It took four beers to write the first one of these. That’s inefficient, I think. Or unhealthy. Or both. They’re not mutually exclusive. Four beers per nine-hundred and fifty-ish words is probably a bad rate. Writing for the sake of it is hard. I feel like I need a thesis, a scheme, a theme, and a storyboard. What’s worse is I feel like I have all of those things floating around up here. Then I go to put pen to paper and find myself suddenly and violently exposed. Like I desperately need proof of something no one but me cares about. Like I need to make this more than it is. A glorified journal. A word I write with unfounded venom. Journal. Like I’m better than that. Like it’s even something to be better than. Like it doesn’t take me four beers to write not even a high school essay length blog post that no one asked for. Like I’m not mean. Like I’m not jealous. Like I wish I could just write something and put it away. Stow it. Shut the fuck up. Like I wish I would stop using italics. Like I wish I wasn’t afraid of making an impact or like I wish I could just do things for the sake of it. Like I wish I didn’t have to assign meaning to the things I create. Like it’s going to fill whatever gap I clearly feel is there.
It’s hard not to start over after opening with that. Hard not to burn the page in the sink and mutter, “Christ, that was edgy” under my breath to myself as I fail to clock the ironic melodrama of my sink burning ritual. I’m writing by candlelight at two in the morning and listening to “Iris” by The Goo Goo Dolls. Not exactly setting myself up for success on the moodiness front. Plus my dog died on Saturday.
Sorry. Emotional whiplash is the only literary device I have. It’s cheap, but it’s all I got. And it works I guess. Depends on your definition of success. It’s like jump scares in a bad horror movie. All I have to do is tell myself that reaction equals genuine interested engagement. And if we both believe it hard enough maybe it’ll be true. Maybe that’s my big issue. Writing feels manipulative. But when a bad movie pulls a cheap trick it’s with a profit motive in mind, and I’m not telling you about my dead dog for cash. Not yet. I’d hardly call what I’m doing here “art”, but it probably fits someone’s definition and so for the sake of the rest of this post I’m going to call it that. I don’t have anything groundbreaking here. Capital has poisoned and undermined my perception of the purpose of art and eroded its most natural and emotional foundation. It has beaten into me the premise that art must exist for any reason beyond that which is so intuitive it’s easy to forget; That art exists for the same reason life does: to be witnessed. And I am often convinced, unless I consciously remind myself otherwise, that there must be some grander scheme or purpose to my writing. To my art. To my life. Like there could possibly be a grander scheme or more fulfilling purpose than to be seen, and it is for this reason that I do not despair upon the prospect that perhaps this is all there is. If there is no higher meaning than that then I can rest assured in that I am empowered to provide that witness, and therefore some small piece of that highest meaning, to others. And that they may continue to do the same for me.
So as I remember my family dog and the life he had I feel a multitude. As I remember his wide and wondrous pupils as they shone each with their own inky night sky of stars I wonder perhaps if he saw the same stars reflected in me. If we were not sent as sentient agents of this supposedly cold and unfeeling universe to be feeling and warm to each other, if our most grand purpose was not to peer ourselves within each other and to recognize that we will always return to that which we ultimately belong, the home we felt together and the beautiful and violent impact we made upon each other, for the sake of each other; if my final act of love for him should not be to allow his departing to shake, and impact, and inspire me without such cynical concerns of emotional manipulation which are planted there by those who would sell these most fundamental truths I have stated for a dime, to not allow that impact to impact others though art which I create, like cosmic bodies crashing and chaining and from that destruction creating something new and life giving, then I’ll eat my hat.
I know I have more. Better ways to articulate myself feel like they’re just beyond my reach. I’ll join a writing group or take a class or something probably. All I know is that sometimes when I am saying goodbye to a good friend it feels like getting out of a warm shower. Forced to shut my eyes and count myself down before I swiftly and decisively shut the water off to embrace the soberingly cold morning. But that time and that feeling before the water goes off is worth it. And I want to write about it.
I did this one with one and a half beers.
Wrote Something 
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