to be honest / mar 26

 

TO BE HONEST, I’ve forgotten the mantra.

I don’t think I needed it, I have had a few ideas through the month of March. Wait, not like, oh i’ve only had a few ideas, but I’ve Had A Few Ideas. I’m excited to write this post, and hopefully explain what I mean about them. I’ve spent the month looking forward to this distilling, sort of wrangling back into an order that I’d be sure would be free flowing, seamless and senseful. It’s the penultimate last day of March and I’m worried about the future. No, wait, don’t let that set the candor of my own voice, I think this month has been both-hands-gesturing-at-you-trying-to-convince-but-sorta-scarying-you-off-by-the-over-the-top-emphatics-at-play stronger than most in recent memory. At least, for the purposes of this blog, its honesty, or the want for sincerity I’m trying to press here. The three ideas are as follows.

1. The Racecar Exorcist. 

2. There are 40 days and 40 nights in March.

3. Are you a worm, or are you a pig?

The first is the most commercial and obvious. In this cinematic ecoculture that fetishises the 30 years later sequel, getting off on the forever eighties, now edging on the nineties, never experimenting with a wet finger towards the naughties, there’s probably a calling to drop the pretense. Our regular digestion of culture has been directed to maximise time spent watching something, with minimal time gestating. We’re reheating of already-stale novelties. Fuck it. Cut the microwave, save a buck. It’s The Exorcist, and it’s set in a racecar bed. There’s a panel that Regan can press to play car noises. You don’t need to watch the original. You won’t need to watch the remake. You don’t need to watch anything it all. Yes, the car moves around the bedroom. No, nothing like Christine. Yes, it will be four hours long with no interval. This is the cinema that you’ve already consumed. This is a safe world, with no teeth, no surprises. Still Waiting for Godot. Rainmen. Koyaanisqati Returns In A Kevlar Vest To Forge Balance Through The Mettle Of A Serrated Blade. My Dinner with Andre and also Pep Guardiola. Straight Blade. I can create things, I can make things, see? See?

Yea, it’s been three months no youtube, no socials, then an extensive period of intensive work that asks for more focus than I could ever give it. More and more, I’m becoming, and I’m loving every minute of it! Sure, I’m worried about an elliot smith sort of suicide, though this is a cruel and irresponsible thing to say, today I’m cresting through another moment, I’m listening to planes and wondering if they’re crashing, I’m pressing my hands to the motherboard to keep the heat in my fingers. I’m thinking more and more that this is what I am. I realised, about halfway through the month, that I had lost way of a mantra I had been following up until now. Something to do with exactly and practically how I was living. I’d sit at my desk and lean on the chair that doesn’t lean. I’d study out the window and I’d spend too long looking through neighbours windows. There is no unknown, but that’s where the answer stands, in the shadow, in the periphery, in the looking, the turning of the head to find the noise, then the light, then the rabbit running across the kitchen. 

Look at what it’s given me. There is not a demon here, but you wouldn’t be wrong to call it one, I’m just going to bed late and sleeping too little and making all the noises you’d expect of a living thing. At least, with Racecar Exorcist, you could have a go at laughing. We might even have a good idea, like either of the two pieces I've written. It’s closer to one and a half - the piece of non-fiction is recklessly too short, but the fiction is now in the canon, and just needs to be shot off to various publishers, who will smile, and nod gently, and unfortunately, at this time, or no reply, or even if we’re so lucky, a quaint and loving ‘we’d be delighted to,’ in the sound of my parents voice. 

Racecar Exorcist has nothing to do with filmic productions or cultures, much like myself. This isn’t hand-on-chin glib or glum, but a calibration of my interests. It’s all about me, duh. I’ll be rereading this in a month's time  to confirm to myself I was there. If I forget another mantra, then it’s okay, I can keep thinking, my brain doesn’t start or stop with the rules that I designate myself to follow. If I’m becoming and that becoming ends up in a weird, disgusting pervert, then I can trace the symptoms back to here and now. I got the shirt. I was living, having the same insecurities about my creative output. Up to and including Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind But Scott McTominay Keeps Interrupting to Score Goals for Club and Country, So It Becomes Like A Highlight Reel, You Just Don’t Know When The Next Clip Is Going To Play. I can have ideas. I can make you money. I have ideas. 

i have ideas

Two, there are forty days and forty nights in the month of March is my account for what has been a rough fucking month, dude. I’m not burdened, I’m not tired, but I’m being weighed down, and the thin veil of exhaustion is making me insular, isolated and weird. This is a farewell, and fuck off. 

