Here we are again. I'm at a bit of a loss, so I will start with what has always worked in my writing: memory.
It's 1978, and for the very first time, I am happy. My mother has separated from my father, getting her graduate degree at MTSU, and the movie Halloween just hit. Twelve is awesome in 1978, people. Poprocks, pet rocks, mood rings, and our very first junked-out slasher flick. Sigh. So much life left. So much Fleetwood Mac left. I am happy.
I suppose I still hold my mother accountable for the fall, the woman that had the audacity to finish her degree in a city that she didn't love. And so, the day after Halloween, I began a long goodbye. We packed and planned, refuted the idea of a Christmas tree (ornaments were airtight in Tupperware), broke up with friends and puppy loves and sent our dog, Bugger, to live with a neighbor. Somewhere in the middle of all that, I started to tear up the green shag carpet in the corner of my room and leave the notes. "This was where I learned to play the flute . . . whoever finds this should know I was happy . . . the sound the toilet makes in the middle of the night is not a ghost." Scraps of paper to no one, shoved tightly under green fibers, probably scrapped without being opened when said carpet was scrapped for hardwood.
This is what I thought of when I read the article, "I Am Writing Blindly." I don't want to make more of it than what it was, just an adolescent shove to the universe. Surely, those pieces of paper meant nothing more. Except . . .
Why, over thirty years later, do I think of it? Our author posits that narrative, and the storytelling it weaves, makes us human. An impulse. Finding God in the next sentence. Why not something else, then? Why writing?
Instead of going long, this time, I'm going to leave it here. Call it an experiment. Whatever. I guess I'm writing blindly.
Making myself think as basic as possible, I've found in my own life that writing stuff down is sort of like writing down your memories, and when I write something down I remember it better and identify with it better. Whenever I go back and read one of my journals from when I was a kid I can better see myself in those written memories because there's no second guessing what I remember or not. I trust my written memory more, because it holds me accountable to what I actually did or felt.
ReplyDeleteI like to think of my writing as a product of my thoughts and feelings and memories. A tangible artifact of the Nation of Paul. I openly assume that is just the prideful “man-conquer-all” instinct within me, but my personal writing is a memento to myself.
The reason I keep a journal now is so that I can watch myself, and read myself, and analyze myself. Get to know myself a little better. I’m thankful that God is the only other set of eyes viewing my journal, or else someone would diagnose me with a list a mental disorders. But that is the best part of writing for the sake of writing, to me, and being able to literally have an out-of-body experience with yourself and look at what you’re doing (my Journal being the physical me, and Me being the out of body version of me).
Alright.
ReplyDeleteSo here we are, blogging, again…and I can’t help but feel like I forgot to wear pants to class. Or like the blog is the ex-girlfriend who wasn’t as drunk as I was, remembered everything I said, and thus, decided to improve her title with an “ex”.
So, I’ll treat my first response after the, “Wilson’s Asshole Sounding Blog Response ”, the same way that I treated the Ex.
I’ll act like it didn’t happen.
If she and I can hug as if we’ve never kissed or fought, then surely I can type as if my last post were an edifying love letter.
Preface: Everything I say publicly, no matter how honest, is birthed from an insecure, lonely, approval-seeking, soul. I want for each reader to consider the author of my text to be honest, respectable, and desired…and because I suspect this wretchedness within myself, it has become very difficult to write. So, instead of writing as if this weren’t true, or overcompensating at the expense of others, I’ll try and drabble on about a thing that I do.
I write love letters for myself, but give them to strangers. After I tell the reader of the note that they’re beautiful. And that they’re important to someone. That they matter, and that they have power. After I tell them that their friends are lucky to be so, and that they should forgive themselves for the thing they haven’t yet. After those bits, which may vary with each letter, I always mention two more things:
ReplyDelete1)I tell them that I know how little they probably care for the opinion of a crumpled slip from a stranger. But that I am a person, and that a compliment of the universal manner should be considered as True as can be written.
2)And I tell them that if they talk to me, if they thanks me, if I’m allowed the opportunity of an accidental run-in…if they give me any reward…if a note of love is permitted as a representation of Me—then it is all ruined. That nothing I wrote counts. So please, don’t ruin it for me or for them, say nothing. Just leave the moment more okay that you entered it.
I imagine their inward smile, or thankful tears. I bask in the glory of having encouraged. For a moment I’m able to be convinced of my goodness. For a moment, I think, “Maybe I’m not your enemy”.
