Achieving inhibitionless writing via speech-to-text transcription

The method of speaking your stream of consciousness aloud and letting it be transcribed by software is, I think, a really great way to achieve free and open creation.

There’s something that happens when the method we use to record our thoughts and feelings is able to keep up at the same pace in real-time. There aren’t any pauses that give you the opportunity to second guess, go back and correct, or intentionally steer the tracks that your train of thought is already chugging along at its natural pace.

There needs to be a certain disconnect between the writer writing and the writer reading. It can be disruptive for the writer to read their words as they are writing them. When a writer types or writes by hand, it’s difficult not to read the words they’ve written. They are right there on the page or the computer screen next to the space soon to be filled by the following word that they were trying to get down.

When you are speaking, you can’t see your words. This may be one of the main benefits of writing via transcription—you can’t see what you’ve already done. If you close your eyes, let go of inhibition, don’t worry about who is listening, and really twist the lens of the microscope to focus down on the exact present moment in your head and your heart and translate those thoughts and feelings in the vocabulary you have—I think this is one of the best ways to create freely and openly, to make our internal world feel wide and expansive and limitless.

Miss you man

A text I won’t send 
To an old friend with whom 
I haven’t spoken in a while:
I saw a guy running in the park today 
He kinda looked like you
I actually thought it was you at first
It would have been a happy surprise 
I would have said 
What are you doing in the city?
I thought you were in Palo Alto
And then I don’t know after that
But it would have been as great as
All the conversations we’ve ever had
We haven’t talked in a while 
I’m not sure why
Maybe it was something I did 
Maybe it just happens
As we get older and get girlfriends
And eventually start families 
I guess I’m having a hard time
Letting go of the college days 
I liked it when we were all together 
And we didn’t have anything to do
Except learn and hang out 
I wrote some articles for newspaper 
And you built robots 
Adult life just doesn’t seem as good
We’re all in separate cities now 
Staying in our apartments most the time 
Hanging out with coworkers sometimes
Working, working, working 
I guess I just miss you man 
But I know this might just be how it is
Maybe I should send you this text 
I don’t know why I won’t 
I’m sure you’d understand 
But maybe there’s nothing we can do
And I think I’d rather just 
Hold onto some hope 
That somehow things will go back
To how they were before 

August 30, 2021 at 07:01PM

Classic

Do I make
My modern experience
All-timely enough
To merit
A classic stamp
Of approval?

August 30, 2021 at 08:55AM

Little leavings

I leave her a little
Every time
I walk away
Even when it’s just
From the kitchen
To the dining room
I hug her
Hold her hand
Then turn
Let it drop
And walk into
The other room
As soon
As her fingers
Fall from mine
I want to turn
Walk back
Hold her again

August 30, 2021 at 08:49AM

Little leavings

I leave her a little
Every time
I walk away
Even when it’s just
From the kitchen
To the dining room
I hug her
Hold her hand
Then turn
Let it drop
And walk into
The other room
As soon
As her fingers
Fall from mine
I want to turn
Walk back
Hold her again

August 30, 2021 at 08:49AM

Little leavings

I leave her a little
Every time
I walk away
Even when it’s just
From the kitchen
To the dining room
I hug her
Hold her hand
Then turn
Let it drop
And walk into
The other room
As soon
As her fingers
Fall from mine
I want to turn
Walk back
Hold her again

August 30, 2021 at 08:49AM

Form in art

Even the art forms are commercialized, controlled, meant to be marketed and sold. Dear artist, who were you before you chose your form? How have you edited yourself since then to fit your form? What did the painter call herself before she became a painter? What did the novelist call himself before he became a novelist? From whence in her did the urge to paint come? From whence in him did the urge to write come? How did they experience it at first? What outlets did it find before she picked up a brush, before he picked up a pen?
In order to be a form, there must be guidelines, rules, restrictions. I recently read about how Kerouac did not abide by the 5-7-5 syllable format for haikus. But what will they be called then? What will the poems be called that are in a 4-7-6 syllable format? Or 6-7-8? Or 8-6-7? They are close to haikus but they are not. Who invented haikus in the first place? Why did they choose the 5-7-5 format? Perhaps because there is a natural rhythm to it, similar to how iambic meter sounds like a human heartbeat. buh-BUM-buh-BUM-buh-BUM. unstressed-STRESSED-unstressed-STRESSED-unstressed-STRESSED. But there are more natural phenomena than just the human heartbeat. A format that sounds natural to one person might sound unnatural to another. Maybe there is an emotion that needs an unnatural format to be properly articulated.
The creative romps of an artist are not cut and dry. They run amuck, break rules, like a child colors outside of the lines designed by the coloring book company that implied the child would draw within them.
But maybe there are lines. Everything is not disorder. There is cause and effect. There are commonalities and universalities. As humans, there are things we can agree on. Survival seems to be one of them. Art may be another. If we generally agree that some art is better than others, this may be how forms get there beginning. There are some forms we prefer to consume over others. Certain ways we like to hear stories told, certain ways we like to see paintings displayed, certain ways we like to watch actors and dancers.
So I do not think that doing away with form altogether is the answer. But when is the appropriate time to break from form? And how does abiding by form affect the art that an artist creates?

