A Written Web

If you wrote a book about someone, you’d like it if they wrote a book about you. If you wrote a chapter about them, you’d like it if they wrote a chapter too. If someone is a footnote in your book, you’d like to be a footnote in theirs. If you’ve erased someone from your book, you hope you’ve also been erased from theirs.
You don’t want them to do this to return the favor, you want everything to be genuinely mutual. You want whatever is sincere within you to also be originating sincerely within them at the same moment organically.

Yes, you want all this, possibly without knowing you want all this. It’s an unrealistic, unconscious fantasy.
Reality, however, weaves a web not so symmetrical, in which you’re a footnote to someone who’s a book to you, if you’re lucky enough not to be erased, you’re a book to someone who’s a chapter to you, a footnote to a chapter, a book to a footnote, forgotten by the remembered, remembered by the forgotten.

And so it goes. 

[Repost from Instagram, so head there and click Like if you liked it.]

Silence

He woke up, suddenly, in the middle of the night, because of the silence. The silence of voices he had expected to hear, the silence too loud to ignore. He attempted to think of words, to write down words that would end the silence and bring back the voices. He panicked when he couldn't think of what to say or find the right words, as if he lacked oxygen. He decided, to relieve himself from feeling, to write down, if nothing else, how it felt to not know what to say, how he felt about the silence and the lack of words, so he wrote, "I am suffocated by the silence of my self when I cannot think of the right words." And suddenly, he could breathe again.

[Now on Instagram, where you can like it, if you like it.]

Ideal Readers

What kind of readers would I like? Those more interested in the writing than the biography. Those that can enjoy texts regardless of context. I find pleasure in words that I come across even when they don't represent me, even when I can't relate to the I in the text, as long as I like how it's written; and that's the kind of readers I wish to have. Of course, relating to the words can be beautiful, and if you do relate then good for you; I just mean that is not the only goal. The least worthy goal for my ideal reader is searching (mainly) for my biography in what I write.

Rereadings

When he was twenty-three he got lost in the moment with her; she was thirty-three at the time. Back then he felt she was lost in the moment with him too, but by his twenty-seventh year, when twenty-three seemed a lifetime ago and thirty-three still seemed far ahead, he looked back and thought she couldn't have been caught up in the moment with him, as he had been with her; she must have known exactly what she was doing, she must have been more in control than she had seemed to him; thirty-three must be too wise to get lost like that, thirty-three must mean full control. He spent the next few years of his life hating her and blaming her for much of what happened to him, with her, and after her. This continued until he reached his thirty-second year and thirty-three was just around the corner, when he still didn't find the control he had expected to have by then, he still got caught up and got lost in the moment. Now he understood it all differently, and the bitter memories he had long replayed repeatedly in his mind gave way to other memories he had forgotten, fond moments he smiled at as he remembered. What he regretted, now, was all the bitterness, and the time he'd spent hating what he now saw was never worth the hate at all.

Really

She said she really likes his photos, the ones he posts on Instagram. He said she really doesn't. She insisted she really does. "But really you don't," he said. She called him rude and said this was no way to take a compliment. She thought he was emphasizing on "really", but really, he was talking about Instagram likes.

[Edited on 28-02-2023]

The Right Words

He wanted to somehow convey to her why they were a good idea. She wanted to explain why she didn't think they would work. He tried to be clear with his words about what he wanted. She tried to hint at him, to lead him to the conclusion she had arrived at without saying what would hurt him. They both believed there was a right way to express what they wanted, a right combination of words that would give them their desired results, but the right words and the rightly said words, if they truly existed, eluded them both. In the end, they surrendered their speeches to the despair of silence, a silence that explains nothing...

[Edited 03-12-2022.]

Different things

They wanted different things. In itself this was not a problem, not always. But they wanted different things from each other. If they wanted different things but wanted the same things from each other, that could work for them. If they wanted different things from each other and they were each getting what they wanted, maybe that would work too. But they wanted each other to want the same things they wanted from each other and they weren't getting what they wanted, for neither of them could control their own wants, much less that of the other.

[Edited 23-11-2022. Posted on Instagram.]

Between what was and what should have been

All that happened was not supposed to happen. And all that was supposed to happen did not happen. My imagination of events, because it fixates on what was supposed to happen, makes more sense to me than my memories of these events. The fickleness of our decisions! What we could never foresee or even understand in hindsight. How was the line drawn, or erased, and when?

[Posted on Instagram.]

Repost: On Types

She's looking through my books for certain types of books while I'm looking through other types of books. She laughs and praises God as she points to the type of books she's looking through, which she thinks of as praiseworthy, in contrast to the type I'm looking through, forgetting that all these books (the ones she's looking through and the ones I'm looking through) are mine. She borrows a book from me; she would like to read this book; she would like to be the type of person who would read this book, and she thinks I'm the type of person who wouldn't read this book, again forgetting it's from me she's borrowing this book. When she tries to read it, she finds it not to her liking; she had expected much more from the book. Years go by, and I ask for my book back. She's forgotten she borrowed it from me; she's forgotten her impression of the book when she did try to read it, she remembers though, that she wants to be the type to have read this book (and liked it), and she remembers that she thinks I'm the type to not like this book, again forgetting the book is mine, as she says: "That book is pure gold."

[Edited 23-11-2022. Posted on Instagram.]

She wanted to seduce him, but he wouldn’t be seduced. He would be seduced, but not by her. He would be seduced by her, but not this time, not again. He would be seduced by her, even this time, again, but not this way. He would be seduced by her, even this time, again, even this way, but not with these words. She wanted to seduce him and she could seduce him, but she had to get too many things right which she couldn’t or for some reason didn’t, and so she didn’t seduce him and thus found him to be unseduceable. 

Who She Was

She didn’t know who she was anymore. When she was alone she said things to herself about who she was. She said she was the type to do this, she was the type to not do that. But then experience came along and put her in situations she hadn’t been in before, in which she had thought she would act in a certain way but ended up behaving in a way that shocked her. She had mistakenly assumed that she was who she was when she was alone, but it was other people who revealed her to herself and showed her what she could do. Maybe she did know herself, but only the self she was when she was alone and not the countless other selves she could be, which only time and other people would continue to reveal to her.

[Edited on 12-11-2022, posted on Instagram.]

Humanity is the confusion
of having animal brains
with transcendent aspirations,
each forgetting about the other.

[Posted two years ago on Instagram.]

Haunted

I am haunted by other people. I am haunted by my thoughts of other people. Haunted by the thoughts of others; what I imagine to be the thoughts of others. The feelings of others, or what I imagine to be the feelings of others. All of which, I recognize, may have no reality whatsoever outside of my own head. I am haunted by my own self; I am the one who haunts.

[Posted on Instagram.]