I am currently tying myself up in knots working on a commentary for my last attempt at a poem - my Asperger’s side took over last night and I got into some lengthy philosophical debate about the nature of knowing! I think this was in large part due to not wanting to rewrite the single short paragraph, or two or three at most, that I lost at the beginning of this week trying to write the same tricky section in which I describe my comparison in the poem of the myths at work in the state’s use of 9/11 and the moon landings; in re-writing it, I had to make it more complex to keep my focus.
I can’t concentrate now, something I put down either to writing late last night, to the cigarettes I had, which also contributed to poor sleep, or to the onion bhajis I’ve been eating and the Ginseng I’ve been drinking all day. Whatever it is, I can’t go out and run because it’s pissing it down, and know that if I played guitar for a while, I would later regret having done nothing when I have to go to my Mum and Dad’s for my mum’s party, something which will be a real challenge for me. And so, I’ve decided to try and do something to work towards a second poem using the same method as the first, only to comment on it this time from the off, if possible, and certainly to show a few workings out. Read the rest of this entry »
I have been trying something new today to get me out of my old routines. It has been clear to me for some time that I need a radical change in my life to enable me to write the novels that are creating such a pressure in my head, and which are making me so unhappy. I still believe in them, so much, but I’m not ready for them yet, already they are too late to be topical and so it is better to wait until they can at least be considered and honed, better for me to work on myself and come back to them when I am good and ready. I have written already of my attempts to refocus, to downsize my ambition and downscale my productive efforts. Some of these attempts are undoubtedly cul de sacs, but I need more than anything a change in routine since my efforts to constantly work on that first novel, and even to trudge through the classics, are wearing me down, and will only destroy my love of literature.
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I found this just now trying to find the last few lines of a poem I began writing a few days ago. An attempt at free verse, essentially, at telling a story in this form as much with the intention of finishing something by not getting bogged down in extraneous detail as anything else. Like much apprentice work, this is truly cringe-inducing, but it is a snapshot of a time, and a desperation. A desperation of not being able to write, and a desperation at not being able to live.
This was addressed to a woman at work who showed me some affection. Someone who had lent me an ear when I needed it and made me feel human. It had been intoxicating. This poem was written before we had an affair. I remember nothing about writing it but it is probably as close to automatic writing as I get, and so it is as true as it is poetically shoddy. It is also incomplete, of course. The central metaphor is robbed from a very famous poem I have read a couple of times but could not track down, a poem which features a man rowing to meet his lover and scratch against her window.
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