This is the first time I've had to do it.
That's because I've never been a writer before.
My writing skills peaked soon after I disappeared from e2. The rush of finding myself capable of something so powerful, far beyond the simple recording of my thoughts which I had intended. It changed the course of my thoughts, recording is raw material for much more. I realised I could expand the complexity of my mind into extra memory, organise my thoughts in another way, one that didn't rely on the focusing influence of university. I've left university now. The eerie feeling when I realised that I could respond critically to my own work, the feeling of ego death when I realised I could write as much unmentionable crap as I wanted, because I could dig in it for anything I wanted; finally sticking at something I wasn't geekomatically good at, discovering that the best things in life are the ones that demand you rather than all the inviting ones that present themselves so frequently.
Intense
discomfort.
That was my peak. I slid off it soon enough.
The thoughts my writing clarified demanded something of me too. They demanded more time than my life right then could handle. They demanded it be changed. I needed to move from the comfort of my home valley into a place where I could access all the things I needed. The city.
I needed space from my parents; I love them immensely and always want to explain the terrible exhilarating things I'm thinking.
I needed people to modulate these ideas back to me, to fight them or nuture them, give Darwin his say.
I realised there's a million circular reasons for not changing the world and only one direct one for trying.
I moved out.
If it were 3 in the afternoon I could say that, as I write, there's people in the other room working on the current part of a chain reaction of events and connections and words that I reagented myself into a year and a half ago after. Um.
I could say that they're coding, compiling mailing lists, scanning the database for pertinent information. I could say that the higher cause they're working on is the legalization of marijuana, and there's many other things to point our pens at. I could say that your mind is a weapon, use it. That I peaked months ago, turned my back on the fire and lost the ability to express it by putting everything I had into getting where I could express it. Say they're setting channels in place based on my desire to say... nothing. I can't write, can barely even remember the things I wanted to to write, the things that had their crude representations buried in the words I tried to make be them. I'm 19 and I feel burned out. In a lot of ways I've felt like that for a long long time. I haven't even officially come of age yet and I dreamed a dream of 20 generations, of infinity, and I feel like a lonely old man. I could even say I'd lost that dream.
But it's not 3 in the afternoon, exactly. They're all asleep and I've been writing for hours. Beside my bed is a printout of tell me, trains, a story. About.... I'm going to claim this new space as my own by wallpapering it with something important to me. Not posters, I haven't made any yet. Writing, the thoughts which have comforted me and terrified me throughout the months since I ended my university career. I may not have said much, but I've been watching whenever I can. Thanks e2. For what, I just can't say. With things as they're going, maybe one day I'll be good enough to.
I can't write the things I intended to come back with, I don't know if they can ever be recaptured or if doing so would make communicating them any easier. I can, of course, only write those things I have.
I've decided to come back to e2.