Posted by trouble on March 7, 2002, at 13:46:16
In reply to Re: Don't try to tell me you're not one of them » trouble, posted by JohnX2 on March 7, 2002, at 3:42:08
>
> Hi John,
hi trouble,you know what? I took the same remedial math class 12 times in college before I finally passed it. I used up all my finanicial aide and still owe 30,000 in student loans. I dropped out of Jr. College when the money ran dry, and I never got passed remedial (10th) grade math. Am I a genius or what? I want desperately to go back to school, but college math is included in every degree plan and so are statistics in the psych plans and I just don't know if I'd be putting myself thru hell again for nothing.
So some people have math, some have words, and rarely the twain shall meet, at least that's what I've heard.
I've been considered slow all my life, by peers, bosses and educators, and the writing thing is like my secret weapon in the face of that degradation. Many people think it's okay to treat "slow" individuals w/ contempt, and I think I decided as a child to compensate by putting all my eggs into the self-expression basket. One day you'll see, I'll tell everyone how badly I've been treated, been misunderstood, and they'll feel sorry for me, you'll see, etcOne leading theory about artists has to do w/its compensatory origins and I agree w/ it in part. Artists are losers, they develop creatively to make up for their defects. Beethoven was deaf and so forth.
As for the creative process itself, it's inexplicable, I know I can have a writers block that lasts 2 years, when everything I type turns to melodramatic shit, and then there are times like this, when I couldn't type a wrong word if my life depended on it.
The way a piece comes about has alot to do w/ my job-I clean houses for a living, and you know that state called flow, when your movements are so repetetive and automatic that
your senses just activate your muscle movements and pass up the cerebral cortex? That's what happens when I clean, meanwhile my mind is sorting out ideas and sentences that seem to connect and lead to something, and eventually a theme emerges. This is usually when I start cleaning frantically so I can get out of there and come home and type, before I forget whatever it is I have to say. Once I start writing another kind of flow kicks in and I lose all track of time, one sentence causes a zillion re-writes and the next thing I know the ashtray is overflowing w/cigarettes and the sun's coming up. If I never publish a word in my life, I'll still be gratified that I have the capacity to check out of my surroundings this way, and go someplace that welcomes and redeems me. Redemption is what it's about, really, I have no right to be here and nothing to give the world, no, it's true. Writing is the only dream left.I keep waiting and hoping that one day soon a character will pop up inside me and I'll write a short story, but so far nothing. I know they're in there, I keep telling myself, and when my characters are ready they'll reveal themselves, maybe they'll bring me a double latte and plot synopsis, but, for now, all I have are these personal essays in me and I'm bored w/them.
If I can go on w/ this self-centered and lengthy reply I'll tell you about one of my deepest depressions, that got me into therapy again.
Two years ago I read a book by the teacher who taught my heroes how to write, Joyce Carol Oates and Raymond Carver among others. Every interview they mention this teacher, John Gardner, so I started reading his books. He says wonderful things about the nature of a writer that seem to describe me to a "T". He has also said that it doesn't matter what kind of day job you get, because everything makes you equally miserable when you can't write for a living. He was just a really cool and controversial guy, on the MTV animated sitcom DARIA there was a scene where Daria was sitting at the breakfast table reading one of his books called ON MORAL FICTION, which was sheer moralizing, which he later recanted, once he grew up a little bit. He died at 50 in a motorcycle accident, how cool is that?One of his books, called The Art Of Fiction is a stern and pitiless manual for would-be novelists, to help them decide if they should pursue creative writing or leave it to the talented and get a real job.
Well needless to say I fall in the latter category, I mean there were exercises at the end of the book, there were test questions like this:Describe a barn by a man who just found out he lost his son on the battlefield. Say nothing about his son.
Describe a sunset by a 56 your old woman who's husband of 30 years just traded her in for a trophy wife. Say nothing about her circumstances.Write a single spaced three page sentence w/out cheating, no commas or these things, sorry John I forget what they're called- ; 3 page sentence, and it better make sense.
He also said if you're not reading Tolstoy and Faulkner and Shakespeare on a regular basis you're not a writer. Bam bam throughout the book, I'm sure you can find some other equally noble way to earn a living but if you can't produce a story the way a pianist produces a concerto, that's a paddlin.
