2002-04-03 - 12:56 p.m.

It's about two and a half hours before work, and here I am, wasting time in front of the internet again. I'm pretty certain I should be doing something really creative and stimulating, something I will remember until my dying day, something to squeeze every last drop of life from my time-ravaged (or soon to be, so close enough) corpse. But honestly, I can't think of a thing to do. Otis Redding had a song about that experience, I think. Sitting on the Dock of the Bay. Man leaves his home in Georgia, makes it to the San Francisco Bay, and just, well, sits. Because there's nothing for him to do. A frightening, and seductive, vision. What to do when you're just waiting for death. Not that I'm just waiting for death, or even checking my watch, but I feel a certain kinship with that vegetativeness.

There's something about the routine of working, and knowing that you will be working for a long time, that encourages the mind to think of life and death and everything in between. I also just read "The Iceman Cometh". Much the same idea, really. About drunks who have nothing left but the drink, no hope, nothing but memories of glory, or of the hope of glory. They each have a vision of what they'd rather be doing, but that vision isn't strong enough to really entice them into doing it. What they really want is to drink and forget, and remember.

Eugene O Neill claimed to have written "A Long Day's Journey Into Night" to show the effects of alcohol on people, the deterioration of soul that accompanies the easy bliss. Iceman is much the same play. I drink, probably too much, but not enough to qualify as a serious problem, or even a minor one. I don't get anything out of it, except that I like the taste of beer, and I feel oddly as if I was communing with the world: everyone drinks after work, and so do I, so I must be part of something.

There is a certain oddness to my entries: I never sit down with any organized idea of what I'm going to write about, and I ramble, but it all seems to hang together by the end. Thoughts I think suggest themselves and others like them, and they end up being different sides of the same thought. I'm sure I'll realize by the end of the paragraph that this last sentence is intimately connected to my musings on drink and work. Then again, there's the fact that logic can never make sense when it talks about itself: "this sentence is false". Maybe by talking about writing, I'm moving outside my own patterns, simply by describing them.

Which is really the vain hope of literature, isn't it? That by analysing the world, and our actions, we spot the patterns, and by seeing them, break out of them. Psychoanalysis works on the same premise. The bars of our cages are made only of ignorance: we never notice the curb of our private streets, and so we never go off-road.

Of course, I've put a lot of faith in that dogma for many years, hoping that if I can stay on top of myself, if I can just analyse everything I do, I'll be able to think a step or two ahead, and maybe really live. Create my reality, rather than react to whatever reality is handed to me. I'm not entirely sure that's possible. It's a good thing I'm an actor: I'm used to behaving as if the impossible is true. I don't have the right to behave any differently, not if I want an actual excuse in case of failure. The paradox is, if I claim my reality is out of my hands, then I will ensure failure, but if I claim to be in charge of my fate, I still may fail precicely because my fate was fixed. The only way to excuse myself is to prove my powerlessness: I can't take it on faith. Funny, 6 months ago, my great break through was that I can't take success on faith either. Success and failure, my future, are unknowable: instead I have to choose a version of reality and run with it, like a belief in God. Nice to know myself and the divine are in the same boat.

It is soothing to watch the tides roll away, I won't deny it. But eventually, you have to make a choice: do you drift away with the tide, or stand back up on your tired, tired feet? And now it's time for me to go.

I have a long road ahead of me.

�

�

previous - next

[ Previous 5 Sites | Skip Previous | Previous | Next ]

This RingSurf New College Diaryring Net Ring
owned by Pretentious White-boy Musings.

[ Skip Next | Next 5 Sites | Random Site | List Sites ]