I’m staying in tonight because I just love the feeling of being at home and cozy sometimes. We went out last night and being the weakass Asian that I am, two drinks damn near had me falling into the pool. But I was STILL able to tell that there was no one hot in the bar, so don’t believe any rumors that alcohol clouds the judgment of all pertinent superficial matters. What about that mailbox incident last year, you say? Once again, I promise you that even sober, I would have totally thought that mailbox was really, really hot.
I need to submit an article outline to a men’s magazine by tomorrow. Sometimes it worries me, how much I trip myself up about things. It freaks me out, getting published or having my creative pieces out there so I tend to sabotage myself. Writing this blog is a love/hate relationship. It’s what I do to keep myself from becoming completely reclusive, afraid of showing any of my work to anyone. I could easily become like that guy, Henry Darger, who died and afterwards, his landlord found enormous amounts of art and manuscripts that he had been privately creating behind closed doors, and nobody ever had any idea.
Speaking of things that people do behind closed doors, have you guys ever heard that REM song, “Life and How to Live It” ? It’s based on this true story of this schizophrenic guy who divided his house up and would live different lives between them, but after he died, they found this huge stash of all these copies of the same book. Apparently, he had written a book, but he had kept every copy ever printed in the back of his house and never showed it to anyone. And the book? It was called “Life and How to Live It” of course. That’s one of my favorite stories. I would do anything to get a copy of that book and read it. [note: I saved this post and searched the internet and found a rare books dealer who has this book and have ordered it, and I thought this piece of news was important enough to justify a run on sentence.]
So anyway, this weird issue I have…my mom and I were discussing it and I told her that I’m thinking about going to see a hypnotherapist. I want someone who has a solid background in clinical psychology but who also understands the marriage between the mind and the soul, the psychological and the existential. I don’t know what my problem is, why I get so freaked out when I think about my work being exposed. Because my work is me and I’m highly sensitive because I haven’t learned the separation between the art and the artist yet. And I’m afraid of what they’ll find hidden in my closet. I don’t think I have anything in my closet. I feel like I’m always obsessively going through it and have ransacked the place of anything repressed and juicy. But all indications seem to be that there’s something unresolved back there. Maybe it’s a childhood trauma. Maybe it’s a past-life trauma. Maybe it’s negative attitudes. Or maybe I’m just fucking undisciplined. But sometimes it freaks me out when I think about how there can be certain factual incidents that have happened in a person’s life, but you honestly can’t pull up a memory of them. Yet you know they must have happened because you’ve seen pictures, or other people were also present at the time to confirm the experience. It’s scary to think about how ANYTHING can happen to you and your mind can just veto your conscious power and decide, yeah, that memory…it’s not going to exist anymore. Like some of the women who get raped on roofies and wo would have no idea what happened if no one told them. Memory is such an amazing, twisted fucking fucked up fucky fucky thing.
I surfed a few blogs today and you know what I’m proud of? More and more people are saying, “Fuck grammar!” in the name of expressing their own personal style. I figure, when it comes to writing, if other people can get where you’re going and get into these personal experiences through the guidance of your words, then you’re the fucking bomb. For example, the whole preposition rule. It’s bull. When we speak, we say, “Who are you coming with?” “What are you thinking about?” Like Winston Churchill mockingly but correctly put, “This is the sort of English up with which I cannot put.” Who talks like that?!? If I wrote things like, “About what are you thinking?” and “With whom are you coming?” in the dialogue of my screenplays, I would deservedly receive the reputation of being a really bad writer. And I think some of the people who are always correcting other people’s grammar do it to feel undeservedly intellectually superior. I suspect these people are insecure about their own lack of personal creativity. Anyway, the first thing they always teach you in writing classes is to be brave enough to write in your own voice. I figure, words on a page are a blueprint, a guideline for the imagination to visualize a live event or conversation. And that’s more important than staunchly sticking to often outdated rules. I mean, I’m not advocating a complete disregard of grammar rules so that people sound like illiterate idiots. But when I read people’s blogs and I can tell they’re completely uninhibited in the way they write and are speaking exactly as they would in real life, it’s so refreshing. Totally honest.
I watched a few episodes of the 3rd season of 24 tonight. Brian thinks the show is terrible. I think it’s amusing. They deal with such serious matters, but the production just isn’t that good. The acting is terrible and the character of Kim is kind of a joke. She threatened to turn the beginning of this season into a WB teen drama. The office is dealing with a serious terrorist threat that could kill millions and she’s spends the first episode overtaking every scene with, “Waaah! We need to tell my dad that we’re dating because it’s been three months and you promised we would tell him if we were still dating after three months!” Um, little girl? We revolve around the sun. Not you. [Anyone else get annoyed by the way she runs around the office referring to Kiefer as “dad?” How about a little professionalism, girl-in-bad-haircut? Jeez.]
But I digress. Kiefer is so in character, and that’s so riveting to watch. The only weird thing is that every time he gets up close in someone’s face and is doing his velvety yet urgent whispers, I can’t help but think about how bad he must smell. Because Kiefer’s a method man and he figures, he’s this guy under great stress who’s running around sweating out spent adrenaline and not eating or rehydrating…for twenty-four straight hours. You can tell how he IS Jack Bauer. Plus, Kiefer’s a fan of hard living in real life. So I just bet when he goes in and becomes Jack Bauer, he’s just not really concerned with personal hygiene.
Or maybe this is my clean freak streak showing.