On starting a bluenotebook

Art Credit: Mallory Page

i.

The chaos of hope and dread in writing a list of books to read: the optimism of a better person, the impatience of you.

I've made these lists in the past and not gone through them. I've started notebooks and left them with nothing but outlines. What makes this moment any different?

I spend more time thinking about reading than actually reading, more time thinking about writing than actually writing.

I cage myself in a quiet collusion.

I am led by restless legs, a psychic fidgeting, a constant moral inventory, a suffocating itch wrapping around me like a phantom serpent; these are the whims of mind and body: silence conjuring my worst recriminations, physical discomfort disturbing the rare moment of (finally reaching!) a mental peace.

I drown in the puddle of a bad chemistry.

ii.

write a poem
write the first lines of a story
construct every Warframe in Warframe
read the last Smiley novel
beat Elden Ring on NG+7
run the new raid in Destiny
review a book
calculate the cost of self destruction
interview a published author
calculate my chances to pass or fail
self destruct

iii.

Labyrinths: the mind
                     the city
                     the library
                     the page

                     the fear
                     the spiral
                     the misery
                     the shame

                     the hope
                     the passion
                     the computer
                     the chase

iv.

I walk my mind as if it were a city: the reveries run north to south, the miseries cross east to west. I stare at the red green amber blinking, the red eyes floating away, the ghost lights past midnight—the insomnia high. I trace my path on a bizzaro map. I climb atop the tallest buildings and wonder at the sights; I shame spiral my whole way down.

Daybreak, the shame of birds outside my window. Morning light flat on the ceiling.

I sit on the sidewalk and cross off landmarks with my own red.