{"id":13582,"date":"2023-03-26T18:30:27","date_gmt":"2023-03-26T18:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/?p=13582"},"modified":"2023-08-25T13:33:54","modified_gmt":"2023-08-25T13:33:54","slug":"selfsense1-not-tired-but-knotted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/2023\/03\/26\/selfsense1-not-tired-but-knotted\/","title":{"rendered":"selfsense1. not tired but knotted"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cNobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought   
And not waving but drowning.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he\u2019s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,   
They said.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always   
(Still the dead one lay moaning)   
I was much too far out all my life   
And not waving but drowning.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Stevie Smith\u2019s Not Waving But Drowning<\/a> (1957)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(2023aug13) Having published Introspect, I\u2019ve been stewing for almost two years now asking myself, what\u2019s next? One obvious thing to do that\u2019s on my todo list is to work on updating both of my books to make them better, with all of the things that I\u2019ve learned since. I could make the structure better so that it\u2019s easier to read. I\u2019ve come up with better phrasings and framings for many of the ideas. But I don\u2019t feel compelled to do it. There\u2019s a slightly strange and funny thing that happens when you begin to develop inner clarity. You start to notice knots that you used to overlook. It\u2019s sort of like how your house starts to look messier when you\u2019re in the middle of the process of cleaning it up. Because previously you had become accustomed to the mess. You don\u2019t think of it as a mess, you don\u2019t see it at all. You don\u2019t notice how it bothers you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHave you ever used a new program or system and found it to be obnoxiously buggy, but then after a while you didn\u2019t notice the bugs anymore? If so, then congratulations: you have been trained by the computer to avoid some of its problems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve noticed a similar thought-feeling every time I clean my windows. I get accustomed to the slow accumulation of dust and grime and don\u2019t really notice it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what I wrote in 2019: \u201cJust cleaned my windows, which is always a rather therapeutic and philosophical experience, and just a pleasant repetitive task (I also like restringing my guitars and polishing my boots). But windows are fun because you see *through* them. Very metaphor. The first thing about dirty windows is that you don\u2019t really notice it. The dirt and dust accumulates slowly, imperceptibly. It takes weeks, maybe months (ymmv) before I notice \u201chuh, my windows aren\u2019t so clear anymore. Windows are two sided, so they accumulate two kinds of gunk – dust from the outside, and – if you have slidey windows like me, and are too lazy to be super careful about it – hand\/finger oils from the inside. In my experience I find that it\u2019s never smart to try and get a window perfectly clean on the first pass. This is because you need to step back after the first pass and allow new light to come through and show you where the rest of the dirt actually is. I find this quite profound. When the window is dirty on both sides, it just has a sort of generalised unclearness. Once you clean one side, the dirt on the other side becomes much clearer, which can strangely look a little counter-productive. This too I find quite profound. When you take care of the inside you see more clearly what\u2019s wrong on the outside. When you take care of the outside you see more clearly what\u2019s wrong on the inside.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(abandoned substack draft)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m feeling knotted right now. For me, knottedness looks and feels like tiredness. So it can be a bit tricky to tell the difference. And they are certainly quite a bit tangled together. I want to detangle, deknot myself. I made some good progress earlier today by cleaning up most of the mess in my living room. Next, I know I will feel marginally better from cleaning up the mess on my computer, and at my desk. But as I set out to do this, I also know that it isn\u2019t the core issue. It\u2019s more like\u2026 something I can do to make my immediate circumstances less unpleasant, so I can face the core issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of my biggest and oldest challenges in life is around sleep. I have dozens of blogposts dating back to when I was a teenager\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think there\u2019s a decent chance I might have a non-circadian sleep rhythm<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember writing a series of blogposts about \u2018hacking\u2019 the 7 deadly sins and how each of them can be reinterpreted to be something like a \u201cdrive\u201d, which can be channeled into healthy means. And the one I struggled with the most is \u201csloth\u201d, or the drive for rest<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ve internalized the idea of a Protestant work ethic, having been born and raised culturally Hindu in Singapore<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve done\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember being really tired in school when I was a teenager. Around the ages of 13 or so. Maybe that was puberty. But I think I was mostly done with puberty by the time I was 16 or 17, and I remember being especially exhausted at 17. Yeah, I would stay up fairly late at night online on the family computer, and then I would sleep on the bus on the way to school, and I would take every opportunity I got to nap, in classrooms, in lecture halls and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I\u2019m looking back and wondering how much of it was also \u2018emotional knottedness\u2019. I have more experiences now to compare and contrast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A startling thing that happened for me was when I was working on my second book, Introspect<\/a>. I would sometimes wake up in the morning bright and fresh, shower, have a coffee, sit down to work on the book, and then in a matter of minutes I would find myself nodding off and craving a nap. I felt a little bit bad about this, but now that I look back I realize it was probably because I was processing a lot of emotional, psychological stuff. I would sometimes have really vivid dreams during those naps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I slept pretty well while I was in New York (which I will write a separate post about), and it was a largely dreamless sleep. I was just physically exhausted, I think. Dreams seem to fulfill some sort of purpose which I think is quite important. They seem to be the exhaust of a process of remodelling interiority. It\u2019s a little strange that we don\u2019t talk about dreams more in modern life. We mostly seem to either write them off as meaningless brain farts, or otherwise it\u2019s relegated<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n

stuckness:<\/strong> when i\u2019m feeling a little stuck i ask myself questions like, what\u2019s going on right now? how am I feeling? What is my highest priority right now? (making money to fund my trip to NYC, and to renovate my house). What am I most excited about? Well, this substack. I really want it to go well. And I\u2019m reminded of a video by Kenny Werner, where he talks about how\u2026 really being desperate for something to go well, of course, tends to sabotage the thing. And you then fall to the level of your training, and you don\u2019t get the magic that you sometimes hope you\u2019d get. But falling to the level of your training is not that bad if you\u2019ve been training well! The problem is that lots of people don\u2019t actually train very well. Training well means facing your weaknesses, and it can be painful and difficult to face your weaknesses. So maybe that\u2019s what this post shall be about, about me facing my weaknesses. Which is something I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve done in a while, as a writer, and a creative?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like good structure when I see it, but I won\u2019t claim to be good at making it happen. I don\u2019t really like outlining things very much. I like to freestyle. I like to let my fingers dance and go wherever they please and see what words come up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have all these drafts lying around and I don\u2019t really like looking at them. I\u2019m now questioning the premise of this post \u2013 is it a little too soon for me to be writing about writing, when I already have 2 essays \u2013 \u201cI don\u2019t wanna\u201d and \u201cthe essays I haven\u2019t published\u201d \u2013 about the nature of creativity, and my internal frustrations? Out of 7 essays? I should do something different, probably. But I don\u2019t have to frame it in this way. I could frame it differently. I could talk about something else and then happen to mention this. Or I could edit this later. I used to have more of an abundance mindset when it comes to throwing words onto a page, and at some point I got overwhelmed, and then I got scared. Don\u2019t be scared, Visa. You got this. Just keep writing. You can correct everything else on the side. You can set aside time to edit and delete things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Be not afraid, vs take heart, feel the fear and do it anyway. The nuances of language is tricky. The job of the author, writer, creator, artist, is to seek aesthetic resonance in a way that makes everything make sense, whole again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

list of tensions.<\/strong> I want to look back and I also don\u2019t, there\u2019s another tension. Maybe I should publish the list of tensions post. But that too feels\u2026 like more of the same. What\u2019s something different from all of that? What if I wrote something that doesn\u2019t talk about writing at ell? What would that look like? A portrait of something maybe? I wrote about Justo a little bit, although I didn\u2019t go too deep into his life. Maybe a memoir? But I\u2019ve said that I don\u2019t want to write a standalone memoir. Maybe\u2026 2006? A year? How about 2013? That was 10 years ago. Lol it\u2019s dawning on me midway through this that technically this is a wordvomit, and maybe I\u2019ll publish it on \/1000\/. That\u2019s not a bad idea. Some needle gets moved. It\u2019s all so arbitrary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was thinking earlier that I\u2019d like to plan a meetup 20 years in advance, kind of just to have something to look forward to? Is that a bit silly and crazy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s revisit the words. Serious. Santa. Constraints1. Earnestness. DontWanna. EssaysUnpublished. Voyagers. What\u2019s divergent from that? Maybe Gong Xi Fa Cai? (singapore draft)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n

longevity and the passage of time<\/p>\n\n\n\n

it feels like for months now i often wake up in the morning and sit down with the intention of writing something and then end up not publishing anything. i\u2019m often conflicted about whether this is a good or bad thing. maybe both, or maybe neither.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(facebook) i\u2019m scrolling through my facebook friends list. there are people on here that i haven\u2019t spoken to in years. I clicked on the mutual friends of one old friend and I was confronted with a list of 6 people that I knew when I was 8 years old. I\u2019m so curious to meet them and hear from them again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t quite believe in writer\u2019s block, even when i\u2019ve gone months without publishing anything. there were in fact i think years where i wasn\u2019t very happy with anything I had published. I don\u2019t like the imagery of the block, I suppose. How is the block supposed to look or feel? I suppose people mean \u201ca blockage\u201d of some kind, but I\u2019m always imagining a big block<\/p>\n\n\n\n

every day when i wake up i feel like a slightly different person than the guy who went to bed. I\u2019ve often suspected that this is part of why I generally don\u2019t like going to bed. I seldom feel like I\u2019m done. As I write this though I think about<\/p>\n\n\n\n

even now as i write this i\u2019m tempted to \u201cchange the channel\u201d to \u201csee what else is on\u201d. I have all these other tabs open in my browser, and in another monitor I have my notes app open with 1,115 notes waiting to be sorted. I just showered so I have a little more clarity of mind than I usually do, and I find myself thinking\u2026 okay close the tabs\u2026? make a note of the thoughts you have when you close the tabs\u2026 but don\u2019t get lost. And I often get lost. Let\u2019s try it. I have a bunch of facebook tabs open, I was thinking of spending a while (this could be hours) going through my friends list and checking out how everyone\u2019s doing, maybe message a few old friends and ask them if they\u2019d like to hang out. I\u2019ve been thinking about the passage of time. It\u2019s striking how some people that I used to talk to all the time have sort of just faded out of sight. I hope they\u2019re doing well. A part of me grieves that \u201cthe good old days\u201d are over. I feel a sense of loss about the people who don\u2019t talk very much anymore. I know and respect that there\u2019s a good chance they made decisions that were right for them. It\u2019s not very normal to want to spend decades of one\u2019s life in public, thinking and talking and working in public. Many people give it a try, get a taste of it, and feel it out and find that they don\u2019t necessarily want to be right in the bustle of things. I\u2019m vaguely reminded of how some people talk about New York \u2013 about wanting to live there for a few years to really experience the thrill of the chaos, but eventually you grow tired of it and leave. I\u2019m more like Fran Lebowitz, who\u2019s still adamantly a New Yorker in her 70s. (I wanna say that I\u2019ll write more about New York separately, but I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s ideal. Maybe I should just write about it here.) We live in new times, we are always living in new times. There\u2019s this lady\u2013 girl, when I knew her\u2013 who lent me ten or twenty bucks when I really needed it as a teenager. I wonder how much activity has since moved to Instagram. How many people who used to have some interest in their broader social graphs have now settled into a comfortable nook of their own. Lots of people are married and have babies now. There are bunch of people whose opinions and approval I really cared about 15 years ago who I barely remember until I jog my memory with their profiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(feeling trapped)<\/strong> I remember when I was about 18 and 19, I had some friends who were studying abroad in universities around the world, and I was quite jealous of that. I felt trapped in my hometown, talking to the same people with the same accents about the same topics, swimming in the same culture, making the same assumptions and taking the same things for granted\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(wow see now that\u2019s a sentence that just came out of me without any planning on my part. I overplan my essays. And I know what I tell people who feel overwhelmed by their plans: make elaborate plans and then discard them and do whatever feels compelling in the moment. It\u2019s easier said than done, but if I\u2019m going to say it then I\u2019m going to do it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can say more about being trapped. Being trapped by one\u2019s aesthetics, one\u2019s vocabulary, one\u2019s grammar, one\u2019s social graph, environment, culture. You could say \u201ceverything\u201d, but that\u2019s almost too broad to be useful. A list of specifics can be more comprehensive than \u201ceverything\u201d. This is why poetry works. A few well-chosen specifics can bring up all sorts of interesting, compelling associations in a person\u2019s mind. Sometimes a two-word phrase is all it takes to make something hauntingly beautiful. The phrase \u201chauntingly beautiful\u201d is a little clich\u00e9d in my phrase-bag, but it should do the job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I try to remind myself that there are all these new people who haven\u2019t showed up yet. And there will be people from the past who make some sort of \u2018return\u2019 at some point in ways that I cannot know or anticipate. What else am I feeling? I want to talk about knottedness. This ties back to [writer\u2019s block]. I\u2019m thinking about callbacks. Should I unknot this callback and put it together? Maybe. Let\u2019s keep going until this feels like it\u2019s done, and then we can edit it, and it isn\u2019t necessary that everybody knows every detail about my process. I used to think that I ought to be radically transparent about my process \u2013I felt compelled to, as a gift to my younger self who felt shut out in the dark \u2013 but I\u2019ve come to realize that there\u2019s some amount of opacity that\u2019s almost necessary in order for creativity to function. And while initially that seems like a bit of a betrayal, when I give myself some space to think and talk and feel and renegotiate it, I realize I can do justice to all of my past, present and future selves. I can be translucent<\/em> about my process, I can share enough of it to be useful, while not killing the process itself\u2026 in the process. Ha ha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What else?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(internal frustration expressed outwards)<\/strong> I\u2019ve been conflicted about how I feel about\u2026 what I perceive to be weakness and incompetence in others. I don\u2019t even really want to talk about it. Mainly I think the most elegant way to resolve it is to face my own<\/em> weakness and incompetence. I\u2019ve noticed a recurring thing over the years \u2013 I get more frustrated with other people when I am inwardly frustrated with myself. I haven\u2019t published a substack in a long time and so I get frustrated with other people. I think I\u2019ll cut this paragraph out because I don\u2019t like repeating myself. Maybe I\u2019ll put it in a word vomit or something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The above paragraph is itself interesting in some ways about the conflict I have with this whole voltaic verses project. How much self-doubt and confusion should I include? I think there should be some. But I don\u2019t think it should be paragraphic. This is something that I don\u2019t get to practice in tweets because every tweet is just a tweet. So I should go a little easier on myself. The only way to get good at this is to write paragraphs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2731;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As long as I can remember, I\u2019ve been interested in books and magazines and media. They were my\u2026 way of making sense of the world. My window to the world. I used to read stacks of magazines in the library instead of doing my homework, and my only regret is that I didn\u2019t read even more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been thinking about blessedness and wretchedness a lot lately. I\u2019m always pouring some love down the drain\u2026 because I used to be a sewer rat who needed it<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n

thinking also how wack it is how difficult it can be to know just how much someone likes or dislikes you. wtf is it with people who love you and then hate you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\/\/ abandoned<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cNobody heard him, the dead man,But still he lay moaning:I was much further out than you thought   And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larkingAnd now he\u2019s deadIt must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,   They said. Oh, no no no, it was too cold… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[727],"tags":[730],"class_list":["post-13582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drafts","tag-substack"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5gxNz-3x4","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13582"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13905,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13582\/revisions\/13905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}