Worrying

[tinyjo]

For some reason when I got into work this morning my computer couldn't access a DHCP server so all my network drives when missing. It was very unnerving - I wondered whether they'd decided that I was using up too much space or something what with the mp3s and the e-books :)

Not very awake this morning because I had a bit of a nasty journey to work - the bus was boiling and the driver and his mate were having a very loud discussion at the bottom of the stairs so I didn't get as much sleep as normal. Then the tube was awful - there had been some sort of delay just before I got there so the train was absolutely full to bursting and the trouble with the Central line is that you just know that the next 2 or 3 will be too so there's no point in waiting. Ah well.

I need to learn a way of expressing my feelings better in writing I think, or at least a way I can accept. I tried to write something about Alex and our relationship but when I try to put it down it looks small and wrong and cliched - a bit like when I try to write poetry - it sounds fine in my head and it works but somehow, on the page it doesn't. I'll have to resign myself to either not writing it or not being satisfied with it. I guess it could be a work in progress. The thing is that I really want to write it - let the world know how good I feel and how lucky I am. Maybe it's better if I don't - Alex might be embarrassed. Still, the desire remains. Watch this space...

Comments

It's easier to use pictures

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

My most emotional works I think are collages. What three pictures represent how you feel? With maybe just a few words --- mostly I leave the words for the snide and the clever and the cruel which words do very well. Creating emotional works out of nothing is a very draining thing.

I have also (to some useful effect) gone back and deleted most of what I said, leaving a single super-compressed sentence.

;) see you

Re: It's easier to use pictures

[jinty]

I agree with cleanskies that deletion is a powerful tool (I work better on computers than with pen&paper for that reason). Having said that, I need to use it more.

Sometimes it's easier to use pictures, not always (for me). Pictures give me a vaguer emotional sense -- or at least more inchoate and less defined. However, I empathise with tinyjo on the difficult of writing about love without it coming out as trite -- and the effect that such writing might have on one's lover if s/he reads the same place that you're writing it in. Either embarassment (which is at least fairly positive) or something darker, if you choose to write about the trickier parts of your relationship -- or else you don't write about it at all, and feel just a bit stifled.

Re: It's easier to use pictures

[oxfordslacker.livejournal.com]

Was discussing something like this with Lorna last night: the problem of expressing emotions without seeming clich?d. We were discussing relationships and world-views and stuff, and founds ourselves saying 'it sounds really trite but...' a lot.

I suspect that this is because:
a) Clich?s are clich?s for a reason: because they're universal (ironically, this is a clich?.)
Or
b) Clich?s are virulent memes that have hijacked, and in the process crippled, people's ability to express emotion (or at least to express it simply).

I personally can't take it when people, including me, start sounding like something from 'Eastenders' or, even worse, 'Jerry Springer'. I can't understand how people can bear to say things so... obvious. Then again, to my shame, I started laughing while delivering my one-and-only 'you're dumped' speech because I'd just used the phrase 'There's someone else', and the contrast between the traumatic situation and the appalling line was too great; so I may be atypical. Which is a good T-shirt slogan.

Re: It's easier to use pictures

[jinty]

So... pictures aren't usually cliches and therefore are less trite? Could be.

The difficulty of expressing emotions is not universal as far as language is concerned. Portuguese has cliches like any other language but it is much better at expressing emotions -- or possibly Portuguese-speakers are. Certainly there are many things in sambas and bossa novas that would sound unspeakably florid, or ridiculously bland, translated into English. Will try to find a specific example or two although the effect of the Portuguese part would be lost on you guys anyway...

'I may be atypical' in indeed a good one.