A while back I was encouraged by a friend and a book to try this writing method that involved getting up every morning and writing three pages before doing anything else. To my own surprise, I stuck with it for more than a few days but did eventually drop the habit. I am not a morning person by nature, and I was already getting up pretty early to get to work (ah, the heady days of employment).
The results were frequently odd, rambling explorations of my mind and vocabulary. When I don't know what to write, I play with words; their sounds and meanings mixed around and stitched together into something else. I don't have a lot of direction when I enter this mode and the words just pitter off into something strange. Recipients of my postcards will understand this.
It's an interesting experience if for no other reason than emphasizing both the power and limitations of words. Words are just parts; you build complex and impossible things out of those words. But words are also packed to the brim on their own: history, emotion, sound, meaning. I am intrigued by the concept of creating something coherent and meaningful out of a complete madness of words. Not like how pixels are arranged to make an image, but how music can make you feel and give you indelible images without direct suggestion. Anyway, that's a lot of navel-gazing rambling itself. Especially useless because most of the time I was writing about dreams I had and things that were going on around me. So here's some of the more interesting excerpts from my morning writings. They have nothing to do with anything, and share no connection at all to real life.
Aug 13: I walk into your neighborhood looking for you. You're not immediately around so I go into your local 7-11 to hang out. I'll get a slurpee, check out the milk and batteries. Oh, hey: you guys have lithium batteries now?
Aug 14: Dreamed about big churches with fat, stupid choir boys that used their British accents like hammers on the brain.
Aug 29: The wind rubs the window of your soul clean while you walk to the 7-11 to pick up milk. Wipes it down with a squeegee and doesn't even ask for a tip. Hallelujah!
It's a beautiful day and I want to run around with my friends. Raise hell all 'cross town. Bouncing off of rubber cars, leap off tall the tall buildings to bounce on rubber roads. Run, holler, and scream until it's evening.
Then we'd eat dinner, sit down on the pier to pull on our tweediest jackets, whip out our pipes, and get all intellectual and shit. That would be awesome.
Bright light through white blinds brightens the room like morning should. Scares out all the nightmares under the furniture, hiding in the corners, and between the couch cushions. They'll be back again tonight -- though they are not wholly unwelcome.
Sometimes the letters don't get in the right order, or the right shape, and I need to sculpt the lines on the page into a more pleasing shape. [Small drawing of an elephant with an arrow pointing to it, and the word "ELEPHANT."]
Sleeping is like setting in to a mold for your soul. And when you can't sleep, you're sliding along the sheet of metal, sometimes your feet fit in but you can't quite get your head to settle in. Or else a bit of blanket is wrapped around me middle and I just can't fit snuggly in the groove. IT's like a lock, and all the pieces all have to fit in just right. I slide into my groove, and then get rotated under a plate as the handle is turned. More like turning a machine, really; cranking the handle of the dream generator. Who's hand is that? It's certainly not my own. Maybe it's the bearded man down the street that gives away chocolate and pennies at Halloween -- dressed in 19th Century diving gear.
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