What U Dying For
Casa,
After your last letter, I started thinking about my response. I went through the usual motions — -What should the title be? How can I be cute this time, if at all?
Then I realized that purely thinking about my response isn’t how we listen. Or rather, that’s not how I want to listen. That’s certainly not how Elmo and the Sesame Street gang believe we should listen. Ugh!
Despite the obvious physical and genre specific obstacles of “listening” through an electronic medium, I was disappointed with my behavior. I am often inhibited by strict adherence to the principles of dialogue in the presence of a small audience. Because I charged right in with little more than a reckless impulse to parade into this creative outlet and be cutesy, I am disappointed and somewhat anxious. And I could be being very hard on myself, or I could be inventing the plot as I go. Ugh!
I struggle with knowing my own mind. Even on good days.
And I was in a good mood when I started this. A few minutes ago, I received an email from a colleague and his observation of one class that I taught last week.
Flames. Flames on the side of my face. My frustration is not directed towards him. Again, there are many barriers between an observer and his observation, unless the observer is a naïve realist. Then, I have nothing to say about that person. Those barriers are very real even if some are small, or even if a significant set of those barriers is a posse of little haters in the observed mind. Regardless, I have been working my butt off in all of the directions, and I feel like there is only one conclusion: I am failing. I am stretched too thin. Instead of spiraling inward and landing on the lowest rungs of despair, I am choosing to write.
At once I get the pressure of having to sustain those high notes, even after the song is over. I cannot say that I have even been in your position. I was invited to read once at something Jennifer B organized. I read at open mics in Somerville, maybe twice. I went to San Francisco State University; I wrote a dissertation. I maybe read to the public a few more times that I cannot recall. Some of my lovers, partners, parents, and friends have never really read my poetry or provided me with the feedback I feel could push me towards the next level. I am not even sure if anyone has ever liked what I wrote or knew that I was writing. It is more than likely that I hid my work and myself from ever shining for fear of being exposed as a fraud or a fool or worse. I admit it; after reading some of the comments of my current cohort at CUNY on our class blogs and listening to the pragmatic advice from my MALS department chair, I fear that I just might be a fraud. Or worse. I feel like my past of evasions and not taking anything seriously that I considered doing as a career or being good at has left me stuck at the kids table. I need help, instruction, or a model of the next level. I often think that you are on that next level, and I am always struggling to get to where you are. You know your mutant power of encyclopedic knowledge of music, fearless dancing, and being an established, well-liked, and road-tested Bay Area poet.
My years in Boston were, I think, a means of establishing myself apart from that person I was at Cornell. To some extent, from you and the gang that knew me so well. I needed to reinvent myself. And I am not even sure who that was I was trying to be then or what I was doing. As Lauren so aptly concluded one day, I didn’t know what I wanted. It has taken me a long time to know and to figure out what it is I need to be doing and how I get there. And I am talking very generally; overall, I have figured out how I want to live.
Unfortunately, many years of unfocused shenanigans have put me years behind my peers and everyone who currently is courting the same goal. I am sorry if this is so unspecific. When I started at Cornell, I wanted to be a writer. And then I found out that I didn’t know shit about writing as a set of technical skills, or about the world. That was devastating. And then I developed a pretty serious weed habit, but I think that helped me regulate the enormity and severity of living in a dream eating labyrinth. It’s heartbreaking.
Needless to say, I got better. Twenty something years later, I feel comfortable enough to run with this and partner with the person I have always been chasing after. I think that’s quite an accomplishment for me. In the academic arena, I know I have to work a little harder than I would like, but I understand why. I know what I did. I acknowledge where I am at. I wish industrial education worked a little differently than it does so it could mentor, teach, and love me for coming to my senses and taking a risk and taking on more debt. It really doesn’t make much sense, but I must. I don’t know where else to turn.
See? I made this shit about me again. Kind of. Bruh, we’re doing our thing. It’s enough for now. Repeat after me: FUCK. THAT. LITTLE. FUCKIN’. HATER. We are doing and saying things about writing and the writing process, implicitly, that seem to come out like our feelings. We are writing about life. But let’s chat about the next level. I’m ready.
Just saiyan
del
