I skipped day 7. I don’t feel bad about that because really, the point is to write every day. And I felt like this was more where I was at today. I did two 15 minute stream of consciousness ramblings. The first one horrified me so much that I wanted to do it again. I’ve included both, with a caveat because it seemed only right. And it helps a bit to know that as crazy and dark as the first one felt, I’m not that person all the time. No one is, I don’t think, but it’s hard to remember that sometimes. Perhaps this will help me in the future, when I’m spiralling into the dark crazy, to take a breath, have a cup of tea, get barefoot and take a moment to appreciate, rather than just react.

To ensure that this is a controlled experiment, I must allow for certain details to be known, including the fact that I am typing this after I wrote what is below.
I have just finished work on my day off. I’m reeling from the news that a beautiful community has lost some of it’s brightest stars and there is no way I’ve been drinking enough water. Also, since I wasn’t planning to go to work, I forgot to eat and ended up eating a piece of pizza, which has wheat, cheese and meat, all of which I’ve been avoiding for a while now. Plus, I forgot to take off my bra when I got home from work and I’m wearing terribly uncomfortable underpants. And socks. There’s your caveat.

Take 1.

I’m surrounded by decay, nothing ever dies here. There is no winter, there is no cold, nothing can die. I don’t ever have a chance to fully let go of anything, it just lies under a layer of rot and if I’m lucky gets mixed in and benefits the whole but I think it more just layers upon layers of brown and slimy and mush and dead leaves and dirty ground and how does that help. How does that effect positive change if there’s never a chance for anything to die and be reborn? And then there’s all that death and sadness on a lonely icy highway east of here. A whole contingency of genius and promise and people who are actually fucking doing something rather than hiding away from the world and hoping the world somehow discovers how special they are so they don’t actually have to leave the house. They’re out there and they’re doing it and they’re pushing creativity and love and broadening themselves and everyone who comes into contact with them and now they’re gone. They’re dead and I’m still shut away in this tiny house at the end of the road waiting for inspiration to drive down my little bat cave driveway and knock on the door and say, ‘this is how you use that talent you’ve got. This is how you do it. Here are some diagrams. Because you’ve got it and right now the only thing you’re doing with it is masturbating like some kind of furious porn addict. Every single day you’re wanking all over the page, except you aren’t even using a page, you’re using a keyboard, a screen. Because you’ve become addicted to the reaction. How many hits? How many looked? How many liked? VALIDATION!!! It might be better if you were masturbating because at this point you’re only a porn star. You need them to watch. You’re like gloria fucking swanson hiding away on sunset boulevard except you lack the charisma to convince mr demille to come anywhere near you. There is nothing unique about what you’ve got to say. What the fuck are you doing with yourself? There are people out there who are amazing and doing things and now they’re dead and what are you doing? Ever? You dropped out of school, you quit doing lighting, you quit being a mechanic, you failed the audition, you keep quitting and for what? For some dream you have that you’re an artist?’
And inspiration would get back into it’s shiny car and drive away disgusted. And I would slam the door and sulk because goddamn it that hurt. What the fuck does inspiration know anyway? And I’m only 7 minutes into this and I’ve still got 8 minutes to go and I’m so scared I’m so scared I’m so scared that inspiration was right. And so I have to stop sulking and get off my ass and do what? Just keep going? Going where? Keep writing and hope that I’m skimming off all the shite. If I just keep writing, I’ll skim off the excess, the words that have no use. Which is sad, I want all the words to have a use. I want the words to mean something and I’m not even sure who I want them to mean something to. Why have I reached this point where I can only do this if someone is watching, oh my god I am like a porn star except I don’t know that there is anything titillating about this. To be fair, I’m not sure there is much that is titillating about porn. From what I’ve seen it’s so pedestrian. I imagine them having sex and then saying cut and switching sides and goddamn I don’t ever want anyone looking that closely at my butt. I can’t imagine how that feels to be no more, no less than a body part. An ass, some boobs, a cock. How many times a day I could say, oh god that’s right..how long