Writing Again

The writing stopped when the reading started. The chaotic reading that consumed every alternative hour. The balance was lost. The loss was missed.

And so it paused and was parked and was mute. I was mute.

It is odd that we have a finite amount of time. Some days that hits me and other days it feels like we have forever. It seems only to be a hard limit when the wall appears in my face while I'm moving at light speed.

It is time for more balance. For some damn balance. For a semblance of balance at the very least.

Lets do that then.

The Imagination of Readers

From a book I adore...

“After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colors of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer’s breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer - perhaps more.”

- Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

Heart Palpitations

You give me heart palpitations. Let me explain how. It actually makes a lot of sense. So I think of you and it's random and the thoughts pop in and I push them out and they keep coming. I make a coffee. Distraction seems my best hope. Normal tasks and hobbies and chores don't stop the ideas and repeated conversations. I make a coffee. An early dinner cooked with effort and detail. I make a coffee. Then the seeds need watering. They are peeping their tiny sprouts through the soil that looks a lot like coffee grinds. I make a coffee. Finished another book. One I'd read before when I was ten. I drank all those coffees I made. You give me heart palpitations.

Write For Yourself

Friends and strangers often ask me how I got the confidence to write and where the skill came from. I still dispute the skill part but I'm more than happy to share the key to my seeming confidence.

There are three things that allow me to write and they are all you need.

1. Write for yourself
I never write anything for the validation or love of anyone else. My writing comes from the need to articulate and sort through my thoughts. That means that when the tapping on the keyboard ends and the readings are read and the brain dump is done then my mind is at peace.

You must find your own reason to write. Simply putting words together will not result in the authenticity you need in your written voice.


2. Write a lot
So many good writers talk about the fact that they treat their writing like a job. They write from 9-5 in the way we do our day jobs. Yes, that's a tough thing to do or mostly impossible unless you are being paid for it or are funemployed. You still must write.

Find the time to write and do it regularly. It will improve your ability to write in your voice.

3. Read a lot
Nothing will teach you how to say something like listening to someone else say that. Hanging around with people who love and play with words can be complimented by reading a lot. If it has words on it and you can make it stay still enough long enough to read it then tie it down.

The best speakers and writers are huge readers. Pick up that book.


So write for yourself and do it a lot and fill the rest of the time with reading and living.

With Oils and Spoils

I painted you a picture but not with pigments. It was crafted and planned and utterly wasted since it goes unheard. There weren't haystacks of lilies or sunflowers whipped in frenzy. There weren't blocks or legends or shapes carved from stone.

It seems that all I have are words.

So the canvas was spotless. The stone was a solid block. My tools were not tangible. My creation does not pose. Everything I said was lost with no repose.

And life goes forward like a stream of tweets with only the last ten read.
And life goes forward like a wedding once the wedding guests are fed.
And life goes forward like the doggerel that is pulsing through my head.

With the message being I wrote it, only because you exist. A message that doesn't do feelings because that is not what I do. Maybe a message that will sink in and see me safely through.

Break it

You're walking down a leafy sunny street in the middle of the holidays. Most people are eating lunch with their families and aren't out and about. Those you do see nod and smile. They aren't friends but you have seen them around and they do the nodding thing and you do the nodding thing.

There is an actual friend-type person that you are on the path to running in to. It's a planned rendezvous. A tryst of sorts.

You keep asking yourself "What makes a friend?" How does that label get assigned and attached and maintained? Songs tell you a friend is someone who walks in to your house like they live there but the police will do that in cop shows you see on TV so it doesn't quite sit right. Others give analogies of gardens and tending flowers but your vivid imagination extends that to weeds and barren soil and other parts of the analogy where worms turn the soil to better it but are still icky.

This person that has been placed in your line will soon be in your sight. The thing with sight is that you don't always see what is in front of you. There is a plumish hue when he appears. As if the sun is setting in his stead. There is a warmth that you feel when you see photos of people having picnics. Not that cuddly corny warmth but the feeling of the sun on your skin, even when all you are doing is looking.