But I know what happened. I know that the barista threw the scrap out with my cake crumbs. I know that the guy who read the note didn’t understand, and I know that the girl who was almost moved, paid more attention to the weight in her fingers than the words on the page.
And I think that this all has something to do with writing blindly. Perhaps it’s a comment on why I write. Or at least, why I want to write. Maybe I write in an attempt to vindicate what I do. Maybe I write because words can be powerful if untainted by the wretch who wrote them. I suppose that I treat the words as buffer. The ink and text can filter out the risk of my touch, or the burning of my eyes, or the scorn of my tongue. I want to wear sunglasses all the time; not because I’m afraid of what my eyes will see, but because I’m afraid of who will see my eyes.
But even in text, behind wires or pen, I still destroy. I have. The wake is mounting and I can’t stop my sinking.
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ReplyDeleteFor me, writing blindly keeps me sane. The things I write blindly are the things that I don't want anyone to see at all. When emotion comes on so strong I can't see straight, there has to be an outlet. Thank God I have writing. If not writing it might be something like cutting or throwing things or something else that is violent. Writing blindly is that sigh of relief, that feeling that I am transferring all the emotion elsewhere. It's the paper's problem now...not mine. This isn't only for negative emotions. When I am overjoyed about something, I often tell it to the paper. There are several reasons for this of course. Maybe I don't want to seem like I'm bragging. Maybe I don't want someone to know how happy they make me because I'm afraid they will think I'm weird. But once I write it, I stop that urge I had before and I am calm again. I am a very expressive person. I update my Facebook constantly for this reason. There are often times that I forget that what I post will be visible to over 700 eyes. I just feel that in that moment, I have to just write something to the world. I will say though...that whatever I write blindly looks nothing like those updates.
ReplyDeleteAs I clear my voice and sit up tall at my desk, I will make a valiant attempt to behave myself in this blog and would like to state for the record that for now on I will only try to evoke the appropriate emotional responses from my reader, and would like to make clear that I have the best intentions of keeping their feelings intact. Please enjoy my boring story below :-)
ReplyDeleteI don't think we ever really know what we are writing about or who we are writing to, until it is written. Part of me thinks that’s just a reason I use to justify my complete ineptitude in writing research papers, yet at least part of its got to be true. I can't tell you how many times I've sat down and began writing without a clue of what it’s about (this disjointed blog is probably the perfect example). But I don't think many people do. When it comes time to write, I might as well sit down with a cane and some dark sunglasses because there's not a time I can remember when I could see where things were going. In the 3rd grade I began writing little notes and messages in any book I read, and all my textbooks. As I got older I began doing it everywhere. In the margins of magazine articles and newspapers left out in waiting rooms and offices, on napkins and paper tablecloths at restaurants, and now especially, on receipts. Usually this was just little blurbs like, “The best clam chowder of my life," or "This is the dumbest article ever written, save your brain cells for something worth reading,". But sometimes I found them to be surprisingly more telling like, "People tell you what they want to be, and show you who they really are." To be honest, I have no idea what any of this means. I used to think it was because I knew other people would read my notes and be mildly entertained by them, but the more I think about it the more I realize it has nothing to do with that at all. There must a reason I was tempted to write any of these things down in the first place. Not sure if anyone would ever read them, and probably not ever understand them, why did I keep writing them down? It’s just a little expression of thought scribbled into existence, tossed away, and probably forgotten.
Courtney - this was exactly what I was trying to get across in class on Friday, although your post was much more clear than mine was. I'm an English education major - I don't have the guts like the majority of the class who are English majors. So, pretty much everything that I write (unless it's for a class) is written blindly. In other words, for myself. I don't write with a specific audience in mind - more often then not I have so much going on in my head that I feel that I can't tell anyone that I need to just let it out. And writing is the healthiest way I'm able to do so. When I need to just let it out that my roommate copies everything that I do and while imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, it's just frigging annoying... I write. Or that sometimes I'm just tired of being the one that everyone turns to when they're upset/stressed/mad/frustrated/fill-in-the-blank-with-any-other-emotion-that-leads-to-girls-and-boys-crying. I mean, who am I supposed to turn to? Well, I turn to writing. I just let the feelings and anger and frustration and stress build up, and then - I write. I write and write and write until I can't feel it as much anymore. I've found that I'm not a big fan of "talking out my feelings" but boy have I come to find that bottled up emotions can be toxic. Writing serves as a catharsis and because of it, I can be the happy, smiley girl that most of friends see everyday- and that my family prefers ha.
