talent

i have about twenty minutes.

i am beginning to think with some dread and premature nostalgia that i will miss this place once i am gone from it. i will miss the faculty, the professors i had and the ones i never got to discover before leaving. i will miss the intelligence. i have found that in the real world--in the world of corporations--people aren't as smart as the people i am used to. it's enough to make me want to start applying for grad school. because it's disheartening--to have all that you learned and all that you learned to value be wasted. the future is looking grim. and isn't it just how it is? the moment i have to leave is the moment i find that i don't want to. the moment i have to start my career is the moment i begin to doubt the career i've chosen. is there something real behind the anxiety? or is it just anxiety? how does one know when to stick to one's guns and when to abandon ship?

i learned about mimetic desire last week. its enough for one person to desire something because then everyone else will desire it too. but there's a difference between desire and fulfillment. even if the whole world desires you, it doesn't mean anything if they aren't willing to act on that desire. so, in effect, it isn't enough.

being in a writing workshop has forever ruined reading for me. now i find myself disagreeing with things the author chooses to do. i read every book like i'm critiquing it--and that is truly horrible. this is me postlapsarian, when i have lost my innocence to the criticism and nitpicking in workshop and can no longer look at books the same way. they have pointed out my nakedness and now that is all i see when i read. their nakedness, their flaws and embarrassments and things to be ashamed of. and these are published works. it has made a hypocrite of me because i know what i want to see but i myself can never write what it is i want to see. i read a time travel book and i am skeptical. is that really how an eleven year old would feel when she realizes she has traveled back in time. when i read about an orphan who strives to be a ballerina. should she really be behaving that way, her character doesn't seem consistent. ruined. fallen. and i can't even hand them a fig leaf with which to hide behind because i've never met them and we've never been in workshop together.

and you know, the worst part about writing? it isn't the actual writing. its the unwriting. when you write and write and in the end you must remove a favorite scene, a favorite character, a favorite point of view because it is hindering the story as a whole. how you must work doubly hard to fix it and how this work costs you one of the best moments in the story. the sacrifice. i used to be amazed when author's spoke with far-reaching authority about the worlds and characters they create. but now i know that that signifies a pain. all the things that couldn't be put in the book, that had to be cut, the writer keeps inside so that what they know and understand is far broader than what the reader knows and understands based on the text. how when you read you actually miss so much even when you think you have the entire world in your hands. only the author and perhaps his or her editor know the whole of it. when you think about it, it could be baffling. in this world that we live in, we will never know everything. in a world that you create, your reader will never know everything. it makes of the writer something sublime, because creating means knowing the whole of it when others would only know portions. but there is that sacrifice. writer's are very generous in some ways because they would like to share the whole of it, to share the entire sublime vision to their readers, but are limited, forced to sacrifice due to length, coherence, etc. how we are comprised simultaneously of limitless potential and potential limitlessness. but i'm not a writer yet. i can only hope to be, if only ever to a select few.

my twenty minutes are up.