To the man with his back turned at the restaurant

To the man
With his back turned 
At the table 
Ahead of ours
At the restaurant 
—Do you hear
What I am saying?
—Do you have 
Something to say?
You seem
To be scholarly 
I do not
Know you 
But I see
You are eating alone 
Your side profile 
Shows the arm
Of your glasses 
Reaching back 
And over ear
Your elbows
On the table 
The way
You sip your tea 
I just know 
You are thinking 
Masterpieces 
Imagining 
Wonderlands 
Why
Are you alone 
When 
Was the last time 
You shared 
Your stories 
How
Can I communicate 
To you 
That I want to hear
What you’re thinking 
About my lauding 
Of Nabokov
Are you sitting there
Silently participating 
In our conversation 
Only as a listener 
How many other
Conversations 
Have you heard 
And not spoken in 
How much knowledge 
Have you retained 
Incubated
Let mix and mingle 
What has it become 
What do you have to say 
I would ask you
To pull up a chair 
But I am with my girlfriend 
No, that’s not an excuse
It’s because I’m shy
Not drunk enough 
Not sure if you
Would even want to

August 29, 2021 at 05:48PM

The art of the breast

Leaning back
With her arms
Overhead
No, not like that
Too flat
Stretched out
Only the nipple
Has accent
Like a lone blotch
On canvas
But leaning forward
Ah, yes
There is the art
Of the breast
She shrugs
And pinches her arms
So they fill
On the insides
And unders
Bulging beautifully
Voluptuously
Coming down
To mold itself
In my cupped hand
Like a dewdrop
At blade’s end
Achieves its fullness
Right before
Falling off
Its insides swell
And press
Against the bounds
My baby hand
Might have felt
That fullness
Which is why
My adult appendage
Is now livened
By the very same
In the body
Of this beauty
Who makes me
Want to make her
A mother
Of my own

August 29, 2021 at 12:14PM

She got too high

Took some tincture on her tongue two or three hours ago and didn’t expect it to hit her so hard. I thought she was just taking her time in the grocery store. On the way home, I thought she was just hungry. Finally, while I was standing at the stovetop, stirring the couscous, and she was sitting at the table behind me, making a charcuterie board, she said, “I think I’m just really high.” I laughed, “Well, that would make sense.” She said, “I forgot I took that tincture earlier.”
Fast forward to after dinner and after the deep spiraling conversations after our plates were clear. I got out of the shower and walked into the bedroom. She was naked, sitting on a meditation cushion beside the bed, stretching her neck with her eyes closed. As she strained her neck to one side, her curly hair fell over her face. She opened her hazy eyes and looked up at me. I squatted down by her side, rubbed her back, and gave her a kiss.

Conversation with Lake about short prose and negative space 08/23/21

Cole: I am really attracted to moments that are impactful yet brief. Like how could I give the reader all the necessary context of a novel but really just have them read something the length of the climax?

Lake: I think (unsurprisingly) that there is much to be learned from short stories, especially by really powerful authors, in as far as the information they choose to make explicit and that which they let/force the reader assume.

Cole: The letting/forcing the reader to assume is important. With my poetry, some of the editors want me to come out and say the point. They don’t want me to just describe the physical moment. They want me to explicitly state the metaphysical message. It’s a balance, getting the reader close enough, but then letting them make the leap themselves.

Lake: Yeah, and constraining the conclusions the reader can jump to.

Cole: It’s not so much what you say but what you don’t say, not what you write but what you don’t write, not what you paint but what you don’t paint. The impression that any word makes on the reader depends on the words around it. The impression that one splash of color makes on the viewer depends on the colors around it.

The most obvious negative space is silence in song, monochrome in painting, blank space on a page of writing. But negative space is really just one end of the scale. We might say positive space is on the other end. Between them, there are pixels of subject that each participate to varying degrees in subjectness.

Now, is there really such a thing as purely negative space? How can we make such an assumption, on behalf of either the creator or the consumer? How can we decide for them what parts they will consider subject and what parts they will consider background?