I’m working with professionals who know how to do their job exceptionally better than I know how to pretend. I was meant to do a literature review this month, so I could start reaching out to universities for potential PhD supervisors in May. The lit review didn’t happen, the abstract needs to be submitted today, and I’m bumbling between distraction and complete headloss. How do they, my peers and colleagues, do it? What do I need to do to get at that level? Is there a canyon between where I’m at, the words I use, the thing that I am, and the idea of others I have made in my head? I’m tired, I can’t figure it out, and most annoyingly, I want to. I want to be good at this. 

How do the students react to me? How am I seen amongst my colleagues? How do u get a phd cheap quick easy fun How do u write an abstract careers in creative writing how long does it take to edit the manuscript what to do if feeling bad at job? I’m a limping dog expected to race and you are the river. I don’t know what to expect from myself. I don’t know what I’m good at. I sit here, legs crossed, waiting for the psychotherapist to say anything back. The days are longer. It feels really good to see the sun staying around for a bit longer. There will be another summer after this one. I’ll wait, and I’ll bear with, and I’ll get there in the end. I went off cereal and sweets for lent. All this will pass. 

In the desert, so so late in an invisible night, I am becoming encumbered by a soft and unpleasant memory. I have not lived this memory yet, it has not happened. But, in the waiting and dull between, it’ll be there, and I’ll feel it through every pore, every pulse. I’ve started to sweat when I run. I am doing something right. This is how it’s supposed to go. I’m not supposed to taste it but I can feel it there, and slowly, I will move on past this month. It’s not a recovery, nothing needs to be rebuilt. This month has the expectation of pressure put upon it — I Must Make It Through March. Otherwise, it’ll be another year of living a recklessly dull life, alchemised by my own incompetence. I don’t think of myself with this sharp language, I’m playing it up for effect, trust me. 

It’s been a long month, but that’s alright. I’m living more and more in the day as it comes. They’re getting difficult to differentiate. An ex girlfriend is proliferating my dreams and I can’t figure out what she wants. Maybe I’m a stable boy poking at the horse’s leg. I’m poking at something just to feel the relief of a result, of a certainty, of a knowing. The arrival of spring is having a near hormonal effect on my body. I skipped my shot for one week and Jerry, I felt every moment of it! Maybe it’s something to do with girlhood, or femininity. She, said with venomous pointing, gets to be a woman. She doesn’t need to worry about this, that and other narcissistic generalisations we made in hasty, hormonal oversights. I won’t choose to ignore dreams, but I don’t need to act on them.  

My priorities are all screwed up anyway. This month has been The Great unsettler. There’s a fucking war being waged by psychofascist pedophilic freaks. The hell am I going to do, except ride the bike, and play slay the spire, and shave every time I shower. I’m supposed to be more than this. I’m supposed to be something I’m not yet. Is this why the future scares me? Does the horse know when to bolt, when to run? Does it know where teh river is ? >w>

horses, etc,

On the third, I skipped work to go for a run. It’s a question that captures the nothing of the vacuum. You don’t need an answer. You don’t need to be corrected. You don’t need to be right. You’re one or the other, and you’re both if you’re neither. As my father would often tell me, the man who’s the worm and also the pig knows better than to writhe. I’ve been doing running more often again and again. It feels good. There’s no music. I’m sweating, for real. Richard Dawson’s Jogging has a hopeful overtone. Some album, that. Rediscovered 2012-2017 by Against All Logic, the Prince Daddy and the Hyenea and the latest Car Seat Headrest album that’s alright, actually. The music’s been good. It’s real Tom Waits Blue Valentine Jeff Buckley and Jeff Rosenstock sounding at the moment. You know how it feels. We get there in the end sounding, never the majority but always a force, second place FC but really good at getting it, so, well, that’s alright. All good endings start with somebody going for a run. Is this the end? Is this the change of metre long awaited for? No, definitely not, but certainly, I think, there has been a shift. If March was the month where I entered the cave, the future waits outside it. I need to send more signals, to say hey, i’m nearly there. Just wait a little while longer and you’ll see me. Soon, we’re going to have a reason to celebrate. We’re going to pick something up and say, look, alright. Despite it all, and that internal monologue set on self destruction, we made it. We did it, we wrote something, we got it out there, we kept our cool, we sweat it off. 

