Fictocritical Innovations. Pawel Cholewa
possible. This is exhausting. If I miss something, it doesn’t exist. If I don’t do something, it never happened. For once, I simply want the spectral gaze of my daze to come true.
A Literary Mitosis (On Form) (2014)
Why do I hyphenate and parenthesise and marginalise so much with a ‘/’ or brackets—with everything else I write coming with an ‘and/or’? Sooner or later a frustrated reader/reviewer will be driven to lecture or criticise me for this, so I will take it upon myself to beat them to the punch. I’m surprised I’ve evaded this issue for so long, particularly since it’s literally staring me in the face almost every single day in the form and format of what and how I write. I guess the most obvious criticism is that it shows a lack of control and mastery over language, an inability to decide on a word or make the right choice because, perhaps, I do not understand the full and proper connotations of every word I select and write with, and why should I? When so many words have apt and adequate synonyms and so many dictionaries define their definitions definitively, yet differently and minimally. So, I make the decision to choose both or either/or. For who am I to choose one word over another? So much of this rambling intellectualised jargon about ‘I’ and integrity and intuition and influence and (un)originality is about the inability to grasp and control everything and one’s expression, whether it is predetermined, (pre)influenced, fatalistic, prodigious, integral, philosophical, or/and so forth. So, I guess I’ve naturally or organically decided over time to use and utilise a form that looks and appears to be rigid when in fact it is loose and lucid at best. One thing says more than only one thing using these devices and interwoven formats. I want this writing to have connotations and implications and insinuations, saying more with less and expanding upon vocabulary and linguistics, using tools that shorten and sharpen and cut to ironically elaborate and engage and grasp, breaking and branching out onto or into more by making more out of clasping, fastening but also separating, distinguishing and dividing—a literary mitosis.
The Mission Man (2014)
Though it can also be a speedy transition; a mission of sorts. For I am, can be and have been the mission man, where things irregularly flow from one to the next.
In fact, there is no flow, so much as there is an immediate changeover. As much as I love the ‘in-between’, I attempt to eliminate as much of the time between the ‘in-between’ as I can, in order to be moving on to the next thing. The very next thing is always the thing to be most excited about. And as much as I wanted to come here, then and now, I am disgusted with this place in this moment. Not to mention, I’ve already been here. And I didn’t like it the first time. So why would I enjoy it the second? A persistent delusion of insanity and self-sabotage and the setting up of oneself to fail in the perpetual moment—the moment that is (unendingly) out of reach in the very near future. I was tired of being there so now I am here, and as soon as I am here I want to be there, right now. But I immediately destroy that precious ‘in-between’ as soon as I arrive in the constant and ongoing now-moment because I decide right away that the next thing will be better.
Unable to grapple with the overly ambient or vague concepts in ‘self-help’ books like Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, I—the mission man—liken or align myself more so with the notion of Jack Kerouac’s falling (failing, or flailing) star idea in On the Road: “I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop” (113).
Because, as the psychologist Daniel Kahneman indicates, there is a “conflict between your experiencing self and your remembering self” (238): the experiencing or “current self is the one experiencing life in real time” (236), the remembering self, on the other hand, has to make “all the big decisions. It is happy when you sit back and reflect on your life up to this point and feel content” (237). There is a serious imbalance between these two different selves and the reality that is formed in one’s mind about one’s life as a consequence of this imbalance (238). These two differing selves or perspectives have to be a well-balanced combination of one and the other. “You have to be happy in the flow of time while simultaneously creating memories you can look back on later” (McRaney 238-39).
Conversely, Tolle would argue that there is only the self that exists in the now, and that anything that has happened no longer exists, and anything that will happen does not exist yet, and so both past and future are seemingly irrelevant to one’s sense of contentedness and joy (in the now). I, the mission man, though, tend to lean towards a more Kerouacian approach. I feel helpless in my restless pursuits, endeavours and desires to travel and constantly move, neither fully satisfying oneself or the other, in my tenacious impulsivity.
The funny thing is this makes me stuck in an altogether different kind of ‘in-between’ anyway!
I’m walking, no, running—I am on a mission. There’s always something that needs to be arranged, organised, done—not felt.
The present-now-moment ‘stayers’ watch me, befuddled. “Why can’t he just relax?” they say or think to themselves.
“But I’ll stray from a straight line. I’ll just stray ‘til I’m gone” is what I think to myself in response to their glances, statements and questioning looks.
Like an eccentric ass, I roam and stumble on in a daze, as the figurative apple (of life) swings on a string in front of me.
An Apple on a String Swings in Front of Me (2014)
An apple on a string swings in front of me, dangling in suspense and freeing me from homogeny (a lie)? I look forward through the fence and see the grass is greener, but blurred in my insistent periphery is that laborious fruit compelling forth my effort and greed and corrupted desires, incorrect in all the right ways, to others.
The Island (2015)
Motions frustrated, the predictability of it now. The stagnation follows the same recourse over and over again. Before, now, then after. So obvious, like a mathematical pattern, perfect and (in)solvable in its eloquence.
Majesty. The initiation of social and flirtatious interactions are always perfect. To his friends he comes off as a professional, superficially only, really. The internalised monologue—the soliloquy stews on itself—outwardly, blaming everything else. He could pacify and nullify, reach out to change, became a gamer like the rest, ‘sarging’ with false pretences and smiles turned ‘true’, like the phantom of prowess and the cavalier in us all.
The blame could go further back, to varying circumstances, orbiting incessantly in the streams of imperceptible consciousness.
Staring at voluptuousness, enjoying it, and then turning back to the luminous phosphorescent screens of blankness and nihilism. Sigh and sigh again; he almost has a panic attack. The intuition is there, deep-seated, and probably wrong. Not knowing how to address addresses, then signing off charmingly, poetically, over-the-top in his formality.
Sculpting, perfecting, working at the self—that could help—or, otherwise, it’s all in the countenance, the personality, the self-sabotage or the self-aggrandising.
One intact, in the bag and on her way, while the other (lesser) sits on pins and needles, sick. So, he is sick, sickens himself, stooping lower and lower every day. A sickness, an unrelenting perversion to want and to need and to desire desire. But really the craving is quite neutral, natural, simplified. And, so, the sickness is a systematic perversion pervading and invading everybody else’s personal space.
Apologies.
But forgiveness comes, eventually, tainted by a pity and a need to justify spirituality in the eyes of the on(c)e true beholder. Once resolved, again, back to the screen, back to the phosphorescence, back to the addressing of addresses, of formalism and an awkward charmless countenance on pins and needles and desiring of desire ‘til nothing else remains. Retire, leave, exit the room.
Find