riffing on my own b-side

07/15/2024. The date above applies to everything in larger print below. Some of the entries in my old journal work with a simple cut and paste, but most, like this one, need the red pen. There are deletions when I drone on. There’ll be minimal editing.

—

I’m 24 years old. just turned the corner on that too, so a young 24. I’ve written a lot in the last few years, but there’s something missing from all my novels: Fiction.

I’m sitting in my first Manhattan apartment. I finally graduated from Brooklyn, if only a sublet. I can’t piece together what the last few years have been about. Some of that is probably the late nights. I thought I had a handle on my life, in terms of knowing what I was aiming for, knowing what I was made to do. It’s not writing. It might be nothing at all.

I could do a lot. I adapt easily. Beyond learning to blend in from city to town to city, I have trouble thinking I was intended to do anything. I don’t know why that bothers me, why I feel the need for a destiny. Even if I had one I’ll die like everyone else. It’s not like Ben Franklin laughed about the whole kite and key thing on his deathbed.

I had a troubled boyhood, but so what, so did a lot of people. I’m more or less okay now. I wish I could make a go of being a professional writer, but I don’t think I have the demeanor or temperament. I’m a flunky really, a drop out of the world.

It’s why I bring people food. If they’re lucky I help them enjoy their evening out. I’m really not depressed about it, there’s probably more to it than that. I don’t see serving food as lower. Maybe it’s as important as being a paid writer.

Listen to me, will ya?

What? I thought my voice was turning into a strong message center.

Ha!

What I have to provide the world is booming commonality. I express the most everyday things in an everyday way. I haven’t sold any of my writing because I write love letters to the world, not even that, fan mail. The sentiment is strong but the ideas fall short.

Maybe it’s the green tea bath talking, but I’m a single breath in the wind. I’m the invisible spirit of men. I’m fighting with my novels and with my search to be a singular voice. I’m not. I’m only an individual in terms of soul, and how do you put that down in writing? Miller managed to do it. Woolf. But not Hardy, or Dickens. Chuck should’ve served cocktails instead of prose by the word. How many lifetimes would I need to get somewhere like the greats?

I’m not looking forward to work tomorrow, but I’m looking forward to the truth of tomorrow. Its complete lack of predestined purpose. If I didn’t show up there wouldn’t be more than a small ripple in that one day, a little hustle to cover my shift, stories guessing what happened to me, but nothing in the paper to tell them. Who knows what my soul can do? I don’t know. I look and I look, but I’ll never figure it out.