Werk

The more I read the writing of my contemporaries the more I think I suck. The more I learn the harder I find it to write - too much to live up to; too much consideration and self judgement.

Thinking about roles at the moment. I think we fall into them based on what is expected of us. Not just what is expected of us by others, but also by what we have learned is the appropriate human response. Someone breaks up with you - you should be sad. Someone steals your bike - you should be mad. You get a raise - you should be happy. I don't think these are inherent in our nature. Like our values they were learned, and we have become their unwitting puppets.

The result of this is a realisation that you can be however you want, at any time. Try it, it's quite liberating.

Hand in hand goes the notion of not trying to manipulate the environment you for gain. Loss/gain is similarly learned anyway, and doesn't really exist in my idealist opinion (in reality, well...). It starts with a want. By wanting X you must do Y to attain it. From that point on you are limited to Y. For me it has been "I want everyone to love me, so I must act indifferent to their love."

Back to writing. Here are some words from last night for my stylistics assignment on Invisible Cities. The idea is to describe a city that's a metaphor for something else. I'd been painstakingly analysing each word and it was getting me nowhere, so I decided to have a good ol' fashioned word vomit. Bleughh.

The buildings were like Gothic cathedrals, spiralling up into the grey dark clouds. Beggars hunched at their feet, dwarfed in both stature and spirit, wandering empty houses and empty streets; streets full of empty humans scuttling along cobbles and looking for something to eat. An old tavern full of candle wax faces, skin hanging from bone in weak acquiescence to gravity. Big wooden struts and big wooden beams, strong and long and built to take the pounding rain. Fear in every corner. Shadows behind every man. A lone white owl on the rooftop watching all. Watching black mould scale the walls; watching piss and spit and faeces slur their way through the gutters; watching through the window as little Tom watches his father get the belt and his mother curl into a ball. Watching life, as some would call it. The life that hides behind smiles and laughter. An eagle swoops down from the sky like a harpy from the storm and snatches the owl in its talons. The owl hoots and the eagle is gone. A white feather floats towards the ground, rocking like a cradle, rocking like the slow sway of a hammock against the universe. It lands on dirty cobbles, fragile and perfect and untouched, until a passing boot presses it into the dirt, with the million other things that once were pure and good.

I don't know what the metaphor is. Lost innocence maybe. Sometimes I feel like I'm satirising myself. It's not so easy to stop wanting.