Woke Up Like This # 13

Day 13611: Rereading parts of Diary of an Anarchist, it was clear the work was good. The writing captured something fleeting, all the records did. A moment. A memory. A series of thoughts without edit. The order, the array was part of it. For writing as practiced was a selection of one word & then the next. A grabbing onto a thought and a riding it to completion. The queuing of others for later on or never.

There were two stories to every story. Learned this in a webinar on personal essays. A decade past education & still feeling not trained enough, and yet a downright rejection of doing it the way of others. The road less traveled — a fucking poetic joke — and was it pretentious to know this and say it or to know this and keep it to yourself, and what of knowing this and having a mental battle about the colloquial versus the esoteric interpretation of the text in your own writing?

Who was pretending what?

It did make all the difference, but more so because the wanderer perceived its value than for any inherent reason. And who had the time to understand it otherwise? Who had the time to read these words over those?

There was no road less traveled now. With the constant algorithmic media stream, all the roads of consciousness were traveled by one. Whom did you spend your time with? What did you do all day? What were the seeds planted in your mind? You chose them. If you didn’t choose, it was still a choice. Mind your mind and all that jazz.

The many voices. The speed to it now. How to make a grander point, the second story, inside the personal narrative. The point of the essay.

Chris said he likes when things wrap up with a point, a punch line. Chris was a stand-up comedian & a stand-up guy, but what did he know about writing? Why listen to the voices here at the expense of the voices there? Why listen to the voices at all?

Danny wrote, “Learn to find your own,” and “Sleep is important to health,” but he didn’t write anything about what to do after learning and sleeping.

What was there to do upon waking up?