I wrote something for you but I broke it. I’m sorry.
No childhood memories of a truly well-spent youth. When I emerged from my forge it in their own image. Did it really happen that way, I spent a few years to take back were the bad memories, not realising - okay, not caring - that I was not only wiping choose my remembrance and bend it the slate clean but wiping away. Years of raging angst pounded out in earnest self-imposed haze, few things were left. Those honour and courage and youth, for were kept alive through repetition and reinforcement. Pictures, oft-told stories. I let others to their will, perhaps I don’t know but first toke, first cut, first fuck (no not that one, none of that matters and I’ve forgotten the real one) is the way I recall the YOUTH! on my well-worn lapel. What? What’s wrong with that? Telling of it so that is the only possibility I handpicked systematically hacking away at what I thought my wasteland of unfulfilled longing finest early adulthood moments for myself, though. On many and now I can barely bring affairs any recall of said slate with nearly post-teen ex-convicts, brainless at all those stumbling fumbles and foibles. And firsts: first drink, first smoke, first trip, first fall. Tiny merit badges of fuck’s sake, those who escape relatively unscathed on which future memories are forged. I’m afraid, though. I’m afraid that a detail of actual importance, something vital to my overall well-being, my survival. Because once I’d stopped the hacking didn’t stop. Phone numbers I’ve dialed twice within my current tell the stories reach. It took on a life of back what I said yesterday. I’m great with trivialities. Never a questioning purposefully hacking glance song lyrics I’ve read while singing along. Beyond that, memory is just a pretty face, pre-teen love its own.
6 December 2007 at 8:38 pm
This is like Allen Ginsberg.
You wrestle with formidable intensity, Ani. What I hope most is that you are finding happiness right now.
6 December 2007 at 8:38 pm
That’s art, that is.
There are a few responses that come to this frazzled mind upon first - and, if I’m honest, second and third - reading of the above words:
1. It all makes a peculiar kind of sense.
2. Except it doesn’t make too much sense. But I think I can spot the joins and part of me wants to sit down, snip away at the screen with a pair of scissors, and then piece all the correct parts back together again, and see what the secret is.
3. Part of me wants to leave it just as it is, with the curious rightness of the mystery intact.
7 December 2007 at 3:34 am
Was this a late night meander? Where were you when this happened? I concur with AUW in all his points: fascinating as a Scrabble game, refitting letters over and over. Err, but in a much more positive sense. You’d probably kick my butt at Scrabble anyway.
7 December 2007 at 12:54 pm
Drodbar: Another one of my favourites, Neil. Um, Ginsberg, you know, not happiness. I don’t know anything about happiness, I’m afraid. [But thank you for the well wishes.]
AUW: You’re far, far too perceptive. This was the digital equivalent of rearranging cut up strips of words. I’m still not sure whether to reveal the original, though, a practice that would have been impossible - or at least highly unlikely - in the olden days of paper and scissors.
2ndhandsoul: No, it wasn’t a late-night meander. I’m just as confused mid-morning and early afternoon, too. And yes, I have been known to kick unsuspecting behinds at Scrabble. Mwahahahaha.
8 December 2007 at 5:16 pm
At the risk of again comparing you to that woman who spent her final moments with her head in an oven, the last time a written piece had this effect on my brain was when I read The Bell Jar, in a scene where she was trying to emote a manic rush of thought.
You try and keep to a linear sense of comprehension as you read it, but your brain just twists itself into knots and starts to throb. The harder you try to put order to the the many images and concepts you encounter, the more your head spins. Everything makes perfect sense on its own. Nothing makes sense as a whole.
8 December 2007 at 6:08 pm
Ben: I’m afraid you give me far too much credit, darling Benji, but thank you. I do love how your brain tries to create some order. Interesting, no? I’m going to break things more often, I think.
8 December 2007 at 10:41 pm
It’s very human to try and put order to things. And thus one of my failings.
6 January 2008 at 4:35 pm
[…] Following is the original, un-fucked with version of this: I wrote something for you but I broke it. I’m sorry. […]