When I finished the book I walked around the city wondering if I had the courage and nobility to kill myself. This mood persisted for weeks til I started seeing my current psychologist, who had to sit listening to me read 3 chapters from
The Art of Fiction before I'd listen to a word he said.I wrote letters to all my friends and said please don't ever talk to me about writing again, as Christ said before me "It is finished." I got back letters saying try. Just try to stop. And remember, there are alot of writers in print way worse than you. They're right of course.
So at this point I'm just waiting to find out whether or not I have it in me, despite the admonitions of the good professor. I tell myself that since being w/ the PSB community I've "worked" more steadily than ever before in my life. Hey I come home every day and spend 4 hours at my keyboard, and that sounds to me like a working writer, but if I think too much about it this might sink in and I'll flee in fear.
Hope my mental doodlings addressed your curiosity. I mean it when I tell you I am in awe of people who can do math, b/c they see something in the problems, a resolution that is beyond my ken, and I can imagine the thrill that must come from that light-bulb moment, when a hideous math problem appears to solve itself.
There's more than one way to find intellectual beauty with a pencil and paper.
take care,
trouble> you describe the thought process involved?
> Do the thoughts just click in your head?
>
> I try to understand this because I had a buddy
> in college who was a history major who could take
> a crummy paper I wrote and return it to me in a
> form that more or less conveyed the same point with
> so much more...elegance. This same person who was so
> terribly brilliant in my mind could not do a simple
> algebra equation in a statistics class I tutored him
> on.
>
> Why is it that some people get it and some people
> don't (in their own ways)? Sorry I can't put it more elegantly,
> maybe I can punch out some cool math equations to
> express this and form some new art.
>
> -John
>
>
>
>
> > Say I'm right about everything. My trajectory. I know exactly how I got from there to here.
> > What's the next step?
> > Please don't give me DBT I tried that already and it didn't wash.
> > My pdoc throws me a rope and I say get that thing out of my face, things are just fine here on the Titanic. Ok, maybe not fine but this is my Home, show some respect.
> >
> > My parents refused to take care of me when I needed them to and it's too late for your hot cocoa and medication to undo the damage. The word for that is hubris. You think you're different from my mom and my dad, you have no idea that you're picking up exactly where they left off. And just like them you charge me staggering fees for every minute of it.
> >
> > You don't mean to call me names.
> > Neither did they.
> > Anti-social tendencies, histrionic personality disorder, masochistic, shizoaffective, depressive paranoid type w/ psychotic features, these labels that have been slapped on me are so contradictory if I was a suitcase I'd be lost in the cosmos forever, shuffled from one hangar to the next, just another forgotten child nobody is looking for. We're out there, bub.
> >
> > You're not about to let me guilt-trip you for doing your duty. It's your job to call them as you see them. I should pay no mind, they're only insults, whining about them will only impede my progress.
> >
> > You took my trauma away from me. You stole my past and replaced it with a box full of stigma. It's only stigma you said, don't exaggerate its importance. We don't talk about such things in this courthouse. Plus you're sorry. I must forgive you.
> >
> > You robbed me of my reasons for being. That's as literal as it gets. There are reasons I am choking on my own chaos, and they do not fall under the rubric of ADHD. Why did you take my history from me, my context, my framework, and replace it w/ degradation? I'm getting a little grandiose about this. I DO give a damn about my reputation and I am disgraced by these diagnostic labels, which hold up around the water cooler no less than they do in a court of law.
> >
> > White male supremacist defender of corporal punishment head of the patriarchal household bastard and that is law number one: nothing leaves this house. Nothing we do to you matters, it didn't matter then and it doesn't matter now. Pain makes you strong little girl. Keep your mouth shut if you know what's good for you. We are truly fucking sorry but Freud is dead.
> >
> > Unresolved childhood trauma is a thing of the past.
> > Childhood trauma is a thing of the past.
> >
> > You are not what's hurting me. I'm what's hurting me. Something within myself is the be-all and end all of my pathology. It has a name. It's written down. You're sorry, but it's for insurance purposes. You never say this. I'm supposed to figure it out, your sympathy, I'm supposed to read your mind, and that's a double bind you call pathological too.
> >
> > What else?
> > I'm supposed to know your apology is a perfunctory one, and won't stand up under scrutiny. Naming it will only place an awkward burden on our therapeutic alliance. It's not your fault you have to label me, it wasn't her fault she had to shove my head down the toilet.
> >
> > This is the thanks you get for correcting her mistakes.
> >
> > trouble
poster:trouble
thread:19430
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020305/msgs/19457.html