I reread old things and I take away new things each time. Steph thinks I'm crazy. I've read Tolkien's stuff like 14 times and counting (I read through his stuff each year). In my previous post, I mentioned how I'm currently rereading through Blue Like Jazz. It's almost a decade old now. Now THAT'S crazy.
I feel like I used to think I had things figured out. Figured out enough to write books about, you know? But now I don't think I do. I think I have a lot of bluster and not a whole lot of substance. I'm far too used to thinking of myself as the standard for normal - and I know that's really arrogant. I do.
Today has been another strange day.
The dogs were barking their heads off most of the morning (our new neighbors had their dogs over). I got up and felt like playing video games... which is not what I usually do at all. The entire day so far, I feel like I've been walking around with a fog inside my mind. I feel too full... and meanwhile, there's shapes in the mist - indistinct - yet I'm still isolated with too much inside. Maybe I'm rambling - maybe I'm crazy... but I'm definitely not as crazy as some (hopefuly?).
I keep running into people I know today. I keep just happening to be in the right place at the right time... like I'm programmed to someone else's autopilot. Like I said, today is a strange day... I have all these lists of things I need to get done, and instead, I keep getting hijacked.
But you know what?
I miss when things made sense and I thought I knew stuff. I miss what I now know is illusion. Maybe I'm just trading one form of illusory sense of control for another... who knows? I want to talk about God and I want to write and I want to help people. I want to move to three places at once. I want the fog in my head to clear, and I want to not feel awkward.
I know this post has little to do with the image of a writer I've built up until now. But blogging stream-of-conscience-style has been my preferred method of self-expression for even longer than I've been writing fantasy. Huh. Weird. I wanted to be a fantasy author, and so I became one. But I think at heart I've always been a blogger first. - a Journal-ist.
A Panera in Quincy is playing music that used to be only on my 8Tracks playlists. I don't know how I feel about it. I used to think I had the corner on cool music. I used to think a lot of things. Definitions mean a lot to me. Knowing them. Being in-the-know. I think it comes out in all my forms of self-expression - because then I get to talk about them like I know something... or something.
Do you ever feel like you've gone off the map? - Like you left terra incognita far behind and everything you thought you once knew disappeared with the old horizon? That's kinda what right now is like.