Dud Sea Scrawls The Writing, clearly, is not on the wall!

…Too much real stuff ging on to think anything I say can make a dent…so I’ve been reading important thinkers by way of the news and novels. But I’m still alive, so I’ve gotten up a list below so people know it. You know how I do…of things I’ve been thinking about.

1. For weeks, none of the things I have put into my mouth have satisfied. First, my hunger was dull and now it is throbbing. Fairly throbbing. I can’t name the thing I am wanting, but I know that it is one thing…it will be perfect, if it ever presents itself. I keep thinking that perhaps it is some chocolate thing, but no…sugar won’t do at all…well, it hasn’t done. Then I think it is salt…god, it must be salt I want…but all those things are much TOO salty and I can’t believe I even considered that flavor in the first place. My palate is not very sophisticated. These things cover the entire range of options it seems are available to me. Sweet or salt. Concerning both, I seem to have had my fill. And even as I type it it is, I know, ridiculously implausible that something like this might be occurring.

2. I am reading Kipling. In spite of Kipling…or the mad tower of scandal that is built up around him…I am, classically, drawn to him because everyone else has already made all the decisions about him for me. None of that. At all. And it seems that I read him when I was a child, too. There is this snake called Nagaina that I always liked and could never remember where she came from. Kipling wrote her. I was very surprised at this discovery.

3. My new favorite film is “Ae Fond Kiss.” Well, not really. But I watched it last night and it was…well. There was some good dialog just before the first kiss. I really appreciate a good sentence before or as people taste one another. Also, and I might have just been in the mood for this sort of thing–searching for reassurance that this can be so–, but their fights were never “this is the end of us” fights. I liked that. I hate yelling and fighting between people who are supposed to be in love with one another. But I am learning that it can be borne–that it is inevitable, apparently–even by me. I still hate it. But that someone can still love me even as he is angry as hell at me…well…I am expanding my definition of loving, I guess, to include this.

4. Where are Alfonso and Carlos Cuaron? They both need to poke out their heads so I can see them again.

5. I didn’t get in line to fill up my car with gas today.

6. I have nightmares. Still. And I want to see “The Skeleton Key” but no one will go with me. I really, really want to see it but I could never do it without peeing on myself if I have to go alone.

7. My body is not a girl’s body anymore (translation: indestructible). It is, actually, turning a new leaf…where I have to be much more careful about things that I never gave a second thought a year ago. Scratches take longer to heal. Bruising happens evidencing my clumsiness, which was a sort if secret to everyone who isn’t my family. Well…this is probably just my vanity…my paranoia. Sense says there’s nothing really shifting about my body…I am just predisposed to think everything that happens to me is somehow related to the fact that I am mid-twenty.

8. Is everything I write marked? As in…am I a black writer? I am uncomfortable with this. I’m tired of people wondering why I don’t fit properly into the group I’m supposed to…because I never write anything explicitly black. On purpose. But what is important is that what I write could be anyone–could be black, could be Pakistani, could be Central American. This deserves something fuller said about it…because, of course, sometimes, I write things that are a specific kind of human being, but they’re never specifically black…but I’m a bit tired. Anyway…if I tried to write a black story…I fear that I wouldn’t do it justice. I think that there are other people better suited to that kind of thing. And then…is that just a copout? Am I shlupping out of responsibility? Do I have a responsibility? Who says? I feel that I do…but I can’t speak/write for everyone. I just know black me. Just me. And that is certainly not a definite, generalizable entity. Myself. I think I better flesh this out in a few days before the wrong person misreads this…because it is a legitimate quandary that doesn’t come from a place of self-hatred or anything. I just don’t think I’d do a very good job of it. Cuz there are the facts of Kazuo Ishiguro and David Simon.

9. I’m not getting enough sleep.

10. It will catch up with me soon.