Red Like Tango

Tag: writing

  • The Great Nothingness

    I don’t have a lot to write about, but I’m in a funk, and usually doing this helps. It’s a weird exercise because I never know what’s going to come out and it feels a bit like floating in the middle of a lot of water, unable to see land.

    I’ve had quite a few exhausting conversations recently. Do you ever feel that way? I don’t mean exhausting in the way that they are hard conversations. I mean you’re in the middle of a conversation and all of the sudden you feel like you’re bleeding out, and as you continue, each word ruptures another artery and something inside you grows weaker and weaker, or the bottom drops out. Like, why am I talking to [person] about [whatever it is] right now? What am I accomplishing here?

    You’ll know this has happened to me when we’re talking if I hestitate in the middle of saying something passionate, look around like I don’t know what’s going on, and speed to the end of our conversation in a near monotone, passion gone.

    Maybe that’s why I’m feeling the way I am. I have these things to talk about, but I can’t talk to all of you about everything. I talk to some of you about some things, and others of you about other things, and I’m just starting to become comfortable with this. I used to think that, in order to be authentic – a word that leaves a bad taste in my mouth nowadays – I had to be an open book to everyone. It was really tiring and really unhealthy.

    What is the impulse? What motive births it? The desire to be known, probably. I want so badly to be known. And to know. I love getting to know people. But there have to be boundaries, right? I’m bad at boundaries.

  • Don’t You Know Who I AM?!

    If you are in a small coffeehouse with wooden floors and sheetrock walls and you are on your cell phone, you should not pace up and down the length of the coffeehouse in your JCPenney wingtips talking loudly about your business plans. We understand that you are important, and that the call is perhaps important, but we are in a coffeehouse, after all, and some of us are trying to listen to Simon and Garfunkel, trying to build a bridge over our troubled waters.

  • Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

    Dear Sufjan,

    Maybe words are futile devices because you use too much of them. I know I do, so I think I understand the sentiment. I mean, there you are trying to express love, and it’s not happening. Here I am, staring down my screen, reaching deep, nothing.

    That’s it, right? Nothing. That’s what is so scary. The Great Nothingness. The suspicion that way down deep… what? What is down there? Void?

    I sure hope not. But as long as you and I keep covering it all up with words, where are we getting, really? What are we discovering?

    Your laconic fan,
    Ian

  • Invierno

    This is the first day of December, and today, for the first time, it snowed. Agreeable symmetry, if you ask me.

    I shouldn’t have slept as long as I did today. There’s something in my bones that can tell when it’s snowing or raining – a barometer, say – and today, my bones communicated with my subconscious like this:

    “Hey Subconscious. Um. You wanted us to tell you when it was snowing. Um. It’s snowing.”
    “Thank you, The Bones. That’ll be all.”

    Then, my snooty, suit-and-tie-wearing subconscious, who had rolled from the computer over to the phone in his too-expensive rolling leather chair, rolled back to the computer and sent an e-mail to my concious:

    “ATTN: Conscious

    Problem: The Bones informed me it is snowing currently.
    Consideration: The Boss likes to sleep when it is snowing.
    Submission: When the alarm sounds, signal The Hands to shut it off quickly, and I shall take him back under for another hour.

    Efficiently yours,
    Subconscious

    sc

    P.S. Absolutely loved that sweet-potato casserole. Send the recipe?”

    My conscious found this submission consonant with his lethargic leanings, and I got up an hour late. I made up for it, though, by working until seven this evening. Of course, you are probably thinking Ian! here you are, writing trite, inconsequential things instead of sleeping so you can be up early tomorrow! Actions! not words.

    Loud and clear. Here I go.

    (He didn’t send the recipe because my subconscious said “shall” instead of “will,” and he felt that needed punishing. Also, the lethargy.)

  • November

    i keep forgetting to carry notecards around with me on which to write my incredible ideas.

    this is a major problem i have: poor memory. a friend told me a few days ago about a conversation i had with her. i stared at her blankly while i desperately searched the reaches of my memory. no dice. maybe it wasn’t an important conversation, but it sure sounded like one. i want to start remembering things again. i was good until the drugs broke me. it’s a horrible thing to have the presence of mind to see memories slip away, to be unable to choose which to keep. but that’s progress in itself, right? seeing it? before, i didn’t realize i didn’t remember. well, i did, but i was too high to care. i guess i do remember more now than nine months ago. i’m just impatient.

    in other news, november was a really good month, and some congrats are in order:

    congrats to my new brother-in-law, for gaining an incredible partner. also for being a bigger nerd than jonathan (earnest basilisk soliloquy).
    congrats to my sister, for taking a name of equal caliber to nix.
    congrats to me, for not getting high in missouri for the first time in several years.
    congrats to nicky and angela, for being the best people with whom to take a road-trip and, duh, be friends.
    congrats to mr and mrs pope, for world’s most outrageous bonfire and world’s most thankful thanksgiving, respectively. we didn’t burn down the neighbors’!

    here’s to the gradual healing of all wounds, by the goodness and power of my Lord Jesus.