I don’t remember where I got all the images in that collage. Not all of them are photos, so they couldn’t have all come from Pexels. So if WordPress wants to object and take the photo down, they can. Then, I’ll either delete this post altogether, or edit, and add something else.
It’s something I made some time ago. Just put it back up as my cover image on Facebook, and my desktop wallpaper on the PC. Feels very summery to me. Also, it has a hint of moody edge to it, which felt a lot more fitting than the spring flowers I had up, before. I’m not feeling very flowery.
I finally clawed my way out of fatigue and got ready to actually go somewhere. And now, I’m stuck here for at least another hour, with little in the way of things to eat. I could make breakfast stuff again, but that would be one less breakfast I would be equipped to make, in the morning. Had some bread and butter, instead, and a protein bar.
Trying to bear in mind that there are others whose struggles dwarf mine. But I don’t know if that’s an effective means of self-soothing for me. It is a valid thing, in theory.
Been trying to juggle bills while also feeding myself and the cat, but it keeps getting harder. Amusingly, Foy Vance just sang the same thing in a lyric from “Make It Rain,” while I was typing that.
Reminds me of how when I was a kid, whenever I was really, really sad, I would go into my dad’s room and turn the dial on his radio until I found the saddest blues on the whole FM band. Hearing them sing about their feelings, everything that was wrong in their lives, made me feel so much better. Maybe that’s an example of self-soothing by comparison. I guess it feels better listening to the blues, for me.
You can also compare back to happier times in your own life, and reflect that you’ll be back to that state again. Both DBT skills. So many of my happy memories now seem tinged with sorrow.
But… here’s one…
Cane’s is one of her favorite restaurants, and it just so happens she was born on what they later declared “National Chicken Finger Day.” We went there on her bday when we were visiting, and I told her she should ask for a balloon, since it was her special day, too. She hesitated at first, said no, she didn’t want to. But she did. And they gave her one. The balloons all said “Today is the day” with her birthday date on them.
And the restaurant had a very iconic poster of The Dude, from The Big Lebowski, styled like those abstract red, white, and blue images that I think first made an appearance when President Obama was running for office.
I guess that memory feels happy enough.
And my last birthday was pretty epic. But that surfaces thoughts of how I won’t get to celebrate either of our summer birthdays together this year– mine or kiddo’s. Le sigh.
So, we’ll stick with Cane’s.
Their chicken strips are pretty dang tasty. And that year’s ad campaign with Post Malone was a lot of fun. Kiddo collected the cups with glee.
Not sure if I will get out of here early enough to hit up the library, after all. I guess there’s always tomorrow, before work, depending on how early I start, and how early I can get ready, etc.
Will have to look into bussing options. Get a pass, maybe. There is a stop on the corner. Everything just feels so… everything.
I was just at a poetry reading and out to dinner last night, and still feel totally unmoored. What more do I need? (I actually cut a lot of what I’d originally typed here, because seeing it in print made me feel worse).
I’ve seen a lot of WordPress blog posts about using one’s own internal compass, or how inspiration lives within, not somewhere on the internet, or out in the world. I don’t know about all that. My mind sometimes combats me, and I can’t always trust my own thoughts. And I think there’s something to be said for gathering bits and pieces.
Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch has a great quote, from an interview (assuming again that Goodreads cited it correctly). His take, I find more credible:
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: ‘It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.’”
—-MovieMaker Magazine #53 – Winter, January 22, 2004
My compass may be faulty at times. I suppose you could say that of everyone. That image has me remembering Jack Sparrow, and the compass that points to what you most desire. I think there was a point in one of the movies where Jack wasn’t sure what he wanted most, and the compass no longer seemed to function.
Stephen King I think once said something about a writer having a filter in their mind, that things got stuck in it, and that they eventually distilled art from them all. I may be butchering that. Let me see if I can find it.
A-HA! Also a Goodreads find. But King is a relatively modern source, so I think you can maybe trust them on that score, more so than on Buddha quotes which are often mistranslated or belong to a pithy pop-culture book written recently.
Here’s King:
“Why do you choose to write about such gruesome subjects?
I usually answer this with another question: Why do you assume that I have a choice?
Writing is a catch-as-catch-can sort of occupation. All of us seem to come equipped with filters on the floors of our minds, and all the filters have differing sizes and meshes. What catches in my filter may run right through yours. What catches in yours may pass through mine, no sweat. All of us seem to have a built-in obligation to sift through the sludge that gets caught in our respective mind-filters, and what we find there usually develops into some sort of sideline.
The accountant may also be a photographer. The astronomer may collect coins. The school-teacher may do gravestone rubbings in charcoal. The sludge caught in the mind’s filter, the stuff that refuses to go through, frequently becomes each person’s private obsession. In civilized society we have an unspoken agreement to call our obsessions ‘hobbies.’”
I knew someone who thought Stephen King was objectively a bad writer. Not that some of his novels seemed better put-together than others, not that maybe he just wasn’t “for them.” He had a persnickety habit of calling any description he found over-the-top for a piece “Stephen Kinging.”
I haven’t read a TON of King, but I have really loved what I have read. I just sometimes shy away from horror, these days. He writes other things, too, of course.
But I think that other dude was full of $h!t. I would trust Stephen King’s writing advice over his, any day. Still need to pick up King’s On Writing, but I do intend to. They have it at my local indie bookstore, along with Writing Down the Bones (Natalie Goldberg), which I have lost a copy of a time or two. Need another one.
Anyway. Here’s to wibbly-wobbly compasses, and the uncertain moments when we don’t know quite what we’re after, in the hopes they all lead toward an “a-ha” moment of knowing it when we see it.
AND I will begrudgingly, cantankerously admit, I feel a bit better now.
All the Bright and Sparkly Things 
Leave a comment