Author: Nic Olson

I often wonder to myself, “If people aren’t thinking about what to write next, then what the hell are they thinking about?”

Food.
Hockey.
Sex.
Work.
Alcohol.
Deadlines.
Bills.
Healthcare.
Bacon.
Sex.
Laundry.
Elections.
Etcetera.

Oh.
Well.
I guess there is quite a bit on the average person’s mind.
My mind usually includes the following:

Witty titles for blogs.
Intellectual phrases for stories.
Lines for poems.
Obscure ideas.
Elections.
New ideas.
Myself.
Not being selfish.
Books.
Authors.
My book.
Stolen ideas.

Plus several others from the first list above. (You know which ones.)

Then, sometimes in the middle of thinking these things, or in the middle of an attempt at writing, in the single moment of clarity that I get in a month, I abruptly throw my hands in the air and groan, “Why do I fucking continue to kid myself?” This thought is born when I somehow compare myself to a writer of worth and realize that I will never reach where I wish to be. I realize that I am in a shop basement writing short stories with one-dimensional characters, sitting at a desk made of paint cans and used plywood at 10pm, staring at a black drywall screw holding up vinyl wood paneling. With this realization, any sort of motivation or feeling of worth dissolves on the concrete floor in the corner that the light doesn’t quite reach. Oh, it is disheartening. Enough to make me consider the deletion of all I’ve ever written and all I’ve ever thought about just to spite my own self.

I need to get real.

Get real in understanding that the world doesn’t need some amateur, second class ‘art’ to give it worth. Get real in understanding that my attempts at expression have been attempted and expressed far before my time. Get real in understanding that although it may not be hurting anyone, fiction or non-fiction or poetry, is all a form of rambling. Sometimes with a mediocre plot, sometimes without.

I won’t ever really know what other people think about if they aren’t thinking about writing. But at least they are lucky enough to be wasting their time thinking about something besides writing, nor will they be obligated to question the productivity or worth of their past five years of life. I will undoubtedly subconsciously continue to kid myself in thinking that what I am doing here is worthwhile, so that maybe someday I will accidentally stumble upon something that no one ever has.

There is no such thing.

A possible answer:

“When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.”
-George Orwell

The past always seems brighter than the present. The sun shone brighter, the rain was warmer, the times meant more. Images are more impressive seen reflected off of a convex mirror, especially an extreme convex like the back of a spoon or chrome toaster. I have obtained a taste for mirror photography. Not the self-taken celebrity nudes, nor the internet photos of new haircuts in the bathroom, but reflections in interesting places, or through objects whose primary function is not reflection. Side view mirror shots are included in the category.

Upon settling in a place that is physically familiar but mentally foreign, I noticed that I continuously crave for what my life was a month previous. For the one month old life. Either I wish I hadn’t settled, or I wish I hadn’t left, but I always wish I was one month younger. I will never be one month younger. In all occasions, my life a month before was more certain than the present, and seemed like a better fit. When in Saskatchewan, I thought this of life on the road. When on the road, I thought this of life in Montreal. When in Montreal, I thought this of life in Saskatchewan. A certain regret for the present and a nostalgia for the past builds up an uncomfortable discontentment in any situation, and this breeds negativity. Contentment, in a certain regard, is needed in the present.

I need to live as if it were a bike ride with no side view mirrors. Straight ahead without any second thought, with a nice song playing in my ears to blank out the hums of cars and the signals of safety. Because safety and looking forward are not related very closely. Worrying about safety creates the reaction of looking backwards constantly.

The present is never worse than the past. The past is never worse than the past before that. Objects in the mirror are not as good as they appear, nor are they any worse than what is inside the car, or what is on the thin flat line of the horizon.

When I read poetry, I write poetry. When I read fiction, I write fiction. When I look at black and white photos, I take black and white photos. The gap between ingestion and production is often several days, so if I want to write a decent poem I have to read fifty good poems a week in advance, and then the styles often cooperate, that is, I write how I read. From the source (X), idea filters through a screen to keep the insects out, and is regurgitated as new (Y).

X ≈ Y
i.e. X is pretty much equal to Y
The skeleton is the same.

In a day a human constantly observes new ideas, images, thoughts, literature, sights, styles that are not his or her own. Today when I wasn’t reading I was listening to music, when I wasn’t listening to music I was watching a movie, when I wasn’t watching a movie I was on the internet, when I wasn’t on the internet I was listening to the radio. These are all filtered through the mind’s small screen that cannot allow all of the data through, so the bits and pieces considered relevant or consequential but small enough to slip through the squares of the metal screen, make it through and end up with the personal flavour of the mind it travelled through.

To ensure decent production we must ensure decent ingestion, like an athlete’s body. The constant entertainment that we demand is created as mindlessly as we decide to devour it. Parallel to the nutritional food rhetoric that we have learned to ignore, we are the vapid television shows that we watch constantly. We are the money worshipping music that we put in our headphones. We are the poorly written sports articles that we browse daily. And if we put nothing in, nothing comes out. Our minds are our bodies.

I have become an easily influenced social leper. What I write is a direct coffee filter version of what I read. If I stopped reading, nothing would come out. I used all of my sociality when it was necessary on the road. I became comfortable with strangers and friends I haven’t seen in ages, but now, maybe out of social exhaustion, I have lost the ability to seem like I give a shit. My intake of the socially able has not subsided in any way but my production has halted as if the filter were clogged.

I am like echos off of a mountain wall. A bedroom with another layer of paint on it. For my production’s health I need to control what I take in, and enjoy the moments when there is nothing forcing itself upon my mind except trees in the wind or the light on the road. Or else my filter will become clogged and my production of decent thoughts will become like my recent social ineptitudes.

287 hours

or

11 days and 23 hours.

or

16,653 km

This is the amount of time that my body spent on a bus in the past 101 days. Nine percent of my past three months I spent marinating in my own odour. It is unknown how much time my mind spent on the bus in the past 101 days. It wasn’t always there. My body withered away while in constant wait. Trail mix and apples will thin a man out when it is all he eats for nine percent of a quarter of a year.

During this time I thought about every possible thing there is to think about. I thought about thought and wondered about the juncture when thought becomes useless. I have always wanted to be thoughtful, but constant thought will only ever make a man more stubborn or more confused. I am the latter. Maybe both. Arriving/settling only accentuates the fact.

A lobotomy performed with a cheese grater. It is like I have nothing left to think about so I can simply glide through the days as if they require no thought. As if every human has a certain fixed quantity of thought time for their life and I spent all of mine on the bus. Or as if my mind can’t keep up to where it seems it should be. Either I’ve thought too much or I’ve thought too little. Which is worse is hard to tell.

But where the bus stole my brain, which includes my reasoning abilities, my decision making abilities, my planning abilities, it gave me a lack of expectation. To expect the bus to be on time is to expect the impossible. The trip made me believe greatly in the possible.

Although my mind feels sterile after two-hundred and eighty seven hours of dizzying thought, I am confident that with a fresh start in an old city I can once again find something to fill it with, be it old cynicisms, or be it something I haven’t found before.