Saturday, November 24, 2018

i just read a thing by beto o'rourke in lit hub cuz it said, is beto the new knausgaard? it was sooo banal, then precious, but at least it was a blog. it took a minute or less, and now i know who he is. it did read like knausgaard who numbed my brain like novocaine with a slow barrage of wordy minutiae. i can see this stuff as a blog, but what is it that makes it hold the reader like knausgaard for volume after volume and thousands of pages? i wondered if the unrelenting storm of lies and war drives people to the comfort of voluminous banality. did knausgaard blog first, then bind himself (and his devoted readers)? banality i get, but i want it brief, and i want glimpses of something through the banal forest. some clearing with light where a meadow may grow suddenly central from the periphery of your mind. i don't get the plodding record of minutiae, i mean i don't want it. and if i ever made a book like people who don't read the blog often suggest, it would be a brief thing, light in the hand and illuminated like a slim bound clearing. i don't like the feeling of following a crumb trail of words just to get to the same place i started. i could do that myself, but i'd have long since wandered off path, pursued a tangent, a mushroom peaking from under a log, a baby snake with a tiny glint in it's eye, a box turtle in a drift of leaves, a used condom that looks just like a snail and a gnome's hat. 
not sure what i'm trying to articulate, i know how numb i can feel, and maybe my expression numbs too. i just wish it to be more than the need to say. 

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