Like a little girl who holds her father’s hand while waiting in line for the train. Everyone else is leaning side to side, jumping up and down—trying to get a glimpse of the train, the door, how full it’s getting. The girl is crouched down playing with an ant. Who could have seen the ant in a painting titled “In Line For The Train?”

Some writers talk about “filler.” In the middle of a novel, there may be pages that are not the writer’s best work, but they get the book to a total page count and they progress the story along. Filler is still positive space. It’s words—the main medium for the art form of writing. But might we say that filler is closer to negative space than, say, the climax?

As a writer, what am I letting the reader assume? How much relatively negative space am I giving them to fill with their own imaginations? The reader is not completely loosed. Even blank white pages will confine their thoughts and feelings to a certain section of mental-emotional possibilities. How meticulously can I reduce the number of possibilities?

If I have written a poem to twenty lines and there are three possibilities for the conclusion at which the reader will arrive, should I write a twenty-first line to reduce the possibilities to just one? How does it change the experience of the reader to make the leap on their own? To solve it like a puzzle. I would say there is some joy and sense of achievement to be derived from this independence.

Lake: I agree with some of the things you said. When I was talking about negative space with writing I was not thinking about physically, but more so negative or empty space in the environment you build for the reader, i.e., when you have a 20-line poem that leads to 3 conclusions or a 5-line poem that could lead to the same conclusions, the 5-line poem has more negative space and also more power because it focuses the reader to the same point with less filler. And I think that is what skilled short story writers excel at. Because then you can think of it the other way: what is the most cohesive and specific, even if not well-defined, environment that you can create in the space of a short story? Whether that is like geographic depth, visual detail, character development, plot texture. Imagine a surrealist essay. They paint a very cohesive and specific picture, but not necessarily one you could describe neatly in a few sentences. Like Kafka can make you feel a very specific way, even if you can’t really put your finger on how you feel.

Cole: Yes, but that seems separate. Can Kafka make you feel that specific way using less words?

Lake: Maybe, maybe not. The point I was making was that you can know something without needing words to represent it, which means you can make someone else feel something without making it explicit. And I think that by properly choosing words you can be very precise with the atmosphere you create and what feelings you grow in the reader. And a large part of that is what you allow the reader to assume based on the information you provide and the info you don’t provide.

Cole: Ah, I see more clearly now. Let me regurgitate back to you a bit. Premise: I can feeling something without words to represent it. Conclusion: You can make me feel something without using explicit words. Whence, then, does the feeling come? What DO you use to make me feel it? Maybe just other words. Not the explicit ones that say what I should feel exactly, but other words that make me feel it by some other means. Maybe these means are something like the subconscious, logical conclusion, or imagination. It seems the minimalism / negative space conversation is unessential to this one.

Lake: I don’t think so! The negative space is where the mind is able to make connections between the words you do use that then lets it feel something greater/different than what was explicit.

Cole: Hm, so negative space does not exist only in the art itself. It exists also in the viewer’s mind?

Lake: What is in the viewer’s mind is a function of the art, like if you only give someone 5 words on a blank page, they twist and turn mentally until they figure out how those 5 words all connect to make sense.

Cole: But the reader already has words in their head. Words that didn’t come from the page. The viewer’s mind is a function. But the art isn’t even a variable in that function. It’s just an input.

Lake: A function takes an input and creates an output. Mind is the function. Art is the input. Feeling is the output.

Cole: I still don’t think the negative space exists in the mind. The negative space exists in the art.

Lake: Okay, but I think that’s wrong, or rather is missing the point. Let’s say negative space exists in the art. What impact does that have on viewer?

Cole: It has an impact on the viewer’s functional mind via the input of the art.

Lake: Yes, but like what does it mean. Why is negative space helpful?

Cole: Now we’re back to square one.

Lake: Humor me.

Cole: Negative space is helpful because … (A) It allows the viewer liberty to draw their own conclusions, which are not explicitly concluded by the positive space in the air itself. (B) It preserves the energy and attention of the viewer so that they can focus with more power on the positive space. (C) It allows the positive space to exist. Without negative space, there is only positive space; there is only space, general space, without an opposite, without contrast.

Lake: Yes, so really what we are saying is don’t give the viewer all the pieces to the puzzle and let them find some on their own. If the input is sparse the function has to make more assumptions, yielding a more interesting output.

Cole: I disagree with the word “interesting.” Maybe the output is more personal to them. Or maybe the viewer feels a keener sense of accomplishment.

Lake: I would say “interesting” is correct because it’s actually just a conclusion that isn’t handed to you therefore you have to think a bit therefore you focus more of your active interest in it. But whatever, not gonna die on that one.

