diaries, uninterrupted #3

Photo by Marcus Löfvenberg on Unsplash; rendered black & white by me

Tuesday, April 1st, 2025. Last night I couldn’t sleep, so for some time I stared at the blank ceiling, blank only because I know it is blank, as it was the middle of the night, a moonless night, with no other light filtering in from the shutters, and it was pitch black, and while staring at the blank ceiling, I fantasized about a couple entertaining an epistolary relationship, except instead of doing it over text or email or physical paper letters, they use medieval means of communication, like messengers riding horses for hundreds of miles to deliver a parchment to a recipient living in another country, or duchy, or kingdom, or whatever, or maybe riding horses for hundreds of miles to get to a port and hand the parchment to someone on a ship bound to cross the ocean to its destination, where they hand it to another messenger who rides his horse for hundreds more miles to finally deliver it to a recipient living on a different continent, and so I fantasized about a woman living in Cornwall, England, a beautiful woman with limpid green eyes, well-groomed, elegant, slender hands, and hair gathered in a braid, writing her thoughts with a quill on a piece of parchment, and together with her thoughts she writes about herself, about what she did that day or week, about what she plans to do the next few days, it’s raining here, she writes, and that’s a blessing for the countryside, but it’s been raining for the last three weeks and I feel so sad, she continues, the only thing that gives me relief is reading, and of course writing, and so I sit, from the wee hours of the morning, near the window with my book, and the noise of raindrops on the glass makes me feel secure that I can face my thoughts without fear, or interference, but what is fear, after all, if not a kind of interference?, she remarks, not only the noise, but also the sight of the streaks of water running down the glass, like thoughts that won’t stay, cannot stay, each one making space for the other behind it as if in a chain or a parade in constant motion, and they’re hard to catch, let alone turn into words, as essential as this process is, turning thoughts into words, making them still, and immortal, but I’ve been tormented by a recurring thought lately, she continues, one that doesn’t seem to pass and give room to the one behind it, one that’s stuck there and won’t go away, like a stain on that glass window, which is the thought of us and where our relationship is going and whether it wouldn’t be both wise and mutually beneficial for us to end it here, but as sad and painful as this decision is to me, and certainly to you too, I would love to read your words on it, my dearest, and she seals the parchment with some bright red wax and hands it to a messenger who happens to ride by, even under the pouring rain, because messengers never stop, they never rest, unless their horses get injured, which rarely happens, and the messenger rides his horse the couple of hundred miles to get to Plymouth, most likely, where he hands the parchment to a fellow on a ship that is about to set sail for Buenos Aires, Argentina, a destination that will be reached after about two months of navigation, if all goes according to plan and the weather is clement, and sure enough, all does go according to plan and once at destination the fellow on the ship hands the parchment to another messenger who rides his horse for almost nine hundred miles across the mountains and the border to Santiago, Chile, where the recipient of the parchment resides, in a small villa facing the Pacific Ocean, and on a slow Sunday afternoon hears a knock on the door, asks who is it, and a voice from the other side responds a letter from England for you, sir, and he opens the door, gets handed the parchment, closes the door, unrolls the parchment, reads his lover’s missive, goes immediately to his study, sits at his desