I Could Never Write A Stream of Consciousness

This is a stream of consciousness/monologue/character sketch I've been working on. I've been doing some experimentation with the way re-tooling punctuation changes the way ideas are presented. Hopefully it doesn't come off as awkward, or if it does, it comes off as a good kind of awkward. Anyway...

'Its amazing, the things you can trick yourself into. For years I tricked myself into thinking I was okay. I'm not okay, and that's a lot of what this is about. And it keeps you up at night at first. But one day you realize that its okay to not be okay. That's the day you become alive.'

It was the best paragraph I had ever written, or at least I thought so. A conclusion to a book with no beginning. The last thing inspired by her that came out well.

And I had no place to put it.

A novel was something I could never accomplish. As a wide-eyed collegiate I stroked my confidence. If Salinger and Woolf could create novels entirely about walking around, going to parties, and having streams of consciousness, so could I. But I could never write a stream of consciousness. For me it was more like a jagged rock slide of consciousness. The consciousness of my characters was like a neurotic robot performing tasks it wasn't built for.

For the longest time I wrote to escape. I wrote out the opposite of what was me. I wrote a book called 'Standing Still' about a man who stood on a street corner all his life. The setting never changed and his whole life came to him. He fell in love on the street corner. He got a job holding signs on the street corner. He had a child on the street corner (the creative process being done on a Christmas night when no one was driving). He got divorced on the street corner (for it's easy for a wife to love someone else when her husband doesn't even turn his head, also, it's easy for her to feel like he doesn't love her when he doesn't even turn his head). The man's friends gave up trying to get him to move and brought their cook-outs and parties to him. And when he got old an angel visited him on the street corner and took him away.

My life was the opposite. The setting always changed and the plot always stayed the same.

I was never good with conclusions, save for my favorite conclusion. My only conclusion. In 'Standing Still,' I completely blanked when I came to the conclusion. The last page stood blank for days until I couldn't take it anymore. I wrote the only sentence I could think of and shut the book. "Fuck you for not loving me back."

It did not get published.

I compromised my dreams a while ago.

I was thirty six when I realized I wasn't going to be a famous musician. After years of minor record deals and scraping by at a day job, I realized I couldn't do it. This isn't a sob story. I was at yet another music conference, shamelessly promoting my music to any sharp-dressed schmuck who would give me the time of day when I was passed by a group of nineteen and twenty year old's. They successfully looked like they had woken up in an alley. I saw the life on their faces. The dreams. The sheer confidence of kids who have never tasted defeat. It was swagger and it was arrogance. It was what you needed to survive here. These kids would have won a staring contest with Mussolini. No compromises. Ever.


And then I looked at myself.

I remembered those dreams. I remembered that arrogance. And yet, it had left me a long time ago.

I saw my pudgy midsection. I saw my receding hairline. I saw my dated sense of style. My friends had families and kids now, and here I was, fruitlessly chasing the dreams of my youth. I swore I wouldn't quit until they heard me on the radio. But I'd almost forgotten who they were, and I was young then.

And so I did something I never thought I'd do; I taught.

I taught because I'd become the musician I never though I'd be. I taught because it was the only thing I knew. Often I thought of what my teenage self would think of me.

And yet there was some fulfillment in teaching. It wasn't a big paycheck or a mass of screaming fans, but I wasn't sad. I remembered myself as a kid. All children are vessels of unblemished hope until they are broken. Some never get broken, but is that sad or happy? What does it mean to be a vessel of hope if you know nothing else? What does it mean to be an angel if you've never been alive?

Everyday I ponder.

What does it mean to be an angel if you've never been alive?