Waiting Games and Words-Gone-Mad
ahhh these last two weeks
Good morning. It has been a time, but to the casual observer little would distinguish these past 12 days from any other stretch. I finished the first draft of that manuscript I alluded to, capped out at the moment at 221 pages, and I’m frankly proud to have revealed myself to be someone who will cope with anxiety by writing that much in just a little over a month. I’m surprised how strong parts of it genuinely are, because frankly, I’d have expected drivel under such circumstances. There’s really no more spiritually-solidifying feeling than reading something over and thinking, “Shit, was that me?”
I’m currently on the waitlist for Columbia University’s MFA program, where one of my literary idols, Victor LaValle, teaches. I don’t know what’s going to happen, or when the last of the Dream Programs on my list will get back to me, but confirmation that my writing is worth reading by people who have never been charmed by me personally (woe to them) has begun to alter my perception of what I’m capable of.
The other day, while walking past the Mochi doughnut shop, I suddenly stopped in my tracks and started crying with relief, because it was only right then that it hit me. The actual writing, my actual writing, got me this far, and I heard a voice in my head that sounded like a friend who omnisciently knew my entire life, heard everyone who’s told me from the age of 6 that I was good I was good I was good. At writing. I was crying because I heard this voice say:
They weren’t just being nice, they didn’t feel sorry for you, and they didn’t just want to get in your pants.
This trifecta of unconscious fears encompasses different people, but across that modest list, you’ve got everyone. This doesn’t mean no one’s being nice. It doesn’t mean, sigh, that no one’s ever stupidly and offensively felt sorry for me, and it certainly doesn’t mean that no engaged readers of my stories have ever wanted to get in my pants, but the point is, that wasn’t why they said I was good.
I didn’t think of myself as Good because I can’t imagine someone listening to an audio version of my work and starting to cry based on strength of craft alone, based on a sort of cosmic understanding that THIS, this is what words can DO, and I? taught them that? There are people who are that good. They have me experiencing this on the regular. I can’t do that! Therefore I’m terrible. That might be a little bit of black-and-white thinking that needs to yeet out the window like most dichotomies. (Isn’t it sad that we don’t say yeet anymore? Keep it alive!)
Even trippier to know that the works that are actually grabbing people on these graduate committees are not the novel exerpts I so anxiously picked out but two of the (tamer) erotic horror stories among an unfolding collection I wrote late at night in a somewhat ecstatic state over a period of several months. I would never have written either of them if I was writing what I know. Write what you want.
I spent a lot of years, decades even, half-alive because I was terrified of admitting what I actually want. That lifetime of shut-down got me some similarly tuned out and fearful friends and a sparse collection of published work that can’t distinguish itself too sharply among what anyone who can write a thoughtful sentence in their native language can do. Coming alive meant writing shit that would repulse a lot of people. Then realizing that none of your haters are going to be in the same place that you want to be.
Part of the reason this waiting period is so torturous is because I’ve never put myself in the position to want something this badly and risk the emotional fallout of not getting it. I couldn’t take that risk without fundamentally believing that, no matter what outside authorities decide, I’ve got something to say. I didn’t, before now. Well, correction: I’ve always had something to say, but I was deceptively afraid to say it. Because I thought being liked was important, you see. But it isn’t! A lot of people really suck! Let them all hate me, and go their own way, and make room for all the others. Like you.
If you’re on Twitter, you know that the site really is crumbling, we mean it this time, that platform has become a thoroughly morbid joke, and it’s not gonna be around much longer. Which means! Your haters in far-flung locales won’t even be able to throw barbs your way at random! They’ll have to write you whole-ass emails, and how many haters are really gonna take the time to do that? If they do, it will be hilarious, and confirm only that they’re really thinking about you. (The line between haters and lovers can be blurry.)
When I lived in Austin, back in my 20’s, I wrote an erotic poem about the apocalypse, because I was brought up to believe that behind human “civilization” there was the real shit, and that it would only come into its true wholeness once our made-up instituions and arbituary authorities collapsed entirely. Then the apocalypse actually came, a few times, and I had to question my assumption that it signaled a planetary orgasm. We’ve all seen the end of the world more than once now and wow has it been unpleasant.
I’m getting back to my youthful view that we’re going to find our freedom when we embrace total collapse. That we’re going to set each other free when we embrace total collapse. I’ve gone through periods of deep devastation only to realize, years after the loss, that I needed those ties cut. That what I thought was stability was just a barrier. I choose to believe that these kinds of experiences are microcosmic evidence that once the pain of losing The World subsides, we’ll discover we’d been making the world all wrong, and we’ll be thrilled to start again, wiser this time.
