Excerpts from My Journals
[Dated Spring 1999. The beginning of a short story I never finished. Perhaps it was supposed to be a novel.]
Life is frivolous. Fear always lurks in the slightly obscured parts of his mind. A fear of an imminent catastrophe that will make his entire life meaningless. An hour from now, the sun will rise, streaking the sky with the tears another day brings, staining the darkness with streams of light. Anyone can write a beautiful sentence, but it is something else to make that beauty mean something. And who can do that? In his mind the question echoes… The answer seemed all too simple. No one could. Beauty was dead because his soul no longer had a grasp of the subtle emotion. Meaning was just violence inflicted upon a coincidence of happenings and ideas and the churning of lust and fear and desperation. It was the creation of a story out of life, and he knew it was futile. So, he went about his business in denial of his self and his life.
All his thoughts are well-crafted lies meant to deceive their continuous observer. And he falls for them, falls hard, believing in love and faith and all those other meaningless concepts and dedicates the pain that some would call his life to them. Most of all, he dedicates himself to story. Stories cause his eyes to glisten and smiles to creep onto his face and fear to surface from the depths of his being. Stories, simple and complex, all end up being simple. Boy becomes man, girl becomes woman, an adult grows into something better or perhaps worse. He delights in these lies that throw light on the darkness illuminating the inner emptiness of whatever there is. They bring him joy though—or he thinks they do?
The sky is pale with night as he begins to write, typing out his words on a glowing screen in the darkness of a room. Sleep beckons, calls, drags him like the tide pulled him out to sea as a child; trying to drag him under. For whatever reason, some delusion of inspiration, he stays awake, continuing to try to resurrect his soul. Writing will be his resurrection. Writing will be his salvation. Writing makes water wine and wine blood. Writing is his life, or all of it that he cares for. Writing is the wound he hides in when fear beings to creep into his heart.