Apr 21, 2020
Among Dogs & Angels
(Excerpt from the Winter on Cape Ann and Other Stories / Go West.)
Production seemed to be my reaction to the removal of consumption. There was very little I consumed in the days when I was learning how to exist. Previously I had relied on the masses to define my motives and actions. I did always have my own unique way about things and it did always end up with my succeeding in ostensible ways. Now was so different. Time was my most valuable asset and I aimed I think to always make good use of it. To waste time could have been the worst offense. Not consuming freed up an awful lot of time both in the act itself and the decision-making time and the afterglow as well and also in the acquiring of resources to support. I still found it necessary to relax, reboot and I found everything still provoked much thought. Even music now that aspects of the physics were internalized, I began to think more about other aspects. I barely watched any moving pictures and when I did watch Californication I found myself paying attention to the writing. The story. I read, still, and not as much as I had. There were authors and works I had to or rather found myself staying away from — Kerouac, Dostoyevsky, and Hemingway were the ones I avoided. I needed to read stories and not outright philosophies I think. Then it still felt relaxing. It was a puzzle, not a didactic and I did feel a lot of it was just me staying away from works which would influence me too heavily, naturally. I just didn’t feel like reading them, though I knew I agreed with all they had to say. Maybe it had more to do with staying away from advice. I didn’t want to listen to anyone. I had listened a lot and received advice of all sorts and I needed to learn what I had to say. What I thought and felt was the only thing I had to offer and the only thing to do was figure out how to express it in the most true, unfiltered way possible and I still wasn’t certain where fun fit in.
I felt I’d touched on this idea much — my lack of making fun in numerous situations. I think I just lost a lot of the ability to make small talk. Seemed like an expected result of being a wordsmith and my art was so close to the method in which everybody communicated, I found it hard to turn off, or maybe it only had to do with exploring the mind, examining what went on inside, which was all there ever was. it was all there ever was. was it. it was.
