idle hands aren’t necessarily the devil’s workshop, but they sure are some sort of workshop.
my hands are idle because I’ve been sick with a cold that led me to realise I’m sick of a lot of other things.
which reminds me that quem pensa pensa melhor parado, as Raul Seixas sang. I don’t exactly know how to translate that, maybe because I'm not a translator. something about thinking better when you’re idle.
I took some optional translation courses in college. I really liked them, really liked the professor — who later became a friend. she also introduced me to psychoanalysis, or maybe it was her and another professor at the same time. they both had the same name, so you’d kind of have to say their entire name, surname and all, every time you mentioned one of them, to avoid confusion. one of them has a Portuguese surname, easy to pronounce (if you speak Portuguese). the other’s surname is Italian, and I’m not sure me or any of my classmates ever got it right.
one of them left her job, moved to another country. she lived on a mountain for a while. I visited her once and I loved it, but I was also feeling like shit the entire time. I wonder if she could tell and, if she could, if she could also tell that it had absolutely nothing to do with her.
I always wanted to live on a mountain for some reason. I remember reading about Hermann Hesse and his mountain house and thinking, oh, right. maybe there’s more than one reason why I like his writing.
which is a silly thing to think, of course. but why only think things that make sense? why not think silly things? who decides what is silly and that silly isn’t a good thing when it comes to thoughts?
I feel silly writing things down sometimes. sometimes I feel downright stupid. sometimes proud. sometimes I feel a thousand things at the same time.
a thousand things at the same time, which together constitute the feeling of feeling alive: that’s the case when I write fiction.
but then I’ll think of something that’s only barely fiction and when I start writing it down, that’s where the other feelings I mentioned mostly arrive.
no, that’s not entirely true. I also feel silly and stupid writing fiction sometimes. until recently it was hard to pinpoint when and where and why that happened, but now I think I more or less know why.
but with nonfiction, I don’t know. in my case it feels like writing a diary to an audience, when the best thing about journaling is that it doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else.
if you’re a nonfiction writer, leave a comment, if you’d like. tell me why you like doing it, why it gives you the feeling that fiction gives me. I'm very curious about writing practices that are different from mine.
like poetry. I love reading it but couldn’t write it to save my life.
that’s always a funny thing to say, isn’t it? “couldn’t [do sth] to save my life.” it makes sense with a few things — “couldn’t swim to save my life.” that’s my case. if I needed to swim to save my life, I’d die. and now I’m afraid I’ll drown and this will be written down for people to point at and say it’s eerie.
which reminds me that I was thinking of Mamonas Assassinas earlier this week, for some reason. how there were videos of them being tense before the plane crash that killed them. one of them dreamt they’d die in a plane crash not long before the accident happened. people tell me I cried a lot when they died. I don’t remember any of it, but then again I don’t think I remember anything else about 1996 either.
but maybe that thing about not being able to do sth to save your life also makes sense for other things. what if writing poetry could actually save my life, but I just can’t do it? not that my life needs saving, actually.
I’d say I guess I’ll never figure out, but maybe I will — who knows. only a few months ago I was so worried about a few things that now feel inconsequential, and didn’t care about other things that now feel big. a few months ago I was so afraid nothing would work out and now I’m not so sure what “working out” even looks like. life’s long and short like that. good luck, bad luck — who knows?