Be safe, be seen, be anyone you like

[sovay]

While looking for something else, I found a page of notes I made to myself last summer, it looks like on the way to/during NecronomiCon. The first one reads as though it might have been shaping up to be a post, but I have (appropriately) no idea where it was going:

There are ways in which traveling by myself, especially at night, feels better than going anywhere else any other way. This strikes me as dangerous and also in some way irresponsible: one of the classic noir fantasies is to walk right out of your life and into someone else's and in most of these stories someone forgets to mind the gap. Taking the night train is itself like traveling into a dream. Outside of the safe confines of routine, you might be anyone. Might even surprise yourself. Pleasantly or unpleasantly, the journey doesn't care. Like Dionysos. When the walls fall down, it's just you against the sky, and you'd better be strong enough to stand on your own. So many characters in these dream plays find out they aren't.

In other news, I just read my own dream record dating back to 1999 (some years nothing written down, some years it's like I was never even awake) and I think I have some kind of reflective hangover. What I wish I had was the breathing room to write fiction. I feel terribly as though I am forgetting, or have already forgotten, how.

[edit] I took a hot shower and reminded myself that I am underslept and still sick to the point that I may bail on tomorrow's chorus rehearsal and that tonight's Hanukkah party was a success but also intensely full of people: in other words, not in good condition for accurate self-evaluation. I suspect it did not help to transcribe a bunch of half-finished introspection. I am going to read some more Raymond Durgnat, who delighted me almost on page one by suggesting that one could read Psycho (1960) as a werewolf story, as I do, and see what I can do about the sleep end of this problem.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

What I wish I had was the breathing room to write fiction. I feel terribly as though I am forgetting, or have already forgotten, how.

I'm sorry - I hope for your sake it becomes possible again asap, but also for all of ours as well!

[asakiyume]

What you wrote about traveling at night really resonates so strongly. YES TRUE. Walk away from everything, even your own shadow, obliterated by the dark, and into something else.

Re: your last paragraph, I'm glad you know that the circumstances aren't right for self evaluation. I know you know also that moods can come and sit on you (generic you), extending their Borg tubules into you and filling you with all sorts of destructive notions about yourself. Re: your penultimate paragraph, and relating to the ultimate one, you have to let the record speak for itself. You have **published** fiction every year that I've known you, I believe? Including the last couple. Maybe not all that fiction was *written* in those years, but the Vulcan in me feels it is illogical to conclude you're forgetting or have forgotten how, and that it's the nanoprobes that are giving you this perception. ... I apologize; it's the Voyager rewatch we've been doing. Please switch to a better metaphor. Little Wittgenstein is tried and true.

[choco_frosh]

It was a good party! And yes, you should definitely sleep before you let Tiny Wittgenstein out of his [cage? closet? ball gag?]

[a_reasonable_man]

Actually, if you switched around the sentence about dreams and night trains, this passage could be a fine motto for that dream chapbook you mentioned.

[yhlee]

*support support* I hope the sick goes away soonest and that you get some sleep.

[selkie]

*gently chloroforms T. Witt and lowers him into the bitters jar*

You have an audience. C'mon, fight me about it.

*hugs* I mean, don't, but honey badger support is on offer. I hope you get good sleep.

[gwynnega]

I hope you got some sleep and that you feel better soon. I am confident you will write fiction again.

Also, I would love to hear more about Psycho as a werewolf story.

[davidgillon]

it might have been shaping up to be a post, but I have (appropriately) no idea where it was going:

There are ways in which traveling by myself, especially at night, feels better than going anywhere else any other way. This strikes me as dangerous and also in some way irresponsible: one of the classic noir fantasies is to walk right out of your life and into someone else's and in most of these stories someone forgets to mind the gap. Taking the night train is itself like traveling into a dream. Outside of the safe confines of routine, you might be anyone. Might even surprise yourself. Pleasantly or unpleasantly, the journey doesn't care. Like Dionysos. When the walls fall down, it's just you against the sky, and you'd better be strong enough to stand on your own. So many characters in these dream plays find out they aren't.

It reads to me like it wants to be a poem. A lot of your writing feels, unsurprisingly, poetic, but this seems to have the core imagery to sculpt something from.