Crying in the Library

So I made this promise to myself that when friday came, I would buckle down and do some writing. For the amount I think about writing, I don’t write a lot. I spend most of my time brainstorming story ideas, thinking about images, how a story could go. Sort of playing the story out in my head and writing the general premise down if it sounds good.

I don’t like writing without a plan because I see it as a waste of time. Just writing to “get the juices flowing” has seemed like complete bullshit to me. I like to know where I am going and craft my writing to get there. Today though, I decided to take my teachers advice and try just freewriting for 25 minutes. God I hate the term free writing. It reminds me of artsy people who have “writers block” and then it reminds me of the cliche that writing is something that is casual and not taken seriously. I have always felt like free writing is an excuse for not being able to think of a story. Boy, was I wrong.

Like I said, the prompt was to write for 25 minutes about something that you do all the time at home, and may not like, but reminds you of home. Writing and not stopping to edit was like pulling teeth. I HATED IT. I literally had to force myself to keep writing. I stopped halfway through and trashed it. I wasn’t getting anywhere.

You see, I hate putting down un-edited words because it makes me feel like the writing isn’t good. I took a bit of a break and reminded myself that no one but me was going to see this and I already know that deep down I’m full of shit and weak and pathetic anyway, so i might as well give my all even if it sucks.

I started on a new topic. I forced myself to put exactly what I was seeing down on the page, no matter how much the wording sucked. It was hard at first, but then, slowly, I began to feel what I felt in the moment I was writing about. It was REALLY strange.

I was writing about this time when I  was shoveling snow early in the morning, the day after my girlfriend broke up with me and how I had gotten so little sleep that night because I had been crying. I will be honest, the writing DOES suck, but something happened. As I wrote, I began to remember quite clearly exactly how I felt that day. It was… like i said… fucking weird. I got really really sad all of a sudden and kind of zoned into the moment. I could feel the emotional weight and intensity of the moment like I was experiencing it for the first time. Things that I had forgotten down the road came back to me…. like I remembered why I felt a certain way. I remember saying in an earlier post that I didn’t remember the emotions that go with some events in my life… maybe I do, they are just stored away deep in my mind. I thought I had gotten over the breakup, but that flood of emotion made me think… maybe it wasn’t complete resolved in my heart. Maybe I needed closure and writing could give me that.

By the end of the “writing experiment” I felt this heavy sadness on my chest and was fighting to hold back the tears. I did cry… no one noticed thank god.

I felt exactly the way I had felt in that moment. Walking out of the library (it was raining to go along with my mood), I felt sad, but also really good. It was like for a moment I totally forgot all of the details of my life (even that I have a girlfriend) and was fixed on the emotions in that moment.

I remember thinking, “Maybe I do want to be a writer.” It was a sort of a high. I felt like by the end, I really wrote something beautiful. Not beautiful because the story is structured well, but beautiful because it mattered a lot to me. I actually wrote about something that causes emotions in me. Usually I write stories with the aim to cause emotions in others. I still have this really big desire to capture exactly what I was feeling, thinking, and seeing in that moment of my life. It’s weird because usually with story ideas… i get them and then forget them later (which is why I write them down), but with this I didn’t forget it. I guess it means something to me.

I’m definitley going to start writing more after that. I’ll let you know how it goes.

-TK

Why I don’t run my hardest

So, one day my fencing teacher was like “Tk and John …. line up.”

She had been watching me fence for a while and couldn’t figure something out. I was winning, but not in the way she liked.

Me and this other kid lined up. She said, “I want you to both run your hardest from this end of the gym to the other four times. This is a race. Go!”

The other kid started out sprinting. I ran behind him. I stayed behind him for most of the time and on the fourth lap, the kid had tired himself out and I overtook him and won. I was proud of myself XD. I had conserved my energy until when I really needed it.

The teacher stood thinking, letting us pant and get back our breath. When we had, she said to the other kid “you did exactly what I wanted, thank you.” And I was like wtf? I won…. The other kid went to get some water and then she turned to me.