Hungry

I can get almost as high
Not eating all morning
As I can off of
A heroic hit of acid

August 27, 2021 at 12:08PM

Longer than expected

I walked by
On my way
To the bathroom
To wash my hands
Saw the door
To the bedroom
Slightly ajar
Extended my hand
And pushed it
To open
All the way
And let in
Some light
Proceeded
To the bathroom
Turned on the water
And was halfway
Through washing
My hands
When I heard
The door bump
Against the wall
Which I thought
Was uncanny
Because my best sense
Of time
Told me,
“That was
An eternity ago
When you pushed
Open that door”

August 27, 2021 at 11:47AM

Engorged

God, I feel
Like a bull
With broad shoulders
And sharp horns
I’ve already killed
Eight matadors
Just this morning
And wrote some
Damn good poems
With their blood
I should abstain
From sex
More often

August 27, 2021 at 11:44AM

What is love?

Standing in the kitchen, holding a spatula, I leaned around the edge of the doorway to the dining room and said, “You’re cute.”
Sitting at the dining table, looking cute—freckles, curly hair, dewy dark skin—she replied, “You’re just saying that because your balls are full” (we’ve been abstaining from sex).
“Well, yea, maybe. But what is love anyway?”

The last chip on my shoulder

At what point should you stop psychoanalyzing yourself? When is the shrink’s work ever really done? If you unpack all your boxes and empty out all your baggage, is there anything left inside your home? If you wash your hands for long enough, your skin will peel away. If you use enough shampoo, your hair will fall out. You get a nose job and someone says, “Oh, but I liked it the way it was before.” You retort, “But why? It was crooked.” They shrug, “I don’t know. I guess it was more you.” To the selfless person, the standard advice: you have to take care of yourself. To the selfish person, the standard advice: you should think more about others. I have only one chip left on my shoulder. All the others have either been sanded down by my boss, anointed and bandaged by my girlfriend, or politely plucked and discarded by my maturing friends. If any of you come any closer to my one last chip I’ll scream. I’ll writhe like Alex the droog under attack by the eye-opening claws of conformity and assimilation. Leave me this one chip, please. Or else there won’t be a me anymore. Whatever the hell me being me is worth to anybody, I don’t know. Asking what it’s worth is what got all my other chips blown away in the first place. I don’t care what it’s worth. I don’t care if it’s irrational, unjust, careless, contrarian, or the opposite end of any other binary that you’ve invented and chosen your side of. I’ll take the other side. Even if it’s just me over here and the whole rest of the world over there. At least I’ll be me.

Psychedelic doorbell

The doorbell
Went psychedelic
For a second
Its yellow
Turned purple
And floated
Off the plastic piece
Drilled to the wall
Dancing
In my field of vision
Like a musical note
Hopping up
To each line
Of a staff
Keeping rhythm

August 26, 2021 at 08:54PM

Flag shadow

Only the edges 
Of a flag’s shadow
Wavered 
On the street 
Beyond the greater
Black shadow 
Of the house 
To which 
The flag was attached 
Above 

August 26, 2021 at 03:15PM

Death, again

We’re going to die. You’re going to die. I’m going to die. I remembered again as I was leaving the soccer field tonight. I saw a man get off the bus. He was wearing slacks and sunglasses, headphones in his ears, the takes-himself-seriously type. Probably coming home from the office. I just so happen to not be working right now, but I’ve done some time. I know what it’s like. The office isn’t the only place to waste your life though. You know what? Forget I said anything about the office. It’s not about Mr. Sunglasses-Even-Though-The-Sun’s-Down. It’s about dying. It’s about living before judgment day, flat line, termination, the end, eternal darkness, the great beyond. Okay, here it is. Just imagine it. Imagine dying. Seriously sit down and comprehend that you will leave and not come back. What would you miss the most? I think about my senses. I would just want to see the sky, hear voices, smell cut grass. I wouldn’t even care if they were pleasant senses. If I was dead, I would take anything. See a white wall, hear a faucet drip, smell smoke. Gosh, it’s really crazy. I’m not getting it here. I’ll have to come back and try again, But seriously, if you’re reading this, remember that you’re going to die, and then live like it!

