Un poème rapide sur un coin de table

There’s this obstacle
There’s this obstacle
There’s this way out
But no way
To see it
Out
Of a white page
Begging
For a bit of change
Of one’s memory
Of one’s creativity
Hinged, and fragmented.
Mostly, I would throw these out
Or away
Vanishing in a trash bin I can’t see
Somewhere out there
With one door on my screen
Where I can never go
Where bits of me are loss
Not to be forgotten but to never be known
Because of this obstacle
That I confront
With words that displease me
With assonances that disappoint
Reflecting feelings I find petty
With a way out
Surely
That I cannot see
Blinded, as I am
By my un-letting sense of mediocrity.

A cold Saturday afternoon

I’m at Café Utopik, on Ste-Catherine St. in front of Berri Square. I’ve known of this place for a long time and have always been curious about it, but never came until today. My plan, after meeting the man who sold me the September issue of Spirale Magazine, was to go to Kilo as a means to soak in my life-before, but, upon exiting Renaud-Bray, I turned westward, away. Something of an imaged riot-ness of the place turned me off: late-morning breakfasts after nights before, served with that attitude that was once mine and that I can’t seem to find patience for now, in my old age. (And this has me wonder if this is what getting older is all about: a loss of patience for those young, combined with a stretched, patient perception of time.)

I’m having trouble with plot. I’m having trouble with language. I cannot write of Montreal in a uni-linguistic way because I have never experienced this city as such, and I could not, because everything I experience diverges any which way through any of both languages that inhabit me, and this city promotes this disparity within me even more. To write this, by which I mean to write in such a way, is quite singular. I have often described myself as a perfect Montreal creation: a location where distinct solitudes meet, leaving me dual in most ways I can imagine. This, I do not know how to write through. And, I am convinced that, ultimately, people do not appreciate pluralities; they are just too difficult.

2007 begun

(Written yesterday afternoon.)

I’m at Café Rico, seated between Caro and Ben. The last time I was here, in November, it snowed for the first time this season. Now it’s spring out. Raining and cloudy as it is, I am told, in London or Paris. My plan of finishing my (NaNoWriMo) novel before my 31st birthday has been unsuccessful. I have not written since my last post on this blog, Christmas cards aside. Already, I don’t remember the names of my secondary characters. My head has given itself up to Night and Day, Virginia Woolf’s second novel, the beginning of which was tedious, long, and rather a bore; but, her writing grows on one, and I am now quite interested with the outcome of her characters issues. Much of her seems to be poured into this novel. So much so that part of every one of her characters seem to be sketched on some facet of her own personality, and that is one of the reasons why the beginning of her novel was so tedious: she describes their inner thoughts and world at length and repetitively, yet she somehow doesn’t succeed at differentiating them until much later in the book (around page 300); they appear too much to be all of the same; it is a muddle of thoughts and feelings weakly portrayed. Her writing is nonetheless fine. Her sentences are extremely well constructed. I sometimes reread one thinking to myself how I wouldn’t have written it in such a way, and then I rewrite it in my mind, and the comparison has me appreciated her writing all the more. I am, for the first time, consciously reading like a writer. A non-writing writer. I would love to know if other writers are crippled with so much self-doubt. It took Woolf about 4 years to complete “Night and Day.” Sometimes she couldn’t work for more than an hour a day. She was conveniently bi-polar and mentally fragile at the time; I’m just scared, and extremely efficient at doing a great number of other things.