Thursday, October 28, 2010

Saying What You Mean

See, there's a bit of tension about blogging.  I'm almost convinced that you can't write without thinking about audience.  The goal, if you'll indulge me by assuming that the previous statement is correct, then, is to write with an audience in mind, but not because of them, not for them. They shouldn't dictate how you feel, for instance, just how clearly you might spell out what it is you want to say.

(And while it may be appropriate to dictate in parenthesis basic physical reality, like the warm but almost sour tea that you have, or the way the light comes down almost liquid like to cast itself heavily on your eyes, or the more mundane things, like the ebb and flow, the sound of traffic outside, and although it is the essence of how you process reality that is fundamentally interesting, it is not okay to expose reality quite objectively, or to let such an exposition become longer than your main text, on average).

But if you like audience, that is, if you like people reading what you write, then you naturally want to attract them to read more, to linger, and all of the other implied connections that are embedded in this attraction, which is basically an attraction to you, the writer, and who, by the way, doesn't want affirmative type attention?  See, though, the tension exists because there's something about the act of writing itself that is highly and personally rewarding.  It may only be that you, like I have, begin to find a voice, even one you knew that you had, and even one that isn't terribly strong.  It doesn't have to be strong.  It also doesn't have to be hugely provokative.  I'm spelling with a K there because it makes more sense, and because I'm learning Polish, which inherently makes much more sense than English (at least, according to how you might spell things, as in you pronounce everything, all the damn time).

There's something inherently rewarding in writing itself, even when the writing is fully descriptive.  I think part of the reason for that is because it aligns thought patterns by slowing them down.  No matter how fast I write, my writing is always slower than my thoughts.  And that actually allows me to think faster than I would normally think, by which I mean process something. So writing is useful on its own for processing. That's what I'm doing here.  That's the project, if you will, at least for now.  At times I felt internal pressure to always say something alcohol-related.  After all, this is about sobriety.  The funny thing about sobriety, as compared to drunkenness, though, is that it is fundamentally more complicated (the world that you experience is anyway): more subtle and delicate and creative and full of many more topics than you're used to, or have the ability to fully develop and explore, unfortunately (and fortunately). Anyway, that's my pitch for sobriety today.  I'll further craft this pitch and try to deliver succinct points in the future, but I may not be successful.  I'll meander, and go back on my own words.  But I won't be violent or manipulative or aggressive or mean spirited for no good reason.  I won't hit or punch or bite, and I won't be reckless in any way that has consequence.  For what it's worth.

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