Is there anything that kills these squirming remnants of creativity quite like the blink-blink, blink-blink of tiny vertical line on a blank screen?

In a whirlwind of aimless research, starting at the NPR story of 'My Lobotomy' and spiraling through wikipedia's psychiatric treatment entries, shock treatment and Thorazine and with a brief tangential foray into UFO's, I finished up, somehow, at the entry for 'jamais vu' and realized with a start that there's a name for the feeling that I often deliberately try to induce.

Often my life can take on a whole different meaning if I pretend I'm looking at it from a younger self's point of view. Often (perhaps too often to be healthy) I stop what I'm doing and try to forget everything I know as a 23 year old; where I live, what I've done, who I love, etc., and try to see if it would be possible to figure out these things by the clues in my day-to-day life. I'm like a phantom 18-year-old ghost detective (and actually my ghost age changes depends on the things I'd like thrown into a new light; if I want to forget I live in Colorado I have to be under 18, if I want to look at romance differently I generally go back to 14 or 15, if I want to think about music at all it's even more, 9 or 10) using every sense to figure out who I am now.

Basically I pretend I've been thrust into my current environment suddenly from that younger age and forced to begin living as if I know what's going on. Where, in the world, literally, am I? What part of the country does this mountain range look like it belongs in? These street names, do I recognize them? Does the air feel dry, do I smell the ocean, are there locusts buzzing, or trains in the distance? Is my jaw aching like it does when I'm stressed and I pop it in and out? Where am I headed, am I headed there on foot or on a bicycle? Am I hurrying, am I checking my watch, am I wearing a watch, do I have a tremor of excitement in my gut, are my muscles sore?

Since I've been playing this bizarre mind game my whole life, I've noticed that technology makes the chase much less challenging. The list of names, clear as day, on my phone, in my email contact list, an online journal I can call up from anywhere, or, especially, a profile on Facebook or something similar that lists my 'essentials'. My social vitals. Everything I'm trying to dig up from mystery, it's there, in column form, on some screen somewhere.

Technology is killing my induced jamais vu. I try to not recognize something I already know, but it forces me to recognize it. That eerie feeling is muted now, my life in a harsh single perspective. Funny how even though I could create countless complex identities if I wanted to, I would immediately come to recognize each and every one of them.

Knowledge is addictive. Or, at least, I am addicted to knowledge. This may be me. It may be me who has an addictive personality, and can turn even the most non-addictive things addictive. I don’t know. It also may be that even though I read and read and read; anthropological case studies, and memoirs of terrible illnesses, and analyses of the perceptions of animals, and sarcastic political blogs and lengthy self-reflective, or should I say masturbatory semi-autobiographical novels, and lists made by fourteen year old girls about how to make themselves better, and fashion police blogs, and biographies of dead musicians, and satirical essays that I don’t realize are satirical until the end, and allegorical essays that I don’t realize are allegorical until someone else tells me they are, and short stories that end on quizzical, faintly looming notes, and pregnant pauses, and every word of warning signs on buses, and this, and that, and this over again, to see if I’ve put down enough, even though I definitely haven’t put down them all, I don’t retain anything.

A little like that. There’s so much paragraph, so much run-on sentence, that the point of it all, a little tag on the end, is lost. I don’t retain anything. It’s worth repeating.

Wake up in the morning. Make a list of things you will not do. You will not spend more than an hour on the internet, clicking on links and soaking up random useless knowledge only to leak it out two seconds later, like a particularly old, holey sponge. Actually, it’s not a list, because that’s the only thing on it.

I was born with a particularly manic mind, though my body moves slowly and lazily. Thoughts fly through it. Not into it, but through it. If I do not have a notebook with me, everything that I think will be lost. Sometimes, even if I do have a notebook with me, the motion of reaching into my bag for it, or the thought required to locate my pen, causes my brain to shift imperceptibly and even though I remember what I was thinking, I can’t remember why it mattered.

Or I can’t remember how to say it. Or how to write it. Or how to put it so my later, even more shifted self will find it important enough to act on.

This essay itself is a result of a notebook scribbling. I don’t even know why it’s important to do this. But I said it was, so it must be. We’ll see. Are you still here? I am. Hello.

There is an imbalance in me, I feel. Too much knowledge entering and exiting my head at high speeds. Too much manic energy, directed out in a classic firework shape; everywhere and nowhere, and certainly nowhere organized, or worse, back into finding out how to find out more stuff. I must know things! I must know everything!! In order to...!!!

Meanwhile, my body aches from inactivity, or rather, the position my back makes as it crouches over the keyboard/books/a pad of paper/a screen. I bought a basketball today. After I finish this self-indulgent reflection that I am forcing other people to read, therefore contributing to their giant knowledge orgy, thus feeding the cycle, I’m going to go play basketball.

Perhaps I should have done that first. It’s a funny thing. A good general definition of happiness for me has always been ‘do what you want’, but lately I’ve come to notice that that’s so completely and utterly wrong if you happen to be lazy, or have an addictive personality, or tend towards simple observation. Do what you want in that case and you’ll end up never leaving your house, on heroin, and watching youtube videos, and I won’t say that can’t make one happy, but I will say that it certainly can’t make most people happy. People need people. It is not easy to find good people. It requires some forcing, and occasionally doing things you absolutely do not want to do, like making a fool of yourself.

I hate making a fool of myself. I especially hate starting things if I have a feeling the end result is going to suck. Ergo: I hate this essay. But I’m doing it, because it’s good for me. And because it’s going somewhere. What? you say? Yes. It is.

There is a reason this is up on my blog instead of in the deep recesses of some black lace-bound journal with a ribbon around it in a velvet case surrounded by, I don’t know, things that goth people keep in their dresser drawers. Spiderwebs. Clove cigarettes. Red corsets tight enough to leave marks. I’m not going there.

And that is that I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to write here anymore. What was newlyindonesian but me taking in my surroundings, the holey sponge again, and simply spitting them out, intact, onto the internet? I don’t like intact anymore. I’m tired of it. Intact is other people, intact is nature, intact is everything, everything except me. I would like to put myself into the things I spit back out from now on. I don’t mean all my stories have to be about me. I mean the exact opposite.

Things that happen to me are good to record, to remember. But not if they edge out something new I could be creating. A short story – a fictional short story, not me thinly veiled. Piano etudes. I used to sit at the piano for hours without a thought in the world of recording anything, and compose. I used to go to elementary school early – I had a key to the auditorium given to me by my fourth grade music teacher – and compose away the hour before school in the empty, echoing curtained auditorium. This was for no one else to hear. Songs, vocal experimentations. The freedom to sing ridiculously so the ridiculousness would edge into song. These are the best kinds. I miss my piano like I’ve missed hardly anything before.

The only thing I miss more is the guaranteed solitude of a one-bedroom apartment. Somewhere I can scatter paints and warp decoration and do cartwheels in the space without furniture. But it doesn’t matter.

If I come back, I’ll be different. I might post a story. Or a link to a song. Or an essay. And maybe I won’t be different, too. Maybe I’ll find other outlets and can come back slowly to observation, phase it in – as an aspect, not as a lifestyle. Don’t take this too seriously. I make big dramatic promises all the time, and go back in a heartbeat. Like New Years resolutions. No one ever keeps those. So maybe tomorrow I’ll write about the stranger I saw making music with pennies and wine glasses and stream water. This didn’t happen. But I’m going to try. That’s all I can say.