this implies I have a plan, but whatever comes is what comes

The air here is full of smoke from the fires several hundred miles off, not so bad as it could be but bad enough that my children cannot play outside and my throat is sore and it is too hazy to see the hills. It makes the days colder, which in a way is exciting -- we so rarely get truly cold weather, it is an adventure to pull out heavier coats, and the trees are finally changing -- but of course because of the smoke we cannot really enjoy it, and it is so dry and the air so harsh to breathe there is a general sense of desiccation after spending any time outdoors. All this with the air is combining with what I think is a virus to make stuffed noses and tiredness, and my son is congested enough when he sleeps that he has been waking me up in the middle of the night in the hopes that I can do something to 'help his goo'. Which I cannot overmuch, but I soothe him and do what I can, and we are running a humidifier in his room... but we are both tired from the interrupted sleep, although he is so full of delight in the world that it does not slow him down very much.

As I wrote previously, I have been avoiding fiction for various reasons, and decided this was not to the good -- but being tired makes concerted reading more difficult, so instead I began watching two different anime series, chosen somewhat at random. The first is Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day which I have been told is good but very slow; I am only halfway through the first episode but I think I see the shape of it and it is full of things I like, meditations upon the past and human relationships and, I think, how people trap themselves with the stories they tell. I am looking forward to more of it, but it has a weight to it that makes me think I will need to watch it slowly.

The other series I've started is The Lost Village (Mayoiga) which (despite Crunchyroll's categorising of it as comedy) seems to be a psychological horror series about a large group of ill-assorted people attempting to start a new life by taking a 'do-over tour' which turns out to mean running away to a mysterious mountain village. This, the village of the title, is remote and difficult to find and many people believe it does not exist at all -- but if it does exist, what is it? Is it a supernatural site where people are 'spirited away'? Is it a government training ground for assassins? Is it a trap constructed by someone on the tour in order to fulfill their dream of being a serial killer? I am halfway through the fifth episode, and enjoying it very much. It is not really that good; the beats are obvious and everything is kept simple, but I love the ambiguity of what (if anything) is actually happening, and the character interplay is fascinating -- it reminds me strangely of a terrible, terrible Japanese reality series I watched on Netflix called REA(L)OVE. It really was terrible, don't watch it, but it had the same sort of character dynamics of a group of people who are all hiding something societally unacceptable trying to figure out how to relate to each other. I do not know how reality-based REA(L)OVE really was, perhaps it was all scripted, but it is fascinating to me that there is something very recognisable in the social dynamics between the 'reality' show and this anime, and it adds some extra oomph for me to what is already a satisfying series.

I have never been good at finishing up my thoughts; when I wrote papers the last paragraph was always the worst, and it seems the same in these posts, I feel like I need to wrap up tidily and land, but really it is more natural to just stop.

absolutely authentic and necessary self-contradicting confusion

I have such mixed feelings about writing, and I am not certain I will ever sort them out. I am simultaneously ambitious to create and have my creation seen and acknowledged (and enjoyed, but I cannot really imagine that), and also intensely private and shy of showing my work to anyone. Nor do I know what my work is; I am not really a storyteller, I think, as I invent people and settings and emotions and moods but plot absolutely eludes me. I struggle with truth in what I write, because when I am the sole creator, anything can happen, and thus the feeling of reality that I enjoy in the best works of fiction I read seems beyond me -- if I can pick any outcome, then no outcome feels true. When I (long ago but for many years) played various RPGs, the presence of the GM served as a reality corrector and I could inhabit my character fully, with their own set of beliefs and opinions and values and desires, and yet there was a reality outside of them that caused things to happen, but I cannot figure out how to do that for myself, and if I cannot make what I am writing feel -- real, inevitable, necessary -- then I am not interested enough to keep writing it at all.

Or something like that; there are times it seems different. The heart of it is that I struggle, and have struggled for many years now, and just this last year or so I thought I had come to a place of peace in the decision that I am simply not going to be a fiction writer; I like writing little bits of personal things here, and in my own journal, and I like writing book reviews on Goodreads although they are personal rather than objective, not anything a reader is likely to be able to use to decide if they want to read the book or not. And I like written discussion about books; I am an avid fan of The Tournament of Books because at its best it provides me a community to read and discuss and argue books with. And perhaps most importantly to me, I do write not-very-good poetry which I have almost never been brave enough to show anyone, but which gives me satisfaction both in the moment of doing it and then later on when I rediscover it and see a moment caught in words like that. But fiction... I had given up on it, I just cannot figure out how to make it work, and although I see that it is work and that perhaps if I buckled down and simply worked at it even when it feels false and repulsive, I might make it through -- but why, when I do not have the passion for it?

And yet it is stirring in me again, that desire to write something, that desire to make those characters and atmospheres and settings that rise up in my imagination into something that someone else can look at. I am annoyed by this; there was peace in that giving up on it, and now I am wanting to change my mind and work at it again and coming up against the emotions of not knowing what the 'it' is that I wish to work on. And of course I am in the busiest phase of my parenting life, or so people tell me -- two elementary school children, Girl Scouts, volunteer work, and perhaps some sports and other activities forthcoming. Do I really want to add a writing project to this mix? For there is also the other side of all of this, where I do have a project and I do feel passionate and it is working even if I do not know where it is going, and then someone gets sick and someone else has a school holiday and then there is a mild scheduling crisis and suddenly six weeks have passed and I am in despair at the thought of picking it all back up again. And even nearer at hand, if I am writing and it is lovely and I get a call from the school that one of my children has a fever and must go home, I am outraged -- not at my child, it is not their fault, and not at the school, but rather at the universe for making me stop -- and being angry I am not kind or patient or engaged with my children and it is unpleasant for the entire family until I manage to calm down, and then I do not want to write again because I know the inevitable interruption will make me impossilbe to live with. (Yes, I know, Jane Austen, writing in the drawing room, perhaps I simply need more self-control but the axis upon which I control my emotions and the axis upon which I write seem diametrically opposed.) So this argues for waiting, there is no reason to believe I will not be alive and healthy in six years when they are older and more self-sufficient and I will both be interrupted less and also less in emotional demand as the center of my household.

I know it is contradictory; I do not want to write at all because I want to write too much for it to be feasible in my everyday life. I am sure I am doing much of it to myself... I wonder what Pema Chodron would say about it? I wonder if I can somehow, finally, begin to untangle it, with the tools I now have at my disposal to recognise when I am making myself miserable? I am not usually a person who gives up, more the reverse, stubborn and dead-set on my goals even when they are ridiculous. And that being said, I am going to go poke at the project that I have been ignoring ever since I had my last temper tantrum and swore off writing forever, and see what comes of it.