Full brain

Who knew, who knows, who’s there, who’s who, who are you to tell me how to live my life

Why me, why us, why now, why not, why am i not able to let go

What’s this, what’s that, what’s what, what are we getting ourselves into

How am I, how are you, how do you do, how do we keep a straight face in a situation like this

When’s it start, when’s it end, when do we ever really feel like grown ups?

 

 

 

Word play

What I love about reading is what I love about writing too. The ability to give shape and substance to something as slippery as a feeling – to record those passing thoughts that might normally get lost in the swamp of everyday living. The disparate bunch of writers I love have one thing in common – amidst tales of other lives in other places there hide moments of stinging recognition. Those things you half-think, or don’t fully realise are passing through your head, right there on the page. Someone else’s honesty enabling you to own your own feelings. That’s the power of good writing – name it and it’s yours. Instead of being ruled by an intangible tangle of emotions, you’re the one calling the shots. A feeling flying round your head can only be grasped at. A word on a page can be picked up, it’s weight tested in your hand before you decide to embrace or reject it. 

A thought

Living your life in 30-minute segments isn’t living. 

Pretentious musings, part 2

She could easily get lost inside her head. Maybe she already was. There were too many wrong turns, too many self-indulgent holes to fall into. Who needs religion when you have your own messed up mind to study, to pick through for meaning.

Pretentious musings, part 1

I’m not a natural writer. It doesn’t flow from my fingertips. It doesn’t spill onto the page. Instead it drips. If I’m lucky. Not the big fat drops of life-giving rain, but the uneven late-night drip of a leaky tap. Out of rhythm, out of time, disjointed and incoherent. So here’s something I wrote a year or so ago. As usual, I thought it was the beginning of a story but it turned out to be the end of something else… 

Words can’t be taken back – they hang in the air and slice at you, over and over. The sharpest ones never go away – they strike out when you’re least expecting it, triumphantly licking at old wounds. “I didn’t mean it.” It doesn’t matter, it was said – it hurt and it will hurt again. Her memory could sometimes be hazy, but she never forgot words. She couldn’t blame him though; she manhandled language just as dangerously. She radiated uncertainty – tripping over the right words, she stuttered the wrong ones instead. The anxiety pricked at his mood, turning him away from her. They went round in circles. She panicked, he repelled. Long silences that would see him relax only left her more uptight. She wondered what she was clinging on to. She wanted resolve to every black mark, to every dark mood, to every cross exchange. She couldn’t just leave things. He needed to be left. Where did that leave them?

Late to the party

Oh no, not another bleeding bleating blogger. ‘Fraid so. Not that I have much to say. Actually, scratch that. Got tons of words blocking up my brain but not many of them are helpful enough to arrange themselves into meaningful sentences. So I guess I’m going to use this blog to catch the overflow until I find a better use for them. Kind of like those glass jars you use to keep loose change in.