Philosophy of Writing – 9 – Depression

I’m not. I can’t. Really. Thank you for the lovely words. Thank you for the things you told me. They’re not true.

You told me it’s beautiful. I don’t know how that happened. I worked hard, yes, I did, but you. You said it was beautiful. I can’t have done this thing I’ve already done, because that would mean I’m capable of doing something that you think is beautiful, and your opinion is very heavy. Your opinion is a big, heavy thing I’m supposed to hold up.

I’m jealous of the person who made something you think is beautiful, but that person is me, which makes it all very complicated and self-devouring.

I dreamt last night of a chameleonic hummingbird that purred in my fingers. It could twist its beak into lovely shapes like a ship’s knot or sinusoidal waves. It jumped from my hand before I was ready to let it go, and was eaten by a hunting dog. I fetched it back but it was only a plastic, fleshy mould–the living thing had been swallowed up. Aren’t I Jungian?

Very easy to decipher. My colourful, living manuscript has gone into your mouth and come back out unchanged but now I see it differently: it’s incomplete. I haven’t cared for it properly. It’s not alive, though it could be.

I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I’m so afraid I’ll succeed and then your very heavy opinion will clasp around my ankle and drag me down where everything is serious and I won’t have air. I want to see how deep it goes but I don’t know what big things swim there.