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"I used to write and write and write"—a phrase that flows often in the journals I've filled over the past three years, a criticism and a hey, just sayin, just cut right here, and it's hurt. The writer's cellblock, the what to do now. When you define yourself by something that ceases I write, I am a writer, right? you make a mess of existence, a mockery of identity, you lose patience with yourself and you're the only one listening to the silence and the absence of what meant so much.
Look what you did. Imagine all the things you haven't done.
As I write this, it's 10:01 on December 31, 2006. In Minneapolis, central time, it's midnight-oh-one, the new year fresh begun. On the coast I have another two hours. The world over the hip and the no ones are drunk, the cool slunk with friends and the faking it tossed back, a holiday of excess, of demanding no more loneliness, of resolve to improve and the hope that the new will best the old, and it better—there's so much to do, to become, to have, to lose, and every year starting again is a reminder and a do over, you get lots of chances but that doesn't excuse screwing up. So you better do better, be better at life.
The city teems with places I could put my mind inside and slosh up my body, get some dance on and growl out, with a conventional, acceptable, sociable night. But this is the only thing I want to do. Write and write and write how I used to write and write, and what it means to be okay with it, this pause that's really a continuance, this lull that is my life.
It frightens that it no longer frightens me. I'm speechless I'm not angry that I'm no longer angry. Deserving and deliverance used to weigh on me: I was owed these things, I owed them to myself, and I still want, I still want to want, but I'm so much… lighter. No longer heavy headed, hearted memory treaded, and a bomb-blast brighter. Doubt is still working out details. I fight that I am okay. A symptom of insanity? it's better than anxiety, the perpetual, pervasive sad stuck stupidity. And so, lunatic, I let myself laugh, I allow an acceptance that is not giving up, but getting over. When it takes years to get bad, it takes years to get back, to get better, to move forward.
So what happened? is still happening. Not every deep breath is a sigh. Not every question mark wants an answer. Over the past several months, I have felt both less and more myself in ways I never imagined. Identity has become something else—not who I am or was or may some day be, nor an act of describing, dos and don'ts and "anything once" if I don't mean it, what's that mean, the ratio of interest to honesty, interestingness to arrestingly shrugging yeah sure, why not and no, that's not me. What does that mean. When decisions of indulgence or abstinence or codified balance lay the bricks to build and to cage. I have become curious and willing to shove while content to simply be, content to feel content with or without contradiction, the tempting pull of compulsion and obsession, and my heart breaks that my heart no longer breaks, like a part of me misses when the whole of me was dying.
I left what I knew for the new, what I know for the no, I don't want this anymore. I have put to rest the killready knifegrip of "Now what?" for now. I didn't need to physically move, in fact, I was well on my way my last year in Minneapolis, with my inane, secret bike dance down Nicollet Ave, slaving hours on screenprints and spending time with time loss, always a gain. But I chose to leave, to see what another city knows, to find what thoughts and emo-stim a different, unknown place would bring, what kind of solitude and dreams would soothe me to sleep and shake me awake.
Vancouver is a beautiful city, even when it rains, and it pours. Miles as minutes I have years to go.
– January 2007
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