Negative space

It’s not so much what you say but what you don’t say, not what you write but what you don’t write, not what you paint but what you don’t paint. The impression that any word makes on the reader depends on the words around it. The impression that one splash of color makes on the viewer depends on the colors around it.
The most obvious negative space is silence in song, monochrome in painting, blank space on a page of writing. But negative space is really just one end of the scale. We might say positive space is on the other end. Between them, there are pixels of subject that each participate to varying degrees in subjectness.
Now, is there really such a thing as purely negative space? How can we make such an assumption, on behalf of either the creator or the consumer? How can we decide for them what parts they will consider subject and what parts they will consider background?
Like a little girl who holds her father’s hand while waiting in line for the train. Everyone else is leaning side to side, jumping up and down—trying to get a glimpse of the train, the door, how full it’s getting. The girl is crouched down playing with an ant. Who could have seen the ant in a painting titled “In Line For The Train?”
Some writers talk about “filler.” In the middle of a novel, there may be pages that are not the writer’s best work, but they get the book to a total page count and they progress the story along. Filler is still positive space. It’s words—the main medium for the art form of writing. But might we say that filler is closer to negative space than, say, the climax?
As a writer, what am I letting the reader assume? How much relatively negative space am I giving them to fill with their own imaginations? The reader is not completely loosed. Even blank white pages will confine their thoughts and feelings to a certain section of mental-emotional possibilities. How meticulously can I reduce the number of possibilities?
If I have written a poem to twenty lines and there are three possibilities for the conclusion at which the reader will arrive, should I write a twenty-first line to reduce the possibilities to just one? How does it change the experience of the reader to make the leap on their own? To solve it like a puzzle. I would say there is some joy and sense of achievement to be derived from this independence.
Works of art that utilize negative space may be more enjoyable in a world filled to the brim with positive space. We see these trends in “minimal” art—one-line drawings, flash fiction, etc. In a boring world full of background, detail is desirable. In a busy world of information overload, detail is overwhelming.

Need and greed

They say the world
Doesn’t need another
Banker, politician, what-have-you
But they, the suits and ties
Need the world
Desperately
And they’re willing to do
Whatever it takes
No matter the price
And they’ll keep being born
As sure as we’ve always fucked
And the tragedies have told of greed
And our great green-blue marble
Will keep spinning
Not according to need
But to greed and power

August 25, 2021 at 02:28PM

Need and greed

They say the world
Doesn’t need another
Banker, politician, what-have-you
But they, the suits and ties
Need the world
Desperately
And they’re willing to do
Whatever it takes
No matter the price
And they’ll keep being born
As sure as we’ve always fucked
And the tragedies have told of greed
And our great green-blue marble
Will keep spinning
Not according to need
But to greed and power

August 25, 2021 at 02:28PM

Need and greed

They say the world
Doesn’t need another
Banker, politician, what-have-you
But they, the suits and ties
Need the world
Desperately
And they’re willing to do
Whatever it takes
No matter the price
And they’ll keep being born
As sure as we’ve always fucked
And the tragedies have told of greed
And our great green-blue marble
Will keep spinning
Not according to need
But to greed and power

August 25, 2021 at 02:28PM

Jealous of my gender

When looking at a handsome man, I used to feel jealous. I would wish that I could look like him in order to make women feel about me the way that I felt about him. Why must the emotion pass through the subjectivity of my own sexuality? Why jealousy instead of attraction?
– inspired by Justin Bieber in the music video for STAY (with the Kid LAROI) when Bieber looks into the camera (neck tattoos, earring, short haircut)

Jealous of my gender

When looking at a handsome man, I used to feel jealous. I would wish that I could look like him in order to make women feel about me the way that I felt about him. Why must the emotion pass through the subjectivity of my own sexuality? Why jealousy instead of attraction?
– inspired by Justin Bieber in the music video for STAY (with the Kid LAROI) when Bieber looks into the camera (neck tattoos, earring, short haircut)

Jealous of my gender

When looking at a handsome man, I used to feel jealous. I would wish that I could look like him in order to make women feel about me the way that I felt about him. Why must the emotion pass through the subjectivity of my own sexuality? Why jealousy instead of attraction?
– inspired by Justin Bieber in the music video for STAY (with the Kid LAROI) when Bieber looks into the camera (neck tattoos, earring, short haircut)

Hiccups

Are hilarious
I have to admit
Even
As I have them now
And hate them
They come so
Unexpectedly
Uncontrollably
Harmless
Quick convulsions
In between
I wait, hoping
They have gone
But then
Another
They are starting
To seem
Less hilarious
I wish
They would
Go away

August 24, 2021 at 09:34AM

Hiccups

Are hilarious
I have to admit
Even
As I have them now
And hate them
They come so
Unexpectedly
Uncontrollably
Harmless
Quick convulsions
In between
I wait, hoping
They have gone
But then
Another
They are starting
To seem
Less hilarious
I wish
They would
Go away

August 24, 2021 at 09:34AM

Writing made physical

I wish writing were not so mental. I sit here in my chair, my stomach pressed against the table’s edge. My elbows on the tabletop, leaning forward, hunched over my laptop. Trying to think of novel ways to re-write a phrase. Ten minutes already, I’ve labored over this one phrase. Twenty minutes more, I’ll likely sit here. My back aches, my elbows are red, the table has made an indentation in my torso. What if writing were physical? What if I could use my body, which has not evolved to sit at a desk, to write? I would punch a punching bag one hundred times for one sentence. I would run a mile for a metaphor. I would swim around Alcatraz and back to the Wharf for a whole chapter. I would swim the length of the west coast for a novel—around the whole continent for a good one.