You call him an actual friend but your actual friends sigh and roll their eyes when he ultimately emerges in the conversation. Those are the deep and meaningful talks resulting from too many ciders and an unyielding urge to tell someone or anyone or maybe an actual friend, about him.

It is nothing new to you that he controls the entirety of who you are when you two are "us". At first it seemed like he was leading you in a tango. Sexy and strong and dominant and all the time caring that you are ok. He will look after you, so you follow.

You aren't sure when but the dance became more like a fight. You both wrestled and he slapped you. He loved it. You broke a little. Then you danced again.

Each time, you saw the glow as he approached and forgot the darkness when he left. Always thinking he brought the sunshine with him when he came and realising he brought nothing but the darkness which he left with you when he'd gone.

This will be another crossing of paths. Maybe a paving of cow paths. It always happens and starts to feel like that is what happens. You cringe. That should paint you a sign. That should bend the neon tubes that illuminate a Vegas like detour but you will tread the road.

He comes and talks and it wouldn't matter if you are there. You are inconsequential. Did you want a coffee? My shout. He talks through you and you feel the sound reverberate over and around and fizzily through your particles. What once felt like a buzz, now feels like a zap.

He leaves and there you are again walking through an empty suburb with trees. Yes, trees. There are people. They are strangers. There is sun in your eyes and you sneeze. Everyone is locked in their house with families that they tolerate. You wonder why it is getting so dark.

Break it. Break it so it is so broken that it can never be fixed again. Break the trees and their damn streaming rays of star light. Break the path you walked over and over again. Break your shoes that you walked it in. Break your rose coloured glasses and throw the jagged lenses in the street so car tyres will be punctured. Break it all.

Then start again.

Who you are

I write to you but I don't think you read it. It could be because I don't know who you are. Maybe you read it and wonder who it is that I write to but never think it is you because of course, I don't know who you are.

Absense

I stopped writing when I found you.

It took a long time to work out why I stopped writing. It wasn't you. Don't flatter yourself. My drivers are intrinsic.

It was the lack of pain.

The pain gave me a certain kind of agony that no one else can know but someone who knows exactly how to explain their feelings. If you have the words to describe it then you should be able to solve it. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Sometimes seeing something with clarity only means that you can watch in instant replay, the person who stabs your naked body repeatedly while you float above it feeling the knife as it slices your soul. Bleeding nothing but the essence of who you are.

Pain leads to art. Pain leads to music... paintings... drawings... words of whim... words of wisdom. Pain is truth. Truth is pain. There is nothing more honest that the rare raw bruised feeling that life leaves you with after you've stood and fought or loved or represented and then lost.

A friend once told me that there is no losing in life. That life is not a competition. Any true perfectionist will explain to you that losing is a game against yourself. It is the motivation to be more than you are and then the inability to reach an _apparently_ unattainable goal. Try tell the perfectionist that they can not reach that apple and they will make you sit in a comfortable chair as they prove you wrong.

The words come from the tearing of your being. They are the beauty you can only show when the lights are out, the vodka has been poured and the world has forgotten you.

Accept it as me

Tonight, I sit am sitting here writing and writing and tweeting and blogging and just writing. There is so much beauty in it. There is beauty in pain. The agony of the soul is a paintbrush.

There are times when I am happy and slightly lost. I don't quite know what to do with it.

Then there are moments when I reach for happiness and it's just out of reach. It eludes me and then I realise that I'm not really trying. Maybe there has to be a little hurt to make it worth trying. Maybe one day I will find another driver. Until then, I think I'll make the most of the pain and try to let it make the most of me.

Don't be sorry for me. Smile at that fact that I accepted the fragility of me. The beauty that is a broken Damana. A star that burns it's hottest, right before it implodes.

Accept it as me.

Sownd Mind

The Carriage

This is pure awesome. xkcd mashed with my favourite angsty girl poet. Love it!

