It Goes beyond Hiding Heaviness

       I am deeply concerned with the aesthetic of my world, and I often have trouble achieving sparseness. Clearness and conciseness, two qualities I often sacrifice for the sake of the aesthetic, are too important to cast aside. They are elemental; they are the metals that comprise the earth on which we stand. It is not within their nature to be bandied about by prettiness and ambiguity, excessive language and esoteric references (unless you're T.S. Eliot, in which case, by all means). When I forget this elementary lesson, my work crumbles like a shoddily devised sand castle at the mercy of the tide. 

          I write this in an effort to remind myself not to be so vain. In the past I've been mired in self-importance and lost in artificiality. I've publicly called myself "chubby" when I wasn't (rather, I was heavier), and I have felt personally repulsed because of it. But don't get me wrong or make assumptions; I would never and have never concealed myself for such reasons. I need to assert, with an emphatic scoff, that even I am beyond hiding heaviness. 

          Yet, I dread imperfection. I feel failure and shame acutely. I hate bathroom lighting almost as much as I hate whatever toxicity runs through my veins. I hate itchiness because it has our bodies convinced that impurity lurks beneath our skin's surface, and, so, unconsciously, we try to remove it. We thrash and scratch and scrape until we bleed. Then we become biologically hazardous.

          Therefore, a distracting preoccupation with the aesthetic turns into a personal crutch. I control my surroundings and operate against the pleasing backdrop that pretty things comprise. 


          ...Actually, there isn't "prettiness" so much as utility and coordination in my real world. The reliance on prettiness exists mainly in my writing. It exists in these blog posts. This concession, this present self-awareness, should reveal to me some sort of unadorned truth, right? Or maybe raw experiences of both physical and emotional pain may bring the clarity I seek. In successful attempts to avoid infection, for example, I've taken to the exorbitant use of rubbing alcohol in all instances of broken skin. I'm a true Underground Man, and these are my notes. 

          But I should be able to reach a state in which the everyday world can seem full of significance and even holiness. Perhaps only then can I achieve any sort of true agency. Only then can power seep from the tips of my fingers, like the pervading sound of a bell I have rung through absolute silence.