Entry 01
April 2015
At Black Cat one time, a guy who was sitting right behind me asked me what I was writing about. Probably about [THING 14]. And I was so bewildered that someone who I’ve never seen or spoken to before could possibly be so audacious as to inquire what the fuck I would never want anyone to hear. Ever.
So anyways, I met this professor in the park. He approached me on the premise that I was craning my neck to watch a street performer gathering a crowd by the fountain. He told me, “You should really just go and watch.”
He started talking to me about writing.
He told me a story – that for two or three years, he used to see the same guy everyday. On the same bench across the way in this same park. He used to come there and write systematically, the way I do. Every day after work, for a few years.
Another guy, he used to sit in teacher’s detention, where teachers go to do nothing and get paid, and write, amongst the desks filled with other teachers. One day, he asked him about it. The man said that he did it for two reasons, 1. because his shrink told him to do it, and 2. because it allowed him to narrow in and zone out on one thing, to focus, and pass the time, and restore order between his body and his mind. Something like that.
The man said to me, I’m not inferring you’re a psychopath…
He also told me how the ancient act reverberated through history.
Confessions by Saint Augustine, the act of writing down your sins, cleansing your soul in a spiritual tradition. To write, to extract, to make known, to make peace with.
And Confucious monks who practice the art of calligraphy as a form of meditation. The act of writing. Of centering one’s soul. Being at ease and at peace with oneself.
The man asked me how long I’ve been writing.
I told him 4-5 years.
He asked me if I felt that I got what I was looking for from writing.
I told him the first time I remember writing...well writing for me and not because someone asked me to, like my teacher or my mother...well I guess it was when I was young, I used to write stories. I remember sitting at 318 Avila Road, in the sunny bedroom I shared with Claire, at the white desk, by myself in the room, sitting in the wicker chair with paper and pencils. I remember writing stories, for no one but myself to read again later.
Anyways, the first time I started journaling (so to speak), was in Florence, Italy. I couldn’t sleep one night. It was hot and I was restless. My body was exhausted, but my mind was racing. I’d been in a full-on state of insomnia for at least an hour or two. Cathy had gifted me a journal and I just started writing…in the middle of the night. In the living room of the mosaic-floored 18th century monastery, with curved ceilings. The pen hit the paper-mache pages and didn’t stop for two hours. Maybe I should take the time to re-read that entry.
I explained to the man how it helped me to process and learn a lot about myself without burdening anyone else. A way to sort out what’s happening in my mind and connect with my body.
The thing he said that inspired me to draw that connection was that literally, in fact, the pen acts as an extension of yourself. It is your fingers, hand, wrist, arm, shoulder, chest, brain that is controlling your output. Materializing it outside of yourself. A feeble human attempt at making the intangible tangible.
I love to write. It saves me. And so much good comes from it. I don’t know if I’m being positive or not when I say this, if there’s one thing [THING 14] drove me to do over the last year is to read and write. Wow, that made a mess of my world.
And in a state of upheaval, writing is where I turn to. And no one can take my brain away from me. At least in the world as I know it. That’d be one of my greatest fears.
After further conversation with the professor, I got up to go to my friend’s apartment. I was supposed to arrive with tequila in 10 minutes and I was empty-handed.
I arrived there 30 minutes late and I was early.