Friday, September 5, 2008

Literary Privacy

I was reading a book by Chuck Klosterman. Chuck is quite a thinker...as much as any of us. I could relater to Chuck because the majority of the thoughts that he wrote about revolved around the way he perceived everyone else perceiving him. Perfect.
Perfectly selfish and egotistical. If I had the same experiences as Chuck, I could have wrote that book.

In his book her does a lot of writing about his relationships with women. It struck me, that I too could do the same thing, although I haven't yet. Its not that I would have a lot of women to write about, its that I could spend pages dissecting what I think that they were thinking in any given situation. Some of my worst moments in the past few years have been when I actually vocalized these dissections to the women in my life. I have definitely learned that a little censorship of my internal voices is a good thing. But...

Once a little time has passed...can I share my thoughts then? What if I change names? Situations? Who will know? What about my future wife? Can I write about her? Us? When will it be okay? Chuck didn't necessarily wait--he just wrote about what he was feeling...it doesn't always have to be damaging. But the one thing he noted that makes me cringe, both because I know it to be my own tendency as well as knowing how much it angers me when I experience it...

Is the fact that often time the things that I can make into cohesive thoughts on paper-with my words-are things I don't know how to say out loud.

3 comments:

River said...

ok... but why does that make you cringe? is there a judgment there that i'm not understanding?

JustMe said...

maybe...I would rather voice my thoughts on paper...it's the easy way out of having to have real conversation/discussion about what I am thinking...the ultimate saying of something as I am walking away-not giving the other person a chance to speak back. I really dislike it when others do it to me...

ryran said...

Just now getting to this...

Not quite following, because if you write it down, people CAN respond. Even if it's not in a blog, what with comments 'n all, if your name is attached, people can always seek you out and talk to you about what you wrote.