Truth & Dare by So Mayer

[reflections, not a review, not a comment. Sorry, reader, if hoping for more]

Thoughts interrupt the experience of reading…

Real worlds and fantastic or possible worlds intersect and literature and bodies and freedom and hope and…

Ultimately, I suppose… I just want to feel the absence of hate. Of contempt.

And, I suppose, I want to feel that more than I want to feel love. Or maybe not want. Maybe I don’t want to feel that more than I feel love but certainly I think I might need to.

And maybe it isn’t hate that I don’t want to feel, maybe even hate is a feeling… Hate is a feeling. Hate is a feeling.

Contempt, too, is a feeling…

Maybe then what I need to feel is an absence of active disinterest.

And that’s what I’ve ended up feeling for myself, nothing but disinterest.N

Nothing nothing nothing

When are the moments when I don’t feel it for myself?

I just don’t know, I don’t know, I just don’t know any more…

Time flows by and I remain sedate yet not sedated, in an impassive rut yet not even clawing at the sides…

I read to escape but I can’t any more, not when the literature suggests literature is an escape and good people, a person’s people, are an escape and and and it is it is it is

–///–

Should this be for me?

Nobody asks for pronouns here, back in England. Certainly not anywhere I’ve been and though I’ve mostly been in places I don’t want to be I have sometimes been to places that I don’t mind I don’t mind I don’t mind…

They look at the shape of the front of your trousers and the front of your neck and whatever they see is what they decide to define you by.

How you live, how you dress, how you feel, how you are… It’s all irrelevant here. It’s all irrelevant…

Bodies are a curse, not a gift. Flesh prisons, meat chains, restraints made of muscle and bone…

At least mine is.

Nothing feels good about it. It looks worse (bad) yet it looks less gendered (good) when it looks less healthy (softer, smoother, looser) and even then it might feel better in the heart but it feels worse on the body to strain at the limits of clothing and strain at the limits of of of of …

–///–

The places where I’m happiest, freest, selfest, these are places defined by literature, by reading, by books…

My best afternoons are those spent in (or beside) large bodies of water in (or beside) the nude, a book in my hand and nobody I can’t stand within eyeshot.

Strangers are fine. Strangers are fine. Strangers are always fine.

The indifference of a stranger isn’t a painful thing to experience… disinterest where there is no expectation of interest is, is, is …

It’s fine. It’s fine.

Disinterest without familiarity is fine.

And it’s exhausting. It’s tiring. It’s too much. It’s so much. To feign an interest. To be polite.

It’s so much. It’s too much. It’s everything. To want to feel… Ah…

It is better to be forgotten than to not be accepted.

It is better to choose solitude and mediocre misery than any kind of active pain, even though it means the loss the loss the loss of everything, I suppose, of everything…

Is it better?

I don’t know if it is.

It certainly isn’t good. It isn’t good.

To be to be to be to be so so so so so so so

without

–///–

People speak, people write, of community, of networks, of togetherness, of groups and coherence and shared values and working together and meeting together and being together, finding their people, knowing others who are like them, who they value, who they who they who they who they…

How??? How do people do it? Don’t they feel the the the the the the the the terror of dying outside in the dark???

–///–

Literature can’t save people. Literature didn’t save me.

Self-knowledge doesn’t help people. Self-knowledge didn’t help me.

The more I read and the more I know know know know know about the world and about myself the harder the harder the harder it all gets…

Knowing from where the misery comes doesn’t cheer me up. Knowing why I’m alone, what failed, the idea of the idea of the idea of what would or could or might or should be good doesn’t make finding that, reaching that, living that, easier…

The barriers don’t fall down just because you see them

Truth doesn’t set you free. Nothing sets you free. Nothing sets you free that’s safe. Nothing sets you free that’s a good idea or or or or or or or compatible…

–///–

People have their people, except for the people who don’t have their people but those people usually have their things instead, or at least their opinions and their little lives validated by the by the by the by the … By the… Yeah…

The people who normally don’t have their people are the people the people the people who who who who who who who don’t need to have their people.

But I probably am someone who needs to have people. People for me.

And not awful little fascists, not pissed up awed up nothings but but but

I don’t know.

Should this book be for me?

Maybe. But all the lacks, all the lacks, all the lacks…

All the gaps and the absences in my life and in my in my in my in my

It made me melancholic, I suppose…

There were Stories in here I liked a lot, moments I enjoyed..

But I think it wasn’t meant to bring a reader down like it brought me down…

But I am never comfortable, never relaxed, never self, never never never never never never nothing.

I know it’s my fault. And that doesn’t make it easier.