untitled

so anyway, i have nothing to say. i have had nothing to say for ten years, although obv. this hasn't stopped me from saying it, but i feel drained even of the ability to do the blah blah. i was never very interesting, so you're not missing much.

i do feel though that in other circumstances i could blog interestingly and at length, and would have a readership in the thousands. the same with my writing. i could do it, if i had anything i wanted to write about. but i don't. i don't care to share any more.

i have been watching Control, the film about Ian Curtis. i've only watched the start but i know the story of course. what's immediately apparent, if you do not know, is that he made the mistake of marrying someone who didn't understand poetry, or rather didn't understand that a poet is only able to express themselves in a way you can't because they're not like you. i made the same mistake, although when we were first married, mrs zen was thrilled that i was different from her. she recognised the value of our difference, and frankly, saw the gap as a positive in my account. i think she has reversed that view, or at least feels she has gained what she can from it. i think she is wrong.

you know, i don't expect to gain anything from knowing you. i don't think of people in that way. maybe i should. it's not that i don't think you have anything to give me. i just hate circumscribing what you can be before you've shown me. i don't know whether that makes any sense. but i know that it's the reason i married mrs zen. i am willing to be surprised. the problem i now have is that i do not like her and i do not believe she can surprise me. none of that means we cannot rebuild our relationship. i will tell you what does. mrs zen wanted a man who would love her and only her, and would match her beliefs of what being loved entails. she also made a very poor choice. actually, i don't think mine was bad, because i couldn't have known that she would change into a person i couldn't like; but fuck me, hers was, because she knew i wasn't that person, and she could be sure that i would not be changing into the man she wanted.

i feel the past four years have been wasted for me; worse than wasted, desolated. they have been empty and unproductive. i don't know how to change that. it's easy to make prescriptions, but you don't have the same perspective that i do on it.

but why? it's hard to explain. it's like you only have so much mind, and if you fill it, you can't use it for other things. does that make sense, or would it make more sense to think that you have the capacity to expand your mind and think more? am i purposely limiting myself because i'm scared of being bigger? that's something i need to think about, but here's the paradox: i can't expand my mind enough to think about that! so i think going home would improve things because i would rid myself of the negative thinking i do about living here, which is far greater than any i would do about living there. but i can't just go home and leave my family. i would then only be able to think about my children.

it is pointless telling me i'm mentally ill. i know i think differently from you. but it's the source of what's good about me; it's why i'm creative at all (and i do believe i'm capable of art that you aren't). i wouldn't give it up.

and you know what it is, why i don't blog interestingly about whatever? my heart's not in it. i'm only good when it is. you look back over my posts and you'll see that i was best when i meant it. so yeah, i can write about Darfur or the global economy or football or politics or music, all of which i know enough about to have a view that you'd read and maybe think yeah that's an interesting view, but there is nothing in me that wants to.

this is what i said in Looney's comments about poetry:

"The key to poetry is, for me, absolutely unrestrained expression. You have to go to the place where you are uncovered, underneath your persona, where your naked flame is. I think you know what I mean. Then let that speak. Do not fake it or censor it."

and i truly believe that.

but do you know how fucking difficult it is to burrow down into yourself and find that flame when you have become unsure you even have one?

posted by Dr Zen @ 12:01 pm