Published

I've been thinking about my writing lately, mostly because of creative writing class, but it's got me wondering about sharing my work. My original plan was to spam the Lit Mag at school with a hundred poems at the end of the year, but I'm re-thinking that right now. When I finish something I like what I've written and part of me wants other people to see it and know that it's mine. So I've been looking into other options.

We are required to make a poetry book for class complete with pictures, profiles, the who shebang. I am wondering if I could go and make that incredibly long and just make things interesting for my teacher (Ok, so I want to cause a little trouble. You really hadn't noticed?). I'd enjoy doing it, so why not? 

I also looked into either opening a 4th blog (not that the other two I have right now are that great) and making it totally devoted to my creative writing. What I worry about here is someone plagerizing me. Which, normally I wouldn't care to much, but I really put heart into these things and I'm not ok with you taking credit for my life. That crosses a line.

Or I could join some website like poetry.com or fanfic.net or devianart (or some combination there of). I'm not particularly fond of any of those sites. Though I do put up with the first two just because of content. 

The truth is that I don't know what I want to do, because as much as I want to share my work I want to preserve my aminimity so that I can do things like submit a hundred poems at a time and see what happens. Or totally shock people by casually writing something really cool while they sit there thinking "what? you write?". It gives me greater opportunity to blow people's minds. But if I share then I have access to more minds in order to take them by surprise. It's some trade off.

Heartbeat

Have you ever considered a heartbeat? It's that most basic sign of life that we have- more important even than breathing. It's the beating of our hearts that ensures us that we are indeed here, not dreaming some impossible dream, that we are not some figment of our own imagination. I think that's why I'm so drawn to them. When I'm scared or rushing around I don't have to try to hear it- I can feel the blood pulsing through my veins and it feels good to know that everything is fine.
We crave finding that in ourselves and others. It's so easy to loose that connection and start to wonder if the people around us are really there or if we are the only person alive in the universe, and even though we know that we aren't, and our minds tell us that there are 6 billion people on this planet and 20 something that you can see right now, even so we still doubt it. If you can find someone else's heartbeat it's like their pulse is your only connection to another living thing- and it feels good. It's all about contact, interacting with another person.
I heard once that Americans need the most personal space of anyone in the world. If you think about it, this makes perfect sense. The idea of touch is lost to Americans. We just don't understand it. As much as we want human contact, we fear it.
Something as simple as running into someone in the hallway makes us panic- as if the touch could be deadly. I think we get shocked by the collision of our respective universes- the idea that someone else could exist on their own completely apart from ourselves- that even people we don't know can make contact with us that easily.
It begs the question: what are we so afraid of. Why does the idea of genuine contact with anther human being terrify us? We're not the only culture that has been lied to about human connection, so why are we the ones that are terrified?

What's different about us?

But more importantly:

How do we fix it?

No, I'm not a Hermit... yet...

Have you ever watched Doctor Who? It's a British sci-fi show (wich just goes to show how incredibly nerdy I am), and something that's been on my mind a lot lately. I love that the show seems to say things that I could envision going through my head, being said by people like myself. One of may favorite lines is in the episode where they are on the Titanic (spaceship, not ocean liner) and the doctor tells one of the passengers that he and his friends are hermits. "Hermits united. We meet up every ten years or o and swap atories about caves."

I am not a hermit. Yet. I have to say though that the idea does have some appeal.

What prompted this is that today I was informed that for Humanities I would be forced to work in a group this quarter (and next quarter too, by the looks of it). I'm not thrilled. People are crazy. Serieously. And I don't have any real friends in that class anymore. So I'm going to have to just go up to some group of friends and say "hey, mind if I join you for the next few weeks?". AKWARD! I'm really good at working on my own. i'm relatively efficent when I choose to be, I'm my own master, and left to my own devices I do some pretty shnazzy things. Put me in a group, and you loose a lot of that.

So while I'm freaking out and considering dropping the class that was my favorite period of the day last semester, I'm really wishing taht Anna would join my class. Or I would know someone in 4th hour. Or I didn't have social anxiety. Or that I could work alone. Mostly that one.

The second reason that I'm loving the doctor right now (besides the fact that I'm probably on overload) is the appeal of having someone in my life the way that Donna has the doctor. I'm Clare, super nerd! Where's my alien in a blue box??? I want to see the universe. I don't know how to explain it... to live like I'm drowning in an idea, and that idea is life, living it so intensely that I can't breathe, and it sinks in so that every part of me is flooded with it, my lungs are full if the thought, and every blood cell has replaced it's oxygen and carbon dioxide with the tiniest molecules of it all. That's how I want to live, and that's what I see here. I see the promise of a different life and the promise of knowledge of life outside ourselves. Like I said, it's hard to explain.