I ran 5k on a Thursday morning. I think I tweaked my foot. Shut it, square, you just need to do some image manipulation and jerk off. I’ve learned there’s a massive difference between running with your pal and running alone. Out there, you’re nobody’s pal. You’re just running with a bra that’s both too small and too large and a second hand athletic shirt. You’re hoping that your shorts aren’t flaunting your cock and balls and between the body and god it’s more out of your hands than you’d like to think. It won’t. I’m exerting this anxiety onto every passing stranger with increasing regularly. It’s just a matter of running. I am not the only trans runner there is out there. Despite the tenor of the discourse, they probably won’t crucify me. Nobody out there knows who I am. I’m only a freak because I see myself as one. 

There’s a barrier between me and the world. This physical interface that I can’t get myself through. I will, eventually. I am living. I don’t really want to die. I have materials to make more little zines. The future holds great, bountiful things. I am a beautiful woman who is detaching herself as best as she can. The challenge now is to keep in touch enough, as to not isolate everything so violently it leaves me with fuck all to hold on to. We’ve been there. The work now is to balance it all. Too see myself with honour, beauty, and talent. I can do this. 

So, let us consider the future, not in this abstract costume I wear to instigate my own anxiety, but as plastic, burning, malleable, killing. 

First, I will send out my fiction to editors to read. Less of the diatribe available above, more ‘i did this, are you happy for me’ next time we speak on this form. 

Second, I will start reading infinite jest. For shits and gigs, don’t get the wrong literary assumption that this is anything more than a testament to myself. 

Third, i will finish a book. I’m not fussed which. But one. 

Fourth, I will write two non-tbh pieces.

Fifth, i will do some collage. 

April will be be no easier, and no more difficult than what has come before. I will live through it, as I always will. I’ll beat ascension 10 with the regent on slay the spire 2. I will smile. I will feel the sun on my face. Marking will resume towards the 20th. All being well, you’ll be hearing from me by the 30th.

On the other hand, I don’t really have time for you. You’re great and all, but I don’t really want to be talking to you right now, or spending money on your caffeine problem, or your sugar problem, or your brain problems. The world is probably going to end, and then it will keep on keepin’ on. Lord you gave me nothin’, then you took it all away. o, wait, don’t let that set the candor of my own voice. I am a human, after all, just looking like the impression of one. You can tell by the way my eyes move, the way the skin grays around my cheeks. There is something that i am not wanting you to see, and it’s getting clearer that the facade is beginning to slip. The world is going to end and nobody is going to remember my dysphoria. No publication has any right or reason to see it as something that should be documented, or kept in any meaningful way. I trust that they know too, that once summer rolls around, as will another new batch of feeling to get muddled up in. I’ll be too broke to worry about the colour of my cheeks, about what I can see and what I think is seen, in a self cyclical deprecionist panopticon. Yea, it’s my own construction, yea, it’s my own money, the month of March is composed of 40 days and 40 nights and if you don’t make it through each one, there’s a pit you’ll fall into from which you cannot return. The depths are getting lower and the crypt is being reborn. I am a sailor who knows one thousand smiles. There is an archipelago where I will go missing, comfortable and alone. I will hear the sea again, when I want to spend the money to travel down to the coast. I’m not the woman I want to be: I’m shuttled off within myself, I’m cold, I’m anxious, I’m swinging between feeling like i’m eating too much then i’m not eating enough and rarely affording myself the comfort and solidity that i need. I have a body. The pressures upon this body are relative. This world can be changed, if i change how i see it. My taste is my own. My thoughts are my own. I am not suffering for a greater cause, this is just a SMALL discomfort. You don’t understand and I’m not communicating myself well. I’m happy, i’ve been better, i’m tired, i’m spending more time awake. This isn’t good for me, but i’m not sure what is good for me.  Fuck this, man. Fuck you! I’m ;aughing. I can’t hear it but i’m taking the wins as they come. That’s why i’ve had these ideas, because i’m still equipped to do this shit. Look at me. I’m caught out of the realm and into the light. I’m not going anywhere, but hey, i’, right here! Sat where you know to find me! I’m still here! I’m just shining. Im just in a part of the map you can’t reach yet. Or you’re not supposed to be. You’re not meant to follow me. You’re meant to know the route but not the path and again, let me tell you, this is my own construction, this is my money, this is my space, let me do what i want. I can’t be myself in front of other people, my writing cannot come from where i want it to, so let this be the me, smiling in the corner of a beautiful room, in a house that i share with my beautiful wife, let me live the dream if you are the river then i am the horse, and the doors blasted open, three thousand doves escape, i am well, i am well, i am well. 

Listen, I have written two pieces, and sent off one of them. Despite it all, despite the reckless noise that I myself shiver within.