ReplyDeleteI don’t find it surprising that passengers spiraling to the ground or dying inmates would scribble the last few lines of their lives to their loved ones. Those sentences are their last minutes, their very last inhales and exhales, their last chance to be remembered. Why else do people blog and write in journals and have their favorite poems engraved on their tombstones if it is not so that, after they are gone, they live on, somehow, completely known as who they were.
ReplyDeleteI think more than death, and roaches, and the dark, people are afraid of being forgotten. I think we as humans have a need to be known, really known. We want people to known our hearts and to remember them; we want our stories read, and our songs heard, and we want our most valuable things handed down to the next generation, not because they were beautiful or because the wood is precious, but because our lives are in them; this explains why I’m still carting around a 100 year old washstand and other furniture passed down from great grandmothers whom I have never even met, yet I know them. Perhaps I don’t know them completely, but I do remember them, and I do have a sense of who they were because of stories they left behind for their grandchildren to tell.
I write because writing is as much of me as my arm or leg, but even more so, I write because I want to be known. I do, at least when I’m writing in my journals. At the moment, I keep them hidden, but I can assure you that when I’m lying on my deathbed, I’ll think of them as my only chance at immortality. Except paper burns and mice bite and people so easily forget. I’m not saying I want to live forever, but I am saying that it would be nice for my writings to outlive me, and even more so, for them connect to all the lives long after mine.
In the article, the writer wrote, “we exist by storytelling,” Speaking, singing, writing, reading, the blink of a left eye…We exist to have our lives seen and to witness the lives of others. We exist to be known. And if there is no one to wonder over my person, my heart, my existence, and I were to have no desire to share it, then I might as well live in a tightly sealed mason jar. I write because there is freedom, and there is that mystery of what will come next, but even more so, imagine all of the lives one could touch with all those words floating around…even if it is just a scrap tucked into the crevice of a prison wall.
Why do I write? Why does anyone write? I like the idea that we write because we must tell the stories within us. I know it's true for me. Every time I write, be it a journal entry, a scribble on a napkin, a paper for class, or a Facebook update, it is a plea to be heard. An attempt to find validation - to have someone out there in the cosmos see what I've written and for it to resonate with them. It's a need to affirm that my story, no matter how trivial, matters. I never write without an audience in mind - notes scribbled on the wall at Niffer's or left on slips of paper in a library book are accompanied by fantasies of the person finding them, I almost always have at least one person who I really hope will read a status update on Facebook, even my journal is usually written with the idea of a specific person reading it after I'm dead and gone - or sometimes still around. Sometimes I wish I had the guts to hand all my diaries over the years to someone and say "here, this is me. Please love me despite how screwed up I am." Sometimes, I wish that someone cared enough to want to read them. Because really, that's what all the scribbling, journaling, and writing is about; it's an attempt to convince myself that I matter, that the minutia of my life are interesting, that my story merits being heard. It's a manifestation of the desire to be known, to be worth knowing, and not despised for who I am. Most of the time, I'm pretty good at fooling myself.
ReplyDeleteSo I have logged into the blog site 3 different times in hopes of some new enlightenment every time I re read the blog. Sadly, no suck luck. I am sort of at a loss of words for this topic, but I will try since it is a reflection on my grade. I am an English Education major, so much like kmp0020, all I ever do is write blindly. Also, I agree with Courtney in the sense that I write to express my feelings. I am such an introvert, so I often don't express myself to others. I would much rather listen than talk. But when I do express myself, it is always written down. I think most of that has to do with I am a little scatter brained and can't keep my thoughts together if I don't see them on paper, but also, if people heard me talking to myself they might lock me up in a white padded room (which sometimes I think might be a good idea anyway). But back to writing blindly, all of my writing is without an audience (expect for school papers). I don't worry about my grammar, or wording or any of the other elements that make for "good" writing. I just write. When I look back at the words on the paper, most of them wouldn't make any sense to the unknowing eye, but to me it is crystal clear. I feel better after I write, I think it is because I finally let my guard down and just be me for a while. And that, my friends, is a curse and a blessing all its own.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to write. I almost said this in class the other day. I'm a reader, not a writer. I took this class because I wanted to be better at reading. I wanted to learn about writing in order to better understand what it takes to be great at reading people's stories.
ReplyDeleteI've never been very good at creating things. This includes stories. I can verbalize a good story, make a good argument on paper, and even some times be a good listener, but my inspiration rarely comes from my insides. And most often when I try to be creative, i end up feeling foolish about the results.