Quote Me Tweet Me Kiss Me Beat Me

"After all, all he did was string together a lot of old well-known quotations."
-- H.L. Mencken on Shakespeare

One Liners

It is easy enough to be twitty. Yes, that is witty on Twitter. People think there is such limitation to being forced to sum it up in 140 characters but they are wrong. You actually have 120 characters so that you can be retweeted (your tweet copied in to someone else's tweet) and it isn't actually that hard.

Say it. Don't explain it. Own it.

What is actually difficult is writing an entire blog post with a beginning , middle and end. Holding the readers attention is much harder when it involves scrolling. I used to be thrilled when I saw a random tweet retweeted over and over again by a hundred people but now I feel very meh. It often takes no effort and there is little reward in praise for an off the cuff remark. Not saying that a speedy retort isn't brilliant but it's passing. Lost in the stream. Giggleworthy but not noteworthy.


Twitter killed the video star

For a while there, there was nothing to blog about because everything was half exclaimed on twitter. It was a lot like standing on a wooden box and calling out the headlines for the local rag. You get the idea that something is going on and you think that you should read more about it but that doesn't always happen. Just like a low cut top, the promise is all there is for most people.

I'm not going to let Twitter silence me with all my own noise.

Summarise in 140 characters or less

Must blog more and give substance. That means tweeting less.

My most reteweeted Tweet recently

"Never believe a man who tells you that you are enchanting, unless you live in a fairy tale and he is the narrator. #lifelessons"

-- Damana Madden

Set me free

On a lazy Sunday afternoon, I had all the time in the world to sit and contemplate what my mistakes are.

Over-think, I do.
Punish myself more than anyone else ever could, I do.
Find answers, I often do.

Today's over-analysis involved trying to understand how giving too much and living for someone else and not yourself could possibly be a bad thing. No matter how progressive the society we live in, women are told to live for their husbands or their careers or their children or all three at once. One thing I know we are not openly encouraged to do is to live for ourselves.

There is a haunting pain that shadows me daily. Some moments are blocked by distraction or entertainment. Some days I punch a volleyball so hard in the hope that I will tire it out and it will recede. Nah, it doesn't.

It is impossible you see, to run from yourself. When it is your existence that causes you to ache then continuing to exist means learning to harness that hum and use it for something else. For me, that is creativity. Slapping paint on a canvas and over some of the floor. Drawing a character that escapes my imagination and filling in outside the lines. Writing a morbid tale of reflective inner sadness is my way of putting it outside myself. Saying to that pain, if you are going to stay around then at least be useful in some way.

As far as I can see, me and my pain are on this journey together. One day we may part ways but while we are here there has to be some way to live with each other.

Unlike my failed marriage, one of us can not run away and think only of ourselves. Unlike my past broken friendships, one of us will not walk out and tell the other that they can't be bothered by them anymore. Unlike leaving a job you agonise about attending when you roll over in the morning, there is no peaceful resignation.

Life gives you one of those suck-it-up moments. Tame the beast or allow it to break you. Trust me, if I didn't allow that monster of a husband to break me then I'm sure not letting some negative thought tear me limb from limb.

You guys have to let me write my suicidal fiction and paint my horned demons without fret. Let me explore the darkness in search of the light. Support me if I fall and celebrate me when I don't.

I know it is only because you love me. I love you dearly too. You are my foundation. My family and friends. I will be ok but I will do it my way. That is Damana.

My New Project

I'm writing fiction now. My first project is to write a short story in 7 parts in 7 days.

It's here, if you are interested.

Feel free to suggest ideas for the plot or anything else. I have some idea of where it is going but it's already very much crowd sourced.

Ghosts

So many ghosts. I see his ghost on the stairs, in the kitchen and even when I roll over at night. He sits in the study on his computer, on the couch he reads, on the buses that pass he waves and smiles and when I call out to him he disappears.

-- Damana