A writer is born: or, why I fell in love with you

Witness-- I have carefully constructed this moment, a work of art with no audience. My father's plaid wool overshirt, my grandfather's grey wool cap, both incongruous with my large dangling earrings. On the table a pack of clove cigarettes and a glass of red wine; a cigarette in one hand and a fountain pen in the other. In front, a window looking into my neighbor's dining room. Above, the stars. Is this not the very picture of a writer, in all her bohemian splendor? It's perfect-- I wish you could see it.

Absolutely I am posing, posing for myself if no one else (but there is always the hope of an observer.) Many years ago I grew conscious of my self-consciousness, and was repulsed by my own artifice. How could I be so stagy, my words and actions orchestrated for effect? What was I really like, who would I be if I was not constantly performing for some unseen observer?

This proves a much more difficult question than it would seem. First of all, the in-turned eye cannot be shuttered. It does blink occasionally, but by definition those are the very moments we're unaware of. The moment we realize we are (at last, at last!) having a moment of unselfconsciousness, it is over.

Here irony is born, born with a squint, born in the act of catching yourself trying to look at yourself with your eyes closed. An ugly child, but some hypnotic glint peeps from under her half-closed eyelids. She spends most of her time playing with parallel mirrors, watching the curved chamber of reflected frames grow deeper as it straightens-- but at the moment it becomes perfectly straight, and the chamber on either side stretches to infinity, her head blocks the reflection and she can only see her own face. And she laughs.

Irony, once born, is with you for good as far as I can tell. Then the best you can hope for is a semblance of unselfconsciousness; the best you can do is to stifle actions and words that come with too-conscious artistic pride. If you think, before doing something, "What a fine picture this would make!" then refrain, in the name of authenticity. You do not want to be like those dramatic ones who are forever saying things for effect (though how you do envy them for how easy and carefree they are with their studied artifice!)

But beware-- since the self-scrutinizer rarely sleeps, the only actions this rule will permit are dull ones. You may wait and wait for lovely and dramatic actions to spring forth spontaneously in your life, but if you have actually gotten this far with me then I can assure you you will never actually be spontaneous, ever. On the rare moments when a spontaneous impulse emerges, you will seize it with such glee that it bursts at once. So you will find that, forbidding yourself all artificial action, you have become a mere watcher of other people's action, adding no flourishes of interest and beauty to the human gallery. You hoped that, by now, self-consciousness might have retired a bit, having little of interest to watch, but she shows no signs of slackening.

Better accept that, for you, authenticity is only to be found in the shifting scopes of artifice, in costumes and poses which you assume as the mood strikes you, parading before the mirror, and before an audience if you can find one. Construct; fabricate; dazzle; entertain. The truth may be in there somewhere. It is not for you to find.

on methods of displaying word-snippets, and possibly a mental illness

I have way too many blogs. Thank goodness I stopped trying to have a system for which entries to post to which... now I just kind of go with whatever feels right. And I'm trying to keep it simple by usually cross-posting from Raid or Chronicles onto the myspace blog, but sometimes I don't. The result is that my three blogs (I've contemplated trying to post blog entries into my facebook notes too, since that's the only one my brother would read, but that way madness lies) read like alternate universes of the Ginny mind: lots of overlap, but each one presents a slightly different picture.

But that's not what I came here to talk about. It's just a thought that arose as I was trying to decide which blog to post this to.

What I came here to talk about was this: I miss away messages. I don't miss talking on IM (note that I do not call it AIM, first because I use ichat and second because people have started pronouncing it like the word "aim" which drives me BATTY) but I do miss away messages. So often a phrase comes to me, either internally or externally, that I want to display before the world. The away message was terrific for this. Actually, college in general (which was the last time I used IM with any frequency) was terrific for this. There was the quote wall, the quote book, there was scribbling lines and excerpts on the back of one's notebook when one was bored in class, there was, heck, just standing in the middle of the quad and shouting stuff. Though I don't think I did that. Much.

I was going to use that little headline quote in myspace for this purpose, but the current quote is so perfect, in origin and applicability, that I can't bear to change it. But I have three other quotes waiting in the wings that desperately need to be broadcasted somewhere. What's a girl to do?

WAIT!!! I know!!! I will start another blog! A quote of the day blog! Or week, or whatever. Displayed on the front page will be whatever snippet of wisdom, cleverness, compositional beauty, or just absurdity I feel the need to place before the world. And then I will have an archive of all the thoughts that struck me as displayable during this phase of my life. Which, for some reason, I value.

...

I have this sinking feeling that somewhere in the universe, something just went horribly wrong.