I think i want to be a professional appreciator.
I love this: "We want people to known our hearts and to remember them; we want our stories read, and our songs heard, and we want our most valuable things handed down to the next generation"
(because I like being reminded that I'm a repository for my ancestor's stories)
and this: "Because really, that's what all the scribbling, journaling, and writing is about; it's an attempt to convince myself that I matter, that the minutia of my life are interesting, that my story merits being heard."
(because this feeling is universal)
and this: I like to think of my writing as a product of my thoughts and feelings and memories. A tangible artifact of the Nation of Paul. (because it made me laugh)
I want to be someone better at loving what others create. I hope that if I ever found someone's notes under the carpet I was tearing up that I would be in love with that moment and with the person who left them. I hope that there's something valuable in loving others stories, in being some the other half of the story telling equation.
For me, I write blindly because it is the most convenient way to get ALL of my feelings out and in the open. Sometimes I think writing allows you to express emotions you never knew were there.
ReplyDeleteIn class on Friday, I compared this "I am writing blindly" to an episode of Seinfeld. As their plane was crashing, each character began telling each other their deepest secrets before they died. They "splurted" these things out almost uncontrollably. The same thing probably happened when those people had to write letters to their family members as they were going to crash.
This often makes me think of what I would write in a letter to my loved ones. Scary to think about, but I feel that I would say things I never even knew I felt. I do this in certain situations though. I wrote in my first paper this semester about a journal my girlfriend and I have. When I'm sad or when I want to express certain feelings, I use the book as an outlet.
Others use writing as an outlet just as I do. This blog is an outlet for some. Like Catherine said, sometimes it feels good to write and finally let that guard down. Sometimes it is a little scary to be so brutally honest and real, but we're just going to have to get over that and be comfortable using our outlets to get our feelings off of our backs.
This one's going to be short.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite writing quote: "If you do not breathe through writing, or cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it." -- Anais Nin. I love it for its concept, but it's lofty, and most of the time I fail at it.
I just drove in from my cousin's wedding a few hours ago, so that's where my mind is stuck at. We write for the same reasons we do any other daring thing: for the release, for the attention, for the rush that loving another person or thing gives us. We write because we want to be remembered, because our worst fear is being forgotten by the people who could have loved us.
As for writing blindly, well: that's all I ever do, so it's hard for me to comment specifically on that. I never know where I'm going when I begin, and I very rarely end up anywhere. But sometimes it helps to write for me and not for the people I want to like me-- to just throw the words out and let them be.
I'm with Josh on this one. I'm not a writer. I'd much rather read what somebody else has written than try to write something myself. I write when it's required, and really no more than that. Every now and then I'll jot down a note, but only if it's a grocery list or a note to remind myself to do something. I don't have any story I feel like I need to tell, or any special wisdom that I feel like I should be sharing with anybody. I'm honestly amazed when other people can find something to write about outside of assignments because I don't share that ability, or even that interest.
ReplyDeleteThis response has been a bit challenging to do because I'm a little confused as to what it's suppose to be about but... judging by the other responses...
ReplyDeleteI write, but I dont know if I would say it's done blindly. If I write just to express myself its through poetry and I don't really care who sees it because I feel that every person that reads or hears it will get something from it. I like to touch on real issues in my poetry and get the reader or listener to think deeply on what ever the subject is. I dont write stories, yet I feel like I do tell them through my poetry in a sense. On the other hand, I'm more of the tell it type. I can't say I will go and write how I feel about an issue or whatever, I'm more likely to express myself by either voice or other ways.
I write a lot of fiction. I know for a fact that I write it not for the recognition, but to fashion another world free from external hegemony and the essential wrongness of reality. To quote Azar Nafisi some more, fiction is not the reflection of reality. I think of it as a form of escapism; even if bombs are falling on the outside, there is that little scrap of paper with a little flower garden or a kitchen saturated with nutmeg or a field where sunshine reigns, a place where 'I' truly exist(s).
ReplyDeleteWhy writing? Honestly, I don't know. For as long as I can remember, I have written, so this blog is going to be difficult. We have already discussed our warrants, and I am tempted to recall the argument I made in that blog. But,it just doesn't work for this assignment. As I sat here and waited for my internet to be repaired by Charter, I tried to think of why we write blindly. I am drawn more and more to the idea discussed in class, that children learn to write to pass down the stories that are already in them. To me, that has to be at the root of why writers write blindly. The river of words is already up in our head, churning into rapids in the rocky bed of our mind. By writing, we allow that river to flow through our arm and onto the paper or the screen. And we do it not because we want to see where the river takes us, but because it just has to flow. If we dam it up, the pressure becomes to much, and we suffer. In the end, I believe that is why I write. I don't know where the river started, why it started, or where it is going to go. It's just there, ready to go, and I'm fine with that.
