repetition

“There is a constant rush that permeates my bones and sometimes I feel as though I am wired to hurry. Maybe the world has taught me to with its to-do lists and the definitive lack of time. My bones carry so much, they sag with grief, I’ve only lived a quarter of my life.”

I hear wind.

It reads as cowardly to blame the world for your own failings, but it seems even more pathetic still to keep dwelling on it. There comes a sort of shame with acknowledging your failings and it feels like stepping on quicksand; when I was a child, quicksand was a huge source of worry to me. I would wonder why we weren’t all panicking about it, constantly. I thought I would die in quicksand – insignificant, slow and drowning.

And now that I’m older I am amused by something poetic in this fear, but I also think I would not die because of it.

I talk (ramble) a lot in my blogposts, and I am certain half of it doesn’t correlate to actual sense, but it is rather just me trying to draw a thread of a connection. There is the occasional (frequent) Greek reference (like how I am traversing this like Theseus in the labyrinth with Ariadne’s thread and blind trust – heading towards a Minotaur I am intended to slay). But in general, I am consistent in what I write, maybe repetitive.

Intention is difficult to track sometimes, so I make do with repetition. Einstein said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. While it doesn’t seem it, that is sort of the logic I intend to follow. In repetition I hope to find what I keep missing over and over and cancelling it out with trial and error. Its robotic and soothing and maybe the wrong way to go about things – and I have grown to have a soft spot for this poetic device of a coping mechanism.

When I first started writing, I found repetition the one device to come easiest to me. I like the way it reinforces a statement; and I love how a refrain means something else the second time its repeated. Poetry is best expressed when it shows the basest of human nature - and the desperation in expression, the anguish in wanting to be understood is best represented in the simplicity of repeating yourself. Over and over, reminding people of the existence of your pain lest they forget, or worse - turn away.

And I want to weave stories out of this. I want to talk about Cassandra, who I have had on my little to-do list of “ideas to explore” for ages, since the first time I heard the song Cassandra by Florence and the Machine. There is a lot I want to talk about with it. (I wish to talk about Clytemnestra too – I read this book about her, and I was so entranced that I posted a review about it. The author responded, and I felt as though I touched the clouds. I wish to do the same justice to Cassandra but I wish to do her story justice – and it feels as though I intend to be the author here rather than the one who appreciates the work. The weight feels so much worse).

“The goal is not to write but to be a writer”. I have not been able to get those words out of my head ever since my professor mentioned it in class. I would like to say I do not know why but I know exactly why, and I do not wish to sink into that realization. I do not look forward to this quicksand.

But to merely dwell on it would be cowardly. I will do what I do best which is to repeat – I know I have been writing like I have not figured out how exactly to hold a pen, occasionally coming across an idea I think to be interesting. Or maybe I have not, and I have merely been staring at my own work for too long that it looks to me as though a nightmarish creation. Did you know that if you stared at a mirror for long enough your brain would distort the image, just to fill in the gaps? Maybe I will come to hard-hitting realizations, maybe I will not. I draw like an artist (I pray to god, please let that remain true), but I write like an amateur which is not a bad thing because ‘amateur’ comes from the Latin word ‘to love’, and I always have a lifespan to learn.

I have run in circles today, and I do not think I have made sense (yet). But I wish to talk of Cassandra: doomed, distressed Cassandra of Troy – gifted with prophecy and later cursed with it. I presume this very same insanity that Einstein talks about was first ventured by her as she held the gift of prophecy, and yet none would believe her. She prophesized her end and this story is all too sad to tie into my quicksand of a post for today, but I will talk about it (someday).

(But Florence Welch did a great job capturing it in song. Listen to Cassandra).