Sign up or Log in
Are.na
Natacia Lim
maintenance work
Info

Writing is rapture/resolve/misery/a lot of edits
Writer writing about writing and hating to write

View
Grid
Table

For a long time I’ve resented my inability to remember, ie. if I do not take notes, my life does not exist — but I understand simply now, thanks to Hass, that this is a gift too: that one is able to pass their world through the “cloud chamber” of language, such that it emerges on the other side “charged with desire”.

That is to say: the note-taking is not a substitute for memory. The note-taking is an act of transformation. More than life itself, it is the singular thing that ties me, us, you & I, to our compulsion to live.

*

Our desires are distinct because we name them.

The writer must be four people:

  1. The nut, the obsédé
  2. The moron
  3. The stylist
  4. The critic

1 supplies the material; 2 lets it come out; 3 is taste; 4 is intelligence.

A great writer has all 4 — but you can still be a good writer with only 1 and 2; they’re most important.

— Susan Sontag (1961)

From an online inspirational quote generator, slightly re-worded:

With the self-annihilation that sentimentalism brings, you cannot find eroticism.

The sentimental feels deceptive but the erotic feels honest.
Sentimentalism as self-erasure, etc.

I wrote a long thread on this yesterday but I'm too lazy to move it over.

Pretty feelings are uninteresting not because they are uncreative but primarily because they are dishonest.

12/01/2022

emotional support trauma plot, brandon taylor
emotional support trauma plot, brandon …
-
-
Gleaners and I !
Gleaners and I !

I want slowness only enough to rest, not to idle. The difference between the two is dignity, self-possession, the needle of my sanity pointing the way.

lol that's me
lol that's me
-
-
Join Are.na to follow maintenance work
Sign upExplore