For clarity, I think I will write this only once.
I do not write confessional poetry, and I do not write things down as a form of therapy. I write because I have something unique to say in a unique sort of way, a way that I think is universal in an analogous manner, not as any sort of literal or digital telling of the truth. I trowel spackle onto pages with a edged blade, I don’t paint aging widows with a brush.
(My soul has been psychedelicized, but this shit’s not about me.)
It comes in this form – that this relates to that, in this way – A form that I think illustrates things that are too true to be looked at straight on – personal truths that are usually discovered through interactions with other people – truths that are often relational, unreliable and subject to the weavings and debris of human beings. Truths that sneak out and become a miraculous surprise of insight – like a Zen master hitting you on the head with a baseball bat at just the right time.
I don’t think I’m the only one that thinks or feels this way. I think people are only capable of seeing themselves honestly from the angles they find themselves in as they interact with other people. We are usually too well defended to see the truth about ourselves – we must get fooled into it from something outside ourselves, and usually that something's a person. Only through misdirection and compassion are we tricked into seeing any glimpse of what’s true in ourselves -- that only from the corner of an eye do we get to see the changing of the stage between acts. We aren’t actors on a stage – we are the fucking stage.
(This doesn’t count for seeing the truth in other people – that’s usually astoundingly easy.)
My rule is that in the small you find the large, and that universal truths come from being aware of individuals as they share pieces of themselves – like watching the parts that fall off and start careening out of control. It’s not about the words, you need to watch for the patterns and the movement, and maybe the reactions of the things they bounce off. When I write about me, I’m writing about you – it’s my way of trying.
I sometimes think that you can’t trust anything but speed and direction – that most of what’s left in day to day life is just one big bumper to launch crap off of – just another entry on the list of self-made distractions that you use to keep from dealing with the pain of being human.
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