Futile Horn

02.10.2005 - 3:55 am (the usual consolations)

Busy, I guess. I’ve hardly any distractions here, so mostly I just have the opportunity to get things done. I’d kill for a distraction. I mean, I like what I’ve been doing, it’s just nothing like a life. I’ve been calling them “consolations”, reading, writing, studying language. Today I thought about when I last felt like I belonged to a community of some kind. About five years. And even then I have to imagine away a few details.

I guess if you want anything interesting to happen you have to make it happen. But it’s still not asking too much to ask life to surprise you every now and again. Throw you something worth writing home about. Speaking of home, nobody from New York has called me in a month. Not even my mom.

I’m itchy about chapter two. I have drafted a good bit what happens, probably more than half, but I haven’t quite figured out where to start, how to color the thing, what to concentrate on, what to leave out. Nobody has read chapter one yet. Christ, this gnaws on my nerves. I mean, essentially the book is a series of problems, and I guess if you look at it as many small problems, none of them individually are really that bad. But there are so many! And you have to solve them all! When I hit something that sticks, I let it thaw out in the back of my head for a while, and in a day or so my brain comes up with a solution I like or can at least live with. I’m just afraid the day will come when that just won’t work, that the only way to proceed will be to knock it all back down to square one. What do I do then? I’m living on hunches that hazy ideas I haven’t completely sketched out are going to work. Weird, seemingly incongruous stuff that that when I try to explain, it sounds really ridiculous. I say, what do you think, every good idea sounds good on paper? It’ll work, you’ll see. I’m running on a refusal to admit that there could be anything other than a felicitous outcome.

Basically I know nothing will come of this. But writing a novel is impossible, and it gets done every now and again despite the fact. Besides, I haven’t a clue what else to do. I keep going because it’s too emotionally taxing to stop. I’ve gotten through more than one crisis of faith over this, I really can’t remember how.

Oh yeah, I lie to myself. I tell myself my greatest strength is turning shortcomings into advantages. I depend on encouragement from fortune cookies. I think about the time I had a fever induced hallucination when the voice of god told me he was going to be pleased with my actions. I’m betting my future on a wager I don’t actually think I’ve a chance of winning, or maybe even want to win. It’s so fucking stupid I can’t believe everyone doesn’t try to live like this.

Really, I’m proud of myself. I know a lot of people who’ve wanted to do something like this but who haven’t tried and show no signs that they will. I’ve relied solely on my own wits to blaze the way, and I feel I can truly say without reservation that I’ve nothing to prove to anybody else.

Maybe I can sleep now.

Born to play the funky céilí,
Futile Horn