Saturday Morning Pages
I have a few thoughts swirling around this morning. I'm just going to jam them out, morning pages style. I set a timer, 30 minutes, go! The only rule is to keep on typing, don't stop. This will be a mess, enjoy it. Maybe it will inspire you (or future me) to develop some of these ideas more. As has been said, writing is an idea generator.
1 What Are We Doing
People are wild. Humans are a malleable mind, you can achieve anything you want and do it with other humans too. This is kind of a curse? It makes the world a bizarre place.
A friend of mine is traveling abroad for an extended period of time: I get periodic text updates. I actually like this quite a bit; the informality of text messages really lends itself to honesty. Today's update is about how he had visited the corpse of a long dead leader in south Asia. It's a think you can do when you are in the area. That's crazy, and while I guess I have a vague recollection that this is a thing that probably hadn't stopped being available to people to do, it wasn't something that I had actively thought about in years. So my friend's visit, well, it made the fact that is a thing that could be done, well, it made it very real. Visiting is one thing. But the machinery that enables that visit, and the fact that people do, or are required to do it as part of their education. My mind boggles.
This is a thing that we humans do in this world. It occurs because someone willed it to. Or in that particular despot's case, not what he in particular willed, but his followers after he was gone. And, of course, this is not without precedent. The preservation of bodies has been going on for, well, quite a loooong time.
Part of me wonders if this is not some animal attachment to the rage of surviving in this chaotic inferno that is life on rock in a vast sea of nothingness. We choose to not let this person go, in the same way that Sartre said that hell is other people. It's what we imagine them to be. It's all pictures in our minds, twitching neurons trying to make sense of something more than just survival.
The malleable mind, and the drive to achieve or outlast or survive or at least make a mark. It's kind of a curse.
2 Too Much To Do
There are just too many damn things to do in this world. Analysis paralysis, or even just over subscription is a governor on what we as individuals can achieve. I should probably read 4000 weeks or something to help me get better at focusing.
Some things that I want to do this weekend: practice writing, make ice cream, improve at bread baking, fix the sprinklers in the yard, read more of a couple of books, watch a movie, do some fixing in the house, cook something good for dinner, continue practicing cooking because I enjoy it. Pick some art for purchase. Go for a run, do my PT. Laundry, clean the garage, tidy up, make sourdough pancakes with some discard and figure out what to do with the rest of the discard or just throw it away. Develop a process for better record of life (diary?) writing materiel.
Doesn't seem like much. Heh.
Then there are the things that I have elected to not do also: practice music making or even just some synth sound design stuff, make some art of my own, learn how to draw or paint, post on social media more, actually pay attention to the tv that is on sometimes. Probably not research for a book I'd like to write, and while we're at it, not actually write any of the novels that I think I could write. Yet.
Ugh, so much stuff that is not done but would be super cool to do. Now it seems like an overwhelming pile of things to do. Impossibly many. At some point the mind abstracts and this list of 10-30 minutes tasks turns into "do those things" which is not a task, it's an achievement.
3 The Writing Voice
I'm annoyed with my writing style, but I've got to write with it anyway to change it. This messy post feels better. Yesterday's post about Paris-Roubaix felt like it had no life. Straight reportage, which a little bit of my own (detached) observations.
I hate it.
But if I hadn't written it, I wouldn't be able to put my finger on what the problem I have with what I write is. And I wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Maybe tomorrow I'll hate this too. It's unedited, messy, maybe not even factually coherent or accurate. I don't know, that's not the point, that's not how you improve.
Best part is, no one will read this. Well, maybe one or two people. And some LLM, that's for sure.
So, what do I want in my writing? Clarity, force, a point of view. To see that some human is authoring it, with a particular perspective that is understandable. Feeling, and wisdom. Something that makes you recognize another mind there, maybe even provokes some thoughts of your own that you could converse with. Writing that is worth reading, spending time with.
How many obvious sentences do you have to write to get something original?
I guess I don't want to just write pointless commentary. It should be something with depth and meaning, personal observations that would help another person with their own struggle to make sense of it all. Solving the worlds problems? Isn't that just commentary?