She said, “You didn’t run your hardest like I asked.”

“I wanted to make sure I could sprint in the end.”

“This is your problem in fencing. You don’t fence your hardest until you think you really need to and it’s keeping you back. You might get away with it here, but in competitions your going to lose to the better fencer. Your not being lazy, but your not giving your all.”

For a long time, I didn’t agree with her. I like the idea of letting other people tiring themselves  out so that I can make the final sprint in the end. But now I think I’m wrong. You have to put your (excuse the cliche) heart and soul into every moment and give everything in every single instance if you want to be satisfied with what you did at the end of the day. Like that one running quote… that goes along the lines of “If I reach the finish line and i’m still standing, hit me with a board because it means I didn’t run my best or hardest.”

Most of the jobs I do are half-assed. I think that’s something I need to work on. Like with writing. I rationalize it that I could write a really good story, but it would take a lot of effort and this story idea isn’t worth that effort. Bull shit. If you don’t have the work to prove it, you can’t do it.

Your gonna be tired as hell if you give your hardest and you might get hurt, but it will make you stronger and is really the only way to live if you wanna grow. *nod* Just wanted to straighten some thoughts out in my head.

Side note… I do ballroom dancing now… something I’ve always wanted to do. I think next I will try cooking or making a sculpture.

*departs*

Hookers outside the World Bank

So i live in D.C. now, right across from the World Bank and every time I go out on a friday or saturday night, there are all these girls in little black dresses and high heels hanging around the benches smoking, posing, and chatting. *grin* If I didn’t know any better, the entrance to my dorm would look like the outside of a brothel.

*smirk* death can be beautiful, but not when it’s in the form of a cancer stick hanging off a 19 year old’s glossy red lips.

I haven’t written on here in a long time… mostly because of time constraints, but also I just didn’t feel the pressing need…

The most obvious thing to talk about would be college… relay experiences.. etc. I don’t think anyone really cares about that though. That’s the topic of conversation when you’ve been away from a friend for a long time… it falls into the category of things like… “so, where you from? what you studying? how’s college?”

What I like to talk about here isn’t fit for dinner conversation, or at least not the pleasant kind ^.^.

I was re-reading past instant messaging conversations today and was …. quite astounded at how young I sounded and how… naive I was… and how much I have forgotten.

The beautify of human existence is the ability to survive anything with the right amount of hope and forgetting. When I was looking over these convos, I just kept thinking… was that really me saying that stuff? how come I don’t remember any of those meaningful convos?

I feel like I know nothing about my past. I know what has happened… for the most part… but I forget how it felt. It’s as though the intensity of the emotion has vanished.

I often times do forget who I am and what I have done/gone through/experienced. I guess that’s because when you’re living… you can’t carry around a lot of baggage or you will never have the strength to move forward. You gotta travel light to make a lot of distance in the race, but not too light that you won’t have the resources to provide nourishment and sustenance when you need it.

I also think that human beings have the tendency to overuse the survival instinct of being numb. We be numb in order to get through parts of our life that are less desirable… but sometimes we don’t switch it off in time. You know?

Like from the movie American Beauty. I feel like i’ve been coasting along in my life for so long, not really giving the energy and attention that each moment deserves because it’s so much easier to watch it with a passive distance.

So… I will end with a quote i want to put up here before I lose it on my computer :-P.

“She may look fit sexy and sophisticated, but after she’s naked with mascara running down her face and she’s trying to stuff her thighs into too small jeans at 3 am you realize she’s just another person trying to get by.”

Being in d.c. and seeing hookers has defs changed my point of view on good looking girls. You know? the ones in highschool who you are like… I wish i could have that… maybe cuz of her curvy hips or ass… but now it’s like, “I could have that or better cuz I got the money and there are girls willing to do anything for it.”

Oddly, it has made me come to understand why personality is soooo important. because it can’t be got anywhere else but in da person you kissin.

(yes I am black) (I do not lie I only exaggerate)