Om

There are
Three parts
Of OM

AHHHH
—Open mouth wide
Release fully
All breath
OHHHH
—Narrows lips
As if to whistle
Focus sound
Drop pitch
MMMMM
—Close lips
Smiling, similar
To satisfaction
After eating
Then silence
Before repeating

August 22, 2021 at 07:28PM

Idea for a book (inspired by reading “Dharma Bums” by Jack Kerouac)

Keep a journal. Date entries. Record your actual daily experiences in narrative form. Write well, not just to get it down. Include dialogue.

Then, I can return to the journal and make a book out of it. Maybe some day’s entries were no good—they don’t have to be included. Even whole weeks, months could be cut, but I won’t know what’s good unless I write it all down.

I already have a notebook in Evernote titled “Personal Diary.” I can put the entries there. The title of each note will be the date and a detail from the day.

Currently, I am writing moments—just small snapshots, unrelated to each other. If I’m going to write something longer form, there needs to be continuity, characters, dialogue. I can achieve this by writing in narrative form in a journal, like I’ve said.

Mushrooms Trip in Elk, CA 08/21/21

There are
Three parts
Of OM

AHHHH
—Open mouth wide
Release fully
All breath

OHHHH
—Narrows lips
As if to whistle
Focus sound
Drop pitch

MMMMM
—Close lips
Smiling, similar
To satisfaction
After eating

Then silence
Before repeating

>>>

My back starts hurting, usually, when I am seated or standing for a long period.

Why am I seated or standing for a long period? To work.

Why am I heeding the call to work and ignoring the pain in my back?

>>>

Self-conscious

I do
Or say something

As I would
Alone

Without realizing
I am not

>>>

A handle pokes out from under the blanket draped over the daybed. I put the pan beneath the bed before I went to sleep last night, in case of an intruder.

Usually, I write well when I take mushrooms, or at least more creatively. I lie here, on pillows on the floor, having taken them once more, waiting for something to write about.

When I take mushrooms, I sit, lie, lounge, walk in circles, but mostly just wait in between bouts of writing. WHY CAN I NOT DO THIS SOBER?

Mushrooms remind me how to live like a child, but then I go back to living in the adult world. They treat me like one of them because I look like one of them. I often want to do things that are not customary in the adult world, either because they are just not usually done or because the law explicitly forbids it. When walking on the sidewalk the other day, I was curious about a shrub. But I could only see its leaves. I was interested in the trunk and the branches. I thought to get down on my hands and knees there on the sidewalk to have a look, but then these other thoughts came marching one after another into my mind like soldiers. One of the soldiers said, the sidewalk is dirty. The next said, someone will see you. The next said, you are not dressed like a gardener. And so I went, walking on down the sidewalk, not knowing what I would have seen if I had lifted up the skirt of the shrub.

I finish one piece of writing. I want to continue on. I have more to say—things I thought of while writing, but they were unrelated or otherwise wouldn’t fit in the prose, because of the technicality of it, and at the moment I was writing, they wouldn’t fit presently, so I carried on with whatever else and my other thoughts waiting in the queue were forgotten. But I have now remembered some of them! Alas, they are only parts. Their beauty was, and still is, in their belonging to and being placed in each of the appropriate stations inside of the whole. Now, I must forget them, maybe forever. Whether they will return to me, in my mind, is up to forces greater than me. My only choice in the matter is either to hold them and have them as they are for me now, or to let them go and know, twofold—that they may never return to me, but also that new and different others may come to fill their absences. Consistently faced with his choice, how deep shall I go with any one thought? How much time shall I spend with her? Does she have more to teach me, more to say? Or might I learn more from others—different, younger ones? Are my wishes the only ones to be considered in this matter? Now I am thinking no longer of thoughts, but of my relationship with my girlfriend.

