fearful me

i’m afraid of going back to school. i’m so terrified of this despair in me, of this feeling of hopelessness, that i’m going to drown and in the process sound pathetically emo in writing and in voice. but i realize that a lot of my anger and frustration is just me not being being able to express myself through any creative outlets. there’s a storm inside me begging to be let out, and it pounds against my body more fiercely than any pulse. if i can’t drum, then i will dance; if i can’t dance, i will sing; if i can’t sing, i will shout; if i can’t shout, i will draw; if i can’t draw, i will write. if i can’t write…

wait. forget whether or not i can or cannot do these things– i will sing and dance and drum and draw and i will write, i will write, i will write, i will write.

organic writing

almost everything used to be organic. simple things, like having a meal, or walking down the street, were once processes rather than processed, because they could be changed and irrefutably shaped by the everyday. the “everyday” refers to the set of odd habits and chance coincidences, gleaned and compiled from an acute awareness of surroundings, so that no two meals in a single restaurant can be exactly the same. a mood, a feeling, a captured combination of senses compressed into a collective idea about what, for example, a basic 6-block commute to and from school constitutes. now, of course, we’ve all got ipods in our ears and destinations in our eyes, to the point where everything from construction sites to traffic can easily be blocked out. (i once heard someone say that you can tell who new yorkers are by where they are looking– usually, at the ground, or straight ahead, at a distant point, to avoid any and all eye contact or human interaction. its a good tactic, especially when you’re surrounded by masses of people, if you’re trying to get away from humanity, i guess.)

organic in the most literal and obvious sense, via home-grown veggies or free-range chicken, reflects the process of an organic experience: the care lavished to keep bugs out without pesticide, the slow wait of sprouting sans steroids. and just as we don’t expect a perfect sald mix to spontaneously pop out of the ground, i like to think that the more complicated things in life, like friendships, still maintain their organic state.

but do they? after all, costco now offers you pre-washed, pre-cut, pre-mixed salad, sealed and dated in a convenient plastic tub, ready to serve. (ironically, it’s labeled “organic spring greens”.) it’s not too different from the occasional parry i hear between two people in my dorm elevator– “i’m more popular than you are, i’ve got more facebook friends”– we’ve now got our own pre-requested, pre-profile-checked, and even pre-poked list of online buddies we can watch from afar, through breakups and makeups and favorite quotes.

sitting down to write is perhaps the most inorganic thing of all. beyond the fact that reading and writing are obsolete (who needs a novel when you’ve got myspace?) the act of writing itself is so foreign now. we used to grip crayons in our grubby hands to concentrate on making straight strokes and smooth curves, and now even the sweat-inducing action of moving something across a sheet of paper is nearly unheard of. the thought process itself involved in writing is so regulated too: answer Who What When Where Why How in 5 paragraphs please, one sentence thesis, indented, double spaced, size 12 times new roman and absolutely no ink other than black. any objections or aberrations will absolutely be steamrollered away with a well-placed rebuke. you have 30 minutes.

no, i’d really rather not.

so here’s to a pesticide and steroid free attempt at writing, to unfinished paragraphs and generally anything that doesn’t require times new roman, to having organic writing.

-mdg