April Littrell
Amplified Discomforts
Whenever you should be experiencing something is when it’s the absolute worst time to experience it. I’m somewhere I ought to be relaxing in an even more specific place I ought to be writing in and it is the most excruciatingly uncomfortable place precisely because it is not at all meant to be.
It’s a curse to require such a specific environment to create. Anywhere but that refuge, writing feels like bloodletting. Language is meant to transport you to the mind of the writer or wherever they’re able to conjure, but I can assure you you do not want to be here with me. I’m slouched in a chair with crumbs and crippling music and non-music making sour sound stew, auditory shrapnel shooting pins into head cotton.
Nothing is worse than a quote and the wall across is built by them. Brittle word bricks.
How does it feel to be a Whitman in a realm rendered by all things poets’ words were written to hide us from? When the mundane to the grotesque become celebrated cerebral text, the real world is left to prove it’s capable of overcoming the protection of the mind. And that leaves us in leaves of ass. Woodland waste tissue. Biodegradable biomass, biologically abominable bile. Unpleasant.
What’s fit to publish
I’m embarrassed to promulgate the publication of a mind’s every whim. It’s 80% ugly. But, quizzically, the rest is trash. I myself am tired of what’s touted as readable these days. There must be balance between what’s worthy of your time and what’s inseminated with the truth that makes you question the time spent on anything you’ve just exchanged it for.
Anything you think you want to read is because it’s easy. Because you and I are lazy. But that’s nothing new. Nothing is.
In defense of zero structure whatsoever. Anyone who calls themself a writer is a dick. Me included. The pen is a phallic extension of the mind.
I’m a lazy writer. I don’t make much effort to understand parts of speech or narrative structure or anything that makes written communication coherent. When I do I feel foolish.
You end up struggling through essays like these, trying to understand what message I’m trying to impart, in part because you believe in meaning. I’m elated to let you know, dearest you, that I cannot provide any assurance that anything created by anyone meant any more than that which was created for the sake of its creation. And I’m elated because now you understand that I am as lost as you are. It’s just that at some point I decided to snip off a squiggle and at some other point you decided to reel in the eel. Let’s meet up again when we can both make a little more sense.
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