On my knees, on the rug, I become aware of the classical music playing. I close my eyes, raise my arms in the air above my head, bend them at the elbow, twirl my fingers, curve the side of my body into a bow, and dance to the music—slowly, softly. I had a thought that someone might be watching. The possibility that someone might be watching made me ask myself, should I be dancing in this way? And now other thoughts come of this. First, we are at a cabin in the woods, just my girlfriend and I, and it is unlikely that anyone is watching. Second, if someone were watching, why should I dance any differently or stop? Third, why is it that someone else watching makes me consider whether I should or should not be doing something? Not even them ACTUALLY watching, just the THOUGHT that they MIGHT be makes me second-guess the way in which I am dancing, alone in a cabin in the woods. Perhaps it is too feminine—the way my side bends into a bow and my fingers twirl. I am a man. Should I, therefore, not be dancing like a woman?

As a writer, I think of myself as such—as being one, a writer. When I write, if it seems like it might be becoming a piece that will be well-received—like a young boy shows early athletic promise and might grow up to become a great baseball player—then the thought that it might be so interrupts me while I have not yet finished with making the piece whole. I think to myself, what if so-and-so reads this, or if they publish me in such-and-such magazine? And then what will that mean for me? Riches, fame, and all the other gifts that are usually given to the main character in a story that ends well. But it interrupts me, this dream of glory, as I am still in the act of making the darn thing.

I worry that I can only write well when I have eaten mushrooms. I don’t believe this is true. I think I write well even when I have not eaten mushrooms. It is the READING that is different after having eaten mushrooms. Everything I read seems to be right and true, fantastic and new. It seems this way whether I have written it or someone else has. When I am writing, I am also reading what I have written. On mushrooms, what I am writing sounds wonderful. I have had this experience several times—eating mushrooms, writing, deeming it well-written. Thusly must the belief, first, and worry, next, have arisen.

Now, as an aside, being an aside because I believe my previous thought has concluded well where it has, still, I might add: I have read, while on mushrooms, what I wrote, while NOT on mushrooms, and found it to be the work, not of a genius but, of one relatively advanced in their craft. I have also read, while NOT on mushrooms, what I wrote, while on mushrooms, and found it to be the work of a lunatic who aspired to write, discovered mushrooms, thought they might aid in his writing process, ate them too often, and never stayed sober long enough to master the intricacies of the craft, which can only be learned by long hours of bored, tedious, and frustrated trying-and-failing, interspersed with reading the greats and wondering—of some of them, why can I not write as well as this myself; of others, are they really as great as everyone says they are?

While writing on mushrooms, many thoughts come to mind while I am already engaged with writing a specific one. Some of these I can forget easily, as they showed a little promise of extraordinariness. Others, those that show more promise, make it difficult for me to decide—between cutting short my current engagement (writing a thought that, before, what the same as this other one than I now consider, a question mark) and ignoring it to delve deeper where I am already standing, up to my knees in disturbed dirt, digging deeper still, to find any stones unturned. They linger, like a first taste that forbids a full bite. With one hand they wag a finger in front of my face that says “no, not yet.” The other hand they hold out, palm facing up. They are asking for something. A price. The price I must pay if I wish to bite into, chew, and mull over the thought to which I have not yet committed. The price is the one with whom I am already. Both, I cannot have. I must place the one I have, still an infant, into the upturned palm. I will never know what the youngling might have grown up to be. But, oh! Here is another, newer, brighter. If only shining its light to attract, if the flame cannot stay lit, if it proves to be no better than the one I had before, then I will go searching once more, and again—the two hands: one, wagging its finger; the other, an upturned palm.

I feel that one of us will win, and the other must then lose. Why must it be this way? I read recently that, based on our evolutionary predispositions, the man desires to spread his seed far and wide, while the woman wants to retain a man to provide for and protect herself and any children they may have together. Is this true? How can I say? But let’s pretend that it is. The desires of the man and the woman are opposing. The women cannot retain the man while he continues to spread his seed. Or, maybe … Already I see margins of possibility in which the man and the woman, in the context of a monogamous relationship between them, must not necessarily be opposing forces. Alas, here I am on the ground floor, writing my own thoughts, while my girlfriend is upstairs writing hers (I can hear the keys clacking on her keyboard), and we are breaking up. It’s not a surprise. We’ve been talking about it. At one point, she wanted me to pack my things and leave that same day. Somehow we ended up here together in this beautiful cabin nestled in the forest of Northern California outside of town called Elk. And I return to my beginning question: if we are to separate, why must it feel like one side is winning and the other is losing? Because one side chooses to end it while the other wants it to continue. There is the opposition: one wants it to end while the other wants to continue. In this situation, both cannot have what they want. Unless, maybe the relationship can transform. One wants it to end, but maybe it doesn’t need to end on the whole. Would the other be okay with a few modifications, in part? Could the relationship still live on, after the modifications? This makes me realize: relationships are always transforming. Because they involve individuals who are always changing. What happens when one changes in a way that the other doesn’t want them to? Then it becomes complicated. She asks, were you this way when I met you? How could I not have seen it? All my other relationships were the same way. Blaming—me, herself, past boyfriends. But the facts remain: people change, relationships transform. Now, the question is: how do we navigate the transformation?

