Stupidity Hole

So what I rambled out the past two days actually came from trying to write a longer thing and it didn’t quite work. At first I was tempted to publish it as it was, but the issue was that it was two separate things that carried the same kind of mood and weight, but didn’t gel. Therefore, the separate things.

Sometimes writing is like that. Sometimes you sit for hours, waiting for the right thing to come along, the right moment, the right suggestion that moves the air that slight amount, and then you find the thing and you go from there. Sometimes you just shoot it out and you power through, and you find the bits and pieces in the middle of it all that connect the whole thing and you’re set. It’s wonderful like that, I think.

But what a lot of writing can be is a lot of sitting down and a lot of time passing, and sometimes not even realising until it’s far too late that things have changed. The day has passed and there’s only seven sentences, but you are certain you wrote a lot more than that.

These sentences are stretching into weeks, at this point.

But, you know, you try to get everything across. You try to capture what it is in some moment and then you move on… sometimes. Sometimes you build further and sometimes that works. Variance and all that stuff. But it doesn’t always work, of course, but you keep on trying.

I keep on trying to write more and I keep hitting the wall, and perhaps I have exhausted all there is in me that I have, and maybe I didn’t have much of anything to say at all, really. Maybe I do but don’t know how to say it. I don’t know.

I find that, often when I try to write, my mind wanders. I want to write these long pieces, but instead of being able to do so what happens is my mind goes to the coastline. It goes to the cliffs and plateaus, to the escarpments and the sound of waves roaring as they shatter into a vast amount of pieces, and some of those get collected before they evaporate, only to roar and shatter once more.

I go to a day not too bright, with a light breeze carrying up the salt and some of the molecules of spray, and carrying them over, and I look out and try to see what it says about me. I look for a deepness that isn’t there, because it’s easy to imply that the ocean resonates with my inner turmoil – applicability is a malleable foe – but what really is the case is I’m looking to just put in no work for an explanation.

Of course that resonance still remains important, but you know.

So I think of the vastness of the ocean, and I think of what it would take to explore it, and how energy passes through it and it is a noisy space, and I think of the insignificance of the self in the grand scheme of it all, and I try to write about that but even that is a strange phenomenon at times. But it’s easier to write about than most anything else I try to cover, and, to be honest, I’m not sure why. It’s a passion, sure, but it’s not my specialty… even though it pertains to my degree.

So anyway, writing. Writing about life, writing about society, writing about going to the ocean and looking over the distance and going “Hey fuck it’s like me, how true to life”.

But there is a power in the ocean and there is a marvel in the Australian coastline, which is more than just one thing, but it has a certain rocky oldness to it, and it seems dry and sparse at times, even if it is continually bombarded with moisture. The rocks leak their contents back into the ocean as the ocean takes it all away and maybe brings it back at some point.

The breeze carries a refreshing feel even if the sun beats down on the hardened surfaces with scattered pockmarks of sand, some of which stretch farther into lines and creases among the scrub.

The vegetation itself holds fast and stabilises much of the sand, and eventually that builds into humps and hummocks, and gradually habitat changes as more sand is captured from the winds, protecting that which is behind where the sand builds. It’s more prominent along long stretches of beach that aren’t maintained for mass urban swarming, and all that scrub and bush and vegetation seems waxy and verdant, yet gangly and dry all at the same time.

Sumps form over years and form into rock pools, and within those habitats grow and flourish.

The coastline is as vibrant with life as so many other areas out there, but when you’re there and when you’re thinking about it, or rather when I’m there and thinking about it, the life is not what I necessarily consider. Sometimes I’m lost within myself, looking for the right words to say and get together, to articulate what it is that I feel in a given moment, and it’s not always possible. It’s not often possible either, but that’s the way things go. I don’t know the words to express some of what I feel, but that’s okay. Some would argue that isn’t and that in saying that it’s okay, I am “cheapening” the expression” of language, but I try to know how to use what I know and I try to gradually learn more. “Pertinent” is good, but so is “fitting” and “appropriate”, and it doesn’t matter how much you use “pertinent” if it feels like you don’t know how to use it.

I try to write about writing and inevitably my thoughts go back to the coastline and what it is and what it can mean, and it’s beautiful and expansive.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 18:49:93

Much slower than I’d hoped, but overall I think this is pretty grounded, which is nice in this particular moment.

Written at home.