The non-existent

To mourn that which never existed. That which never could have existed! To mourn that which could have existed but never did. (But maybe that which never existed could never have existed?) To mourn that which we thought could have existed, that which we thought should have existed...And that which did exist, but barely, never enough...

[Can I turn this thought into a story/narrative?]

Thoughts to Stories

I wrote how one of the things I write in my notes which can turn to stories is my thoughts. Thoughts can be developed into stories and they sound better as a result. I write down my thoughts first, that's the purpose of our note-taking, and they would take the form of: "I think", or "I thought", or "I wonder", and all such similar forms, but these don't convey the idea as aesthetically as placing a character into an incident. 

One good example of this is the Jigsaw piece, which started off as a note about how "we are like jigsaw pieces." I shared it with someone who said it needed more work, and I rewrote it in the form of a narrative in which I woke up as a Jigsaw piece. 
Same thing happened with the piece I posted yesterday, The Past Self. In my notebook where I started writing about it first, I began with: "A thought occurred to me..." Then I wrote it in my email drafts later beginning with "If I could go back in time . . ." Finally, after someone told me it still needs work, I rewrote it as a second person narrative, in which it does happen to someone. 
And so it goes, it starts off as a thought, you make it a narrative and it doesn't matter if it's about I/he/she/you. You don't even have to agree with the conclusion of the narrator, as long as the story itself is coherent, and has its own aesthetic.

These are two examples which I consider successful, whereas others are still there waiting for more work to be done on them. 

The Past Self

You go back in time. You meet your past self and you tell your past self to do things a bit differently. Not too differently, you say, because you don't want your present to be too different. But does your past self do things differently? Your past self goes on to do only what you have already done, what the moments made you do; your past self justifies doing so by thinking that you don't really know what would happen if you hadn't done what you had done in your past, if you had done more, or if you'd done less; and your past self would be right in thinking so. You realize then, how you are not as autonomous as you previously thought, and perhaps you are compelled to do what you do exactly as you do it, never more, and never less.

[Posted on Instagram.]

His World

He lashed at the world. He lashed at the world while thinking he was lashing back at the world. He thought the world was attacking him, but the world was the world. The world didn't care about him. The world was too big to care. But he lived in a world of his making, an imagined world of his making that was the only world in which he was the center, the only world in which everything was about him and everything else was purposely excluding him.

[Edited 25-1-2023]

The World of an I

I in my world do not see the world in another I belonging to someone else, and all the other worlds that will not stop for me, and every other world in every other I that doesn’t know about the world of my I, which doesn’t stop for them.

Between the Hate

Between the hate they each thought the other felt, which they only felt at times because they thought it’s what the other felt, the hate they felt they had to feel because it was “what the other felt”, were other feelings they wouldn't admit to feeling, that came from their true and better natures, unaffected by what they thought the other felt.

[Posted on Instagram.]

Who noticed first?

When he noticed her, she noticed him noticing her. She had noticed him before, but he hadn't noticed her when she noticed him. Now that he noticed her and she noticed him she made sure he noticed that she noticed. She liked that it now seemed as if he had noticed her first and only then did she notice him. Actually, he had noticed her before too, before he decided it wouldn't matter if she noticed him noticing her; he had quietly observed her, as it turned out she had done too. All that was left was to acknowledge who noticed the other first, or to make the claim at least.

[Wanted to add more details to make it clear that this is about strangers and first moves, but I don't know how to do it without interrupting the flow and ruining the minimalism. Maybe I'll think of a way later. Posted on Instagram.]

On Forgiveness

To write your way to forgiveness. To read your way to forgiveness. Oh for a forgiveness of others that comes as easily as self-forgiveness! To forgive blindly, never knowing how your forgiveness will be received, or whether it’ll be known at all.
To forgive is to let go, to let go is to heal. To forgive, even though your forgiveness itself may be misconstrued, may be unforgiven; to forgive even those who lack forgiveness; to forgive the unforgiving too.

On Notes

After I wrote in my notebook about different ways to come up with stories and ended that with "make a story from a note", I wanted the next bit to be about what to write in my notes. But I wasn't getting the time and eventually just wrote other notes instead. I figure I can write it here for now, which I may write later in my notebook:

 - Write a sentence, all that is required of the sentence is for it to be a good sentence, it doesn't have to be anything else. It doesn't have to be true, wise, anything other than a good sentence. 

 - Write down an image. Any image that spoke to you, and that you want to think about later. The writing of the image in your notes doesn't have to be good for you to write it down, since you can always work on it later. 

- The plot for a story.

- The beginning of a story.

- Any part of a story that comes to you.

- Your thoughts, or parts of your thoughts. I say parts of your thoughts because sometimes the thought may be incomplete in your head until you write it down, so you may avoid writing it down because it's incomplete, but writing may be the process you need to complete it. (Although sometimes, by the time I write down part of a thought, I find I've forgotten even parts I had thought of...)

- Your beliefs, views, opinions. 

- Rewrite different versions of previous notes.

Some of these are obvious, I'm just trying to make a full list, though I know I'm probably missing out on things I write in my notebook, or also in my notes, in my email drafts. I write these down when they come to me, and then when the time to write a story comes, I have all these notes to work on, and sometimes that's what happens. You can of course also combine different notes or the outcomes of them into one story/piece.

On Not Knowing

You want to know because you are under the illusion that knowing will give you some control, that not knowing will be like losing all control, but then you come to know and you simply lose more control than you had when you didn’t know. You want to know because you’re not indifferent to what it is you want to know. The desire to know leaves you under the control of another. You can liberate yourself only by not wanting to know. Perhaps not knowing can be your way of having control. To intentionally not know; to be in control of your not knowing. Seek to not know and delight in your not knowing.

[Posted on Instagram.]

I looked at my ego, and how ugly it is to look at one’s ego. I saw the nature of humankind, I saw in my ego a mirror of every other ego. (Looking at my ego is as ugly as looking at my handwriting.)

[Old handwritten notes of mine from 2015 which I found recently.]

Writing exercises

Or how to come up with ideas for stories:

• A story (sometimes they just appear) 
• The story of the making of a story
• The story of the impact of a story
• Rewrite older stories, change gender, perspectives, etc. (Since the point is universal)
• The story of how a story never was
• Make a story from a quote, even if it’s yours
• Make a story from a note

(From my notebook)

Jet lag has me waking up in the middle of the night and thinking of what I'd like to write the next day but also knowing I'll forget when I do wake up. I don't get up to write it down because I have hopes of falling back asleep. Though I do remember now, that as I was reflecting about some real world problems, I remembered a beautiful sentence and I reflected on what a luxury it would be to spend one's life thinking only of the beauty of beautiful sentences.

On Imagination

I’m a slave of my imagination, and I wonder if everyone else is the same, or if it’s only me and maybe others like me who overfed their imaginations until they grew to monstrous proportions and took control. I suffer because I live not in the moment in which nothing is truly happening, but in imagined moments in which I suffer. I suffer because I imagine myself suffering. And I cannot help suffering from my imagined suffering, because I’m a slave of my imagination. I am punished and on trial, and my crime is my imagination, and my punisher and my punishment are my imagination too.

[Edited on 9-1-2023. On Instagram.]