ReplyDeleteI think people "write blindly" for two reasons: to let other people know they aren't alone, and to get their story out. Those people in the ghettos during the Holocaust probably had some hope that someone would see their letters, so their stories would never die. Websites like postsecret are supposed to be so people know they aren't alone in the world, they don't know who will be reading their letters, but they hope that someone out there will read it and think, "damn, someone else really gets it." I think this is also what blogs are for, you don't know who will be reading your blog, but you write it anyway, in the hopes that someone will really understand you, and maybe if these people who have been persecuted recently about their sexuality had someone's writing to read that spoke to them, maybe it would have been a little different. Isn't that what most writers want to do? To have someone, anyone, that loves your writing enough that it changes their life? I know that's what I want.
ReplyDeleteI like to write because I'm just not quite good enough at anything else, which I usually write about.
ReplyDeleteI feel like I have waited long enough to still respond with so little. In rationalizing my retarded reply, I came to the generalization that all of my writing is written blindly. Never do I write what I sit down intending to conceive, and nothing that I sit down specifically to relay gets even halfway to the point.
ReplyDeleteI have been thinking about the education aspect of writing and how one who has no written language might also ‘write’ blindly. I think writing is a luxury we in the industrialized world take so much for granted. How many brilliant stories have no voice because their keeper has no literacy? Just a thought on how brilliantly privileged Americans are.
It seems rather counterintuitive, doesn’t it, that the most evocative writing has been written – not by some toasty, European hearth with postured development and flawless characters – but in trenches, slums, by men and women near or facing the end of their lives. Why do we write? I don’t know. But I know that we will continue writing without bothering to look passed the simple, raw words on a page – casting all thoughts of utility and self-absorption aside. In this sense, writing blindly is a skill in itself, but not one to be practiced or taught – but simple to be felt and done.
I wish Rosenblatt had probed his metaphor more deeply, the more so after I read Kat's blog over at A Witchy Thought, "Holy Moses, I think she's got it!" (Kat has so much to teach, that I almost wish I were a student so I could take her classes.) It isn't just the writing we do blindly. It's the living. We have to take the mataphor for all its possibilities. We're pretty sure we go through life with our eyes open and that we can reflect back on it with the penetrating insight of hindsight. Writing is, after all, in some views, putting into words what's already in our heads, as memory, a concept. But like life, it's also a step further to the right on the page, down a line, over to the next page, everything ahead of us blank and as empty but always possible. When we write about it, then, we're not just remembering in words, but (re)creating, or as I like to put it in my own blog, creating, crafting, making. Do I want to suggest that we live our lives in a dark submarine interior waiting for the air to run out? Yes. But only if we remain silent.
ReplyDeleteWriting “blindly” is an art I think I sometime forget. Writing blindly is reminds me of that spontaneous friend who says whatever, whenever and does not care what others think or have to say about that. Now for some strange reason, I am usually that spontaneous friend…you would not know this from being in class with me because I have learned to be a certain way in educational settings- so is this me not being real? No, because there is a time and a place for everything…right? As long as we all stay in our little boxes things will be fine and the world will stay in order…so I hear. Well, I think we all better learn how to write and live “blindly” again or we will go crazy. Sometimes to bring myself back to that blind state I grab a sheet of paper and just doodle…I write random words, some in cursive-some print. It does not matter if I really know what the words mean or if they make since-because for that one moment in time I am not blinded by my “glasses of the world”- I am free to be blind, to be inexperienced, to just say whatever.
ReplyDelete"For me, writing blindly keeps me sane. The things I write blindly are the things that I don't want anyone to see at all. When emotion comes on so strong I can't see straight, there has to be an outlet. Thank God I have writing. If not writing it might be something like cutting or throwing things or something else that is violent. Writing blindly is that sigh of relief, that feeling that I am transferring all the emotion elsewhere. It's the paper's problem now...not mine"-Courtney Paige.
ReplyDeleteWriting blindly has been my safe haven lately.I have had some pretty shitty instances happen in my life here recently but I have had some wonderful things happen, as well. Writing has gotten me through all of it.