Collar me, Don’t Collar me
I don’t know where I put it. A file, now rotting, on a drive in a niche corner of my laptop. The original version of this essay was ‘written for’ a scholarship contest, in that I submitted it to the contest. In actuality the 500 words that smeared this file coalesced to a monologue of self hatred, a flagellation for not having written anything worth publishing since “Just Another Sad Transexual” in GNL. I am now an English teacher, one who has nearly survived her first year, and I see myself falling into the same trap as some of my students, the trap of wanting a perfect product.
I have wanted to start my own press since college. A way for me to write and produce zines where I will never be found. Even so the oldest essays on my list are pushing three and nothing has been printed. After rereading my 100th edit I still somehow look at the amalgam and go “this is all shit.”
I don’t know where I put it; this blinding, very annoying, and brash confidence I used to have in my work. Originally this essay was formatted to REM’s “Orange Crush”, which I had though fitting due to this suffocation I felt towards writing. Since then I have written, the first volume of the zine is ready for publication if I ever cared to go to the library to print, but my former brazen temperament has given way to writing that is much more docile. Even before teaching I had been terrible at taking my own advice. I tell others that failure is a part of growth and that attempting to do something is the only way to become better at that thing. In essence flagellation for the simple act of doing and failing is a fruitless thing, people are not robots meant to produce until the oil runs dry. In spite of this I still obediently cross my arms to the nine tails on any perceived error.
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I have always wanted perfection, and no I do not care to reflect on that fact. I do, however, see the hypocrisy in telling my students that the best thing you can do is to complete a shitty first draft and refine it when I do not award myself the grace to have that shitty first draft. Even as I write this draft myself I look up, rewrite, look up, rewrite, various sections of this article five maybe six times before I have even finished the first draft. It is as if I want every word to be the rebar in my brain’s concrete; reinforcing and structuring the cacophony.
I don’t know why I meandered in such a relaxed way. My previous response to this feeling was a violent cutting of every visceral fiber of my being. I believe in that version I had said that I had only picked up the pencil to have my work “vivisected and raped as an attempt to beg for funding”. I, quite obviously, was not selected as a winner for that round of funding; a peculiar notion seeing how lightheartedly I write.
I had always wanted perfection. However as I begin to reinvigorate myself as a writer I wish to dance. My brain is still wired to refine itself to death, but I hope that this piece about nothing is my much needed introduction to the world of dance.
Coming in Fast, Took Over me
Oh, but old habits die the hardest. Originally “collar me, don’t collar me” and “follow me don’t follow me” were allegories for a state my mind was at, a need to push past any pessimism and refine my particular bastardization of the English language. Now I realize that this need for refinement is a toxin filling my lungs, heart, and torso. With this reformation I feel as if I may begin to produce an image of myself which is actually liberatory. A freedom to experiment outside of this ever present feeling that I must do something a certain way or be judged by a society that wishes me dead anyways. An actual breath of fresh air in years of documenting my own immolation.
