Sometimes, even with their famous kindness here, it feels a little like they have stripped us naked and thrown us out into the blizzard with a pair of tap shoes, saying, "Dazzle us. We know you can." I sat down to class yesterday, next to the other student who has the same fellowship as me, and he said, "They told me they expect more. More from us. There are expectations," and the anxiety billowed off him like storm clouds on a mountaintop. "Fuck that," I said, and we laughed, because how else can you respond to such expectations and live? This is all I've got. I'm giving you all I've got. But I walked home from class talking to myself and swearing into my scarf and the wind all the way back after a teacher's biting comments to me.
Some days, I feel like all my interactions here are with people needing propping. We all need to see that kind face and those scrunched eyebrows looking back at us and saying, "I know, I know, IknowIknowIknowIknow." There is so much fear of failure. We're writers. Of course there is.
"I feel like a seventeen-year-old asking this," says a man in class, "but is it even possible to write and be happy?" The room is silent because we are all afraid of the answer, and later I lie on the hardwood floor of my office crying, because no one tells you how to jump into those dark pools and not drown, they only tell you to dive deep and bring up treasure.
"Fuck it," being my favourite phrase of late. Fuck it. Fuck it. I think Jesus understands.
I will not can not should not shall not play that game. Fuck it. And my mouth tastes like happiness as I say it.
7 comments:
I am right there with you. I'm going to try out "fuck it." Please let it work.
I have been checking every. single. day for new words here.
YAY.
Don't trade the incorruptible for the corruptible just to get an A+... I'm not a writer, just an avid reader but isn't the threading of words on a page just as subjective as the blending of colour on a piece of canvas? In the end beauty is in the eye of the beholder(the reader)... And, as reader, and your audience,be encouraged to know your writings stir my consciousness in previously uncharted ways! Be encouraged and press on!
Thanks for the glimpse into what it would be like to receive in this way. It's a wonderful way, and yet, nothing goes or comes without the stains of fallen creatures all over it.
Yuck. But you're hanging in and encouraging others. I think that's the best kind of dazzle.
Yeah. You wrote this a month ago. I've been thinking about you, clicked over.
Can I tell you how I know this? I know it down deep. And can I tell you that it's so hard to get away from telling the world to screw you when the MFA memory boils down to a few parties, a few crushes, and a few late-night readings. It's hard to shake what it does to you, but it's worth it if your love remains for the words you're writing - if your heart gets all crazy when you're alone and the story makes you the artist.
Love it for what it is. Screw the rest. (I still feel guilty to say the F word - unless, you know, it's in a good joke or something.)
you. are. so. great. i love how the words seem to tumble from you and everything is too fast to be anything but honest. just love reading you.
thanks, good people. i can't believe you're still here. you are full fantastic.
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