before I would just start needing to be clever and spicing up the dialog. “oh lord you are so huge, we’re all really impressed down here, i can tell you” and then make noises like an elephant seal and try not to think about my long lost dream to be a figure skater and not have an asshole the size of a canyon? Would I get fired? How depressing is that to consider that I wouldn’t even make a good porn star. I can’t even get fucked on camera for a living without messing it up. This is not where I expected this stream of consciousness exercise to go. Not at all. It makes sense though because I’ve just found out a scholar I admire is a secret romance novelist and shades of grey is super popular even though the dialogue is terrible and it just makes me sad and that lady saying that it’s allowing women to have spicy sex lives without feeling guilty just makes me angry because that’s on par with sex and the city suggesting that rampant consumerism and the need to have an identity that revolves around stuff and landing a guy and twilight saying landing a guy, even if he’s a vampire is a step forward. What is this fucking drive to have happy ending synonymous with landing a guy? Fuck you fairy tales, you lying pieces of shit. I’m tired of stories that aren’t true. I’m tired of glossy, of airbrushed, of perfect, of unions and breeders and clothes off the rack that fit well. They don’t! Besides, the character in the grey books is a virgin, what the fuck does she know about handing over control to someone? At least in the story of O, she was an emancipated woman who made a conscious decision to submit to her lover and all that went with that. Plus it was written by a woman, proving to me that women can write however they want! It’s not all fucking hearts and flowers and fuzzy handcuffs. Perhaps I’m just jealous because I never got to lose my virginity to an aloof and slightly douchey millionaire. Also, that guy who said the story of o was horrifying? Shut up. I suppose you thought belle du jour was sickening and jeanne dielman, 46 rue st whatever that movie was called was boring. You want sex in a lingerie box all vanilla scented women who have orgasms in less that 40 seconds by someone gently blowing on her clitoris?? Goddamn! This is just disintegrating into ranty drivel. And I still have 4 minutes are you kidding? I don’t have anything left. My mind is worn out. How does this help? How does my not doing anything help? I want so much to help and yet I never do anything. I come home and I might play piano or I might write or I might read. Or I might spend 18 goddamn hours on the internet looking at pictures of cats. When did cats get interesting? I can’t say that it’s because I’m at work because what do I do with my days off? Yeah. Why can’t I just be okay with living my life and enjoying my job and enjoying my days off? Why do I have to be traveling the world playing oompah songs for the benefit of the people? Aren’t there enough artists? What I think I’m the next magpie? or Sheri? Or James? Or Hannah? I don’t even play the fiddle! Or guitar that well! Do I have to speak to have a voice? Do I want a voice? What if the world did look over here? What do I have to show them? What comes natural? What is natural? Why do I have such a hard time being okay with art being something I have to work at rather than just something I’m good at? I’m torn between wanting to do all the things because I’m terrified I have a brain tumor because nosebleeds and dizzy all the time and pain behind my eyes and what if I just die alone in this cabin so removed from everything and poor gala has to eat me and what the fuck have I got to show for all my years of silliness. What is the point of making people happy if all you’re remembered for is that you were eaten by your dog? I should probably leave her dog door open all the time just in case. Just in case? What kind of a horrible reality mindset is that? There is no way I can publish this, I am so completely destroyed by the woe is me bullshit perspective of this exercise. But seriously, if a group of amazing people can suddenly be snuffed out on a lonely highway in Saskatchewan and left behind a legacy of incredible and touched an massive amount of people, I just feel like I should and could be doing more because you just never know. Also, fuck you inspiration. Shove your shiny car and your overbearing judgmental attitude up your ass. I bet you sound like an elephant seal when you fuck. Maybe I wasn’t watching porn, maybe it was the nature of things or something, that actually makes more sense. At least from the elephant seal angle..oh my god it’s finally been 15 minutes. Ack. Wow, I wrote 1500 words in 15 minutes. Also I think I might be insane.
It is more than 2 hours later, I am wearing a cozy sweater, fuzzy pants and no socks. I ate some sane food and had a cup of ginger tea. I played the piano for almost an hour.