I thought I heard her crying. I couldn’t tell if it was just the music or if she really were up there whimpering, sniffling. I got up and walked over to the steep steps (almost a ladder) of the old-water-tower-turned-cabin. I grabbed the railing and climbed up. There she was—her caramel skin in contrast to the white sheets, her curly hair slightly frizzy (as it gets when she’s been rolling around in bed). I asked how she was doing, if she was okay, or something like that (I forget exactly what I said). We skated, as we tend to, like those water bugs, along the surface, before descending. Then she told me that she HAD been crying. I told her, oh, I’m sorry, well, that is why I came up here. Then she said oh, did you hear me? You couldn’t have. It was only a tear. I wasn’t sobbing. I told her about how I thought I had heard crying in the music. We marveled. I must have FELT her crying, somehow, even though I wasn’t actually hearing her. She was crying because she read a few pages out of a book she found on the steps by a Vietnamese author about how he was thankful for his mother and for memories of when she would take him to the mall. My girlfriend’s mother is Vietnamese. I suspect that is why she felt a closeness to this particular book. She said, “I realized I want to cry more. I want to have things in my life that make me cry. Not just shallow melodrama. You know? Like (and she preceded to describe what she meant and how she felt in words that were perfect, but all I can remember is …) things that make you feel like you’re on the brink of being alive.” The moment was sublime, terribly so. I, knowing our relationship was ending, one tear already on my cheek and more welling. Her, being beautiful in her body as she always is, but then also the depths and intricacies of her emotions, as well as her lexical prowess to communicate them. The trees through the window behind her, bending in the wind, a glint on the glass making their green look red. Ah! What is a man to do? Other than audibly call for his deity, cry more than he already has, and shield his eyes, only to pry them back open, unveiling the portal to his heart, inviting in the moment that is more than can be captured by any artist, no matter how skilled, nor how numerous his forms. Only I, as I was in that moment, the material world as it was, chakras balancing, energy fields in opposition, formless feelings floating, angels singing—all conspiring to torture me, as if all the potency of life were distilled down into one drink, one swallow. As soon as it touched my lips I sputtered and spat. If it were spread out and watered down, so that I could have had time to process, make rational, cram into my own understanding—then I could have taken it. As it was—me, her, and the trees through the window behind her—I had to run. In this case, I slowly descended the steep steps, holding onto the railing. It took some willpower and a great deal more conditioned concern for my bodily well-being not to suddenly fling myself down them as fast and as recklessly as my heart and soul were fleeing. But no matter the manner in which I did, I ran, nonetheless. I ran like I always do. I ran like a thief into a field clutching above my head the bouquet of flowers she had given me, petals flying off of them as I went. See, I’ve never been able to stay put there and just listen to her. As soon as she starts being beautiful (which is immediately, and always) I run away with derivatives, hand-me-downs of her to render into my heart, so that others will pay me, praise me, or whatever will validate the male equivalent of female beauty. I do this, even as I am somewhat aware that I am running in a wide circle, the path of which is laden with obstacles, deceits, let-downs, repetitious exhaustion, self-loathing, and various other trials which must be faced by a man working his way up through the world to be worthy of a woman at the top—all of this, I persist in putting myself through, even as the woman of my dreams lies here in bed asking me, why will you not listen to me? Why will you not come to bed? Why will you not stay?

*** This prose above has the same idea as the poem, HER HONEY. I need to return to that poem. The idea is there. It is true. But it is not yet well-written.

When I forget to breathe, I cannot make up for it by taking rapid deep breaths, which is my habit. I failed, was resultantly worse off, may even suffer lasting damage, but there are some mistakes in the past that I can’t set right presently. I can only learn from them and avoid making the mistake again.

I am realizing, now that I’ve come down from the mushrooms high but still writing, that STAYING PRESENT is important for writing well. This is a partial answer to a recurring question: why do I write better on shrooms, compared to being sober? When I write sober, it usually goes like this: I am inspired by some sensory input, thought, or feeling, and then I formulate an IDEA thereof. I thus interrupt the otherwise seamless flow from stimulation to words, by having an IDEA of the stimulation before I begin to write. I end up writing about an impostor, the intermediary idea. While on shrooms, I stay present. I write about whatever comes up. And I write honestly, rarely second-guessing.