cat, letting his slit eyes dilate. The curled up leaves that have forgotten to be nourished wince away from the sun. The Italian basil plant soaring for the ceiling pushes its way toward the blinding heat, extending its large bright green leaves proudly. The little curly ones near the bottom sprouting from the already hardened brown stalk wave around excited to get a hold of more sun than the others. They’ve yet to feel the drought of my negligent hands. The nearby Thai basil plant, frustrated, has shifted its stalks considerably to be caught in the sun’s angle. Until the afternoon sun changed positions, the edges of the drawn-back curtain cover it. Sophticleas adjusts from side to side, positioning himself facing away from the sun but directly parallel to the sharp morning angle, with his back’s pattern turning a golden color and his dandruff shining. The dust in the air creates a hazy immersive screen around us. Every time Sophticleas moves, hair starts flying around. How come it’s more visible in the sun? How come everything is clearer in the/because of the sun?

The table’s age stares at me, worn out from moving around the city, worn out from the banal every day. The disproportionate coffee stain smirks in the sun percolating into the cheap wood, while the white coffee mug’s long shadow seeps off the table edge. Softlicious inches his way into the sun’s angles too, trying to push the other cat away from the table to try to claim his space. They’re both parallel now, away from the sun facing me with their slits for eyes. Everything seems positioned not in relation to each other, but in relation to the will of the north-facing sun. Everything seems to be shifting around to gain energy. Everything is gaining strength. We’re all in this together.

A friend writes on their blog how they write with a censor, so instead of writing freely, they write about the everyday, and their perspective on those experiences, asking questions like, “Can I lay myself bare and assume that people won’t draw conclusions?”

Over the past few days I’ve been thinking about this space here, the fairly secluded hill I’ve managed to climb and build a moat around, but I am not sure I want this to be so hidden. At least in such a way, that to find it, is nearly impossible. Would allowing this in the public change my voice? Allow me to write more, allow me to write differently? Although my stats show more hits than people I’ve given this to, I always manage to leak it here & there, but mostly to those close to me, because I want to be read by them.

The question asked though, is so obvious in achieving its answer. But, can we lay ourselves bare? Can we ever explain our motives enough for others not to draw conclusions? Everyone assumes it’s always about them.

For me, it is always, Can I write outside of myself? Can I write something other than my own feelings? Am I difficult to digest because of my focussed perspective? I think my most honest writing, my best writing comes in the form of letters. I have always been obssesed with conversations through words. Often, when I write about an experience, it is written to the person(s) involved. I don’t really know why I do this, not at first thought.

(If you read this, even from time to time, because I know some of you do, say hello, say anything!)

There is a novel brewing inside me. My muse is still here, I just have to take from the muse differently, even if it pains me now. Even if it’ll break me down by going inside it. If I don’t, then I lose doubly. But I knew it would break my heart from the start. I’m okay with that. I have to be. I(t) fulfilled its destiny. This is all so vague. I wish I could just split myself open, but if I did the whole world would explode. And that’s not ego, that’s self-realization.

Muriel Rukeyser knew it too.

I want the whole world to explode, but I’m part of that whole world, and I can’t die.

I’m running a festival, all by myself and I’m anxious that the participants aren’t rolling in like the previous years. I’m anxious that the early-called election is taking full view.

I’m desperate for sharp conversation, but when it’s right there I in all my social awkwardness take over and mumble about something or other. Food politics! Down with Harper! Cocaine! Wobble basslines! The city’s arts scene! Everyone is dancing the same!

I wait days and then you have to take it away prematurely. But isn’t any time before forever premature?

I don’t write anymore. There’s no fiction in my words, there’s just running around selling my ideas, helping on projects, reaching out to everyone and anyone for grad school, for community politics, for my documentary. Everything is external of me. I enjoy the way it masks my depth by pronouncing my knowledge of current events. That seems like a contradiction but really it makes sense to me. By involving myself with everything around me and facilitating ideas that involve many, I don’t have to think about the hurricane that is subsiding at the slowest rate possible inside me. By being involved I can seperate myself from my grief, from the memories, from the reminders. But they are there, they were there when I ate the Dr. Oateker pizza yesterday, or when I think about getting my driver’s licence. Smell is supposed to be the most intense sense in memory recollection, but intensity of experience scraps smell and instead lingers on every sense.

The writing class I wanted to take was full by the time I was ready to register. I didn’t have to loaf, but instead I was too intimidated to let myself inside my own writing. It’s so easy to feel anxiety and cry about not being able to do what you want to, it’s way fucking easier than giving in and doing it. So instead of using the grief to write and write, I’m just letting it go away, even if it doesn’t seem to want to.

-

She pulled at the seaweed covered branch stuck between the rocks, trying to lift it up just enough to throw it over the stone’s edge.
“Come here!” She yelled after him, as he disappeared into the dark.
“Leave it alone.”
She managed to slide the long thick branch over the stones, just near enough to touch him with it at the other end, “You’re it.”
“You’re it,” he jumped over it and pummelled her onto the stones, catching the back of her head with his hands.
“You’re it.”
“You’re it,” he grinned looking at her so close, he could no longer focus.
“Always catch me. Ok?”
“Yes… Yes.”

From Livejournal, January 2003

Do you ever stop & think maybe what you are reading never happened or maybe there’s so much more happening than is being told & recorded despite the honesty it portrays. Last year I had another journal & wrote in it parts of (my) life & autobiography is never complete honesty, just look at Simone de Beauvoir’s autobiography, which is so less telling then a book she wrote that contained the truth about her life, but people don’t understand that & it caused much heartbreak & turmoil in my life. Maybe because the context of a journal is ment to be autobiographical? I hardly ever write what happened to me on a day but rather fragments of feelings that I or those around me have witnessed or experienced. Or perhaps how I have interpreted their reaction to events, because analysing those around me intrigues me. I remember being younger & being like Harriet the Spy with my little notebook on the bus edging in on people’s conversations because it allowed me to peak into a different world.

Does the audience being aware of the blurring of fiction & non-fiction somehow discredit the art? the story being told? I read a certain person’s journal who can articulate feelings & experiences like no one else, but I am pretty sure not everything he writes about has happened, and I am the least bit bothered by it. Although I am not saying that my journal has become a place for make believe stories, but the emotions presented sometimes act as metaphors of experience. Or maybe they are just stories that I imagine happening or have happened but not in that sequence.

Does “it’s not you it’s me” ever mean anything, is it really possible? Why has it been twisted as this awful thing to say to someone on any level. At the end of one letter, he wrote to me, I love you, don’t ever change (unless you want to) but what if I want to & I can’t. What If I have?

How do I repossess the moments of my life to rewrite them into fiction? And why does my fucking keyboard keep switching to Canadian French-CSA keyboard palette turning all my punctuation into accented letters?!

And how does Miranda July do it? Probably because she just does, she does it, instead of just zealously thinking about it.

http://wordsmith.org/words/sheeps_eyes.html

Shy amorous glances.