Take 2.

There is beauty in the distraction, that’s what I tell myself. I don’t have anything to prove to anyone, anywhere. I don’t have to act any particular way or worry that I’m not doing enough because I’m too busy being enough. That’s the thing I struggle with. I don’t need to do something to show people how capable, how good, how deserving of happiness I am. I need to be okay with my deserving of happiness regardless of what I’m doing. Why is that so hard? My concern that I should work hard and be a better musician, circus freek, hula hooper, ukulele player, tea drinker, whatever..it’s me holding myself up to some ideal that I spy in someone else. I see this person play and I want to create music like that. I want to make someone feel the way they made me feel. Which is like there is light inside me. I hear this person speak and I want to move someone the way that person moved me. To speak and have someone nod and say ‘you understand in such a beautiful and eloquent way!’ I see a dancer, an artist, someone on stilts and I think, I could do that! And somehow that instantly translates into I should do that. Can you imagine if everyone immediately did the thing they thought they should be doing because someone else did it well and inspired them? It’s not even that I want to do that! I think if I actually did it, I might find some of it boring. It would have no appeal other than how it made me feel to see someone else do it. Not the trapeze, the trapeze would always have appeal..says the girl who has yet to discover how to challenge herself enough to do a fucking pushup, there’s another thing..that’s very passive aggressive but it’s become commonplace to make fun of my inability to do a pushup which does not inspire me to get down on the damn floor and start practicing because then what would I make fun of…so mean, all the time.
I like the thing. It’s the work. The work I find so hard. I sit down at the piano and I have the sheet music and I start to learn a song and at first it’s amazing because it sounds (albeit stilted, disjointed and slow) like the song I want to learn and I’m excited because I’m learning it! And I’ll learn the first page. I practice the left hand, I practice the right hand. I put them together. It’s slow going but eventually it gets there and it feels amazing..I hope that something better comes along!! I sound just like rowlf the dog right now…and then I get to the bridge, the bridge is different, I haven’t learned the bridge yet. I’ll start to play it. It sounds like the song I know but maybe I’ll just play the first part, the part I know really well again because it feels so good to know it already and to learn the rest..well that’s work and maybe I should make myself a snack instead. Or perhaps I’ll write something and so I’ll sit down and come up with something that seems promising but now again, the work is going to start, I’m going to have to pull it from somewhere and what if it’s not good, it has to be good right off the bat (when did I become such a perfectionist?) so maybe I’ll just make a snack or read this book…and on and on…I feel like..what’s his name..that muppet who had the bust of beethoven on his piano and he would start to play but then he would lose his shit and smash his face on the keys and scream ‘oh i just can’t do it~!!!’ and one of the zen muppets, ernie or rowlf or kermit would come along and be all, dude, take a breath. I wonder if it’s a coincidence that I always loved ernie and rowlf the best but always identified with animal and gonzo and fozzie the most. I want to be zen and find joy in something as simple as taking a bath or be great at the piano but having this lovely humility of dogness. Instead I’m a manic weirdo who really wants you to like her and tells jokes that are funny some of the time and just terrible other times…I read this quote by jim henson where he said that he just always knew he would be good at whatever he decided to do and it just happened that what he decided to do was be a puppeteer and I’ve often thought that I’m pretty good at almost everything I try but I don’t want to be great at any one thing. How sad is it that when I think, yeah I understand that I’m pretty good at almost anything I try, it feels arrogant, but when he said it, it just seems true and valid. Is it because he worked really hard? They also say he never said anything unkind about anyone, and appreciated everything. I’d like to be more like that. But instead of saying I’d like to be a better person, like Jim Henson, I’ll say, I’d like to be a better person, like Trish. Wow, it’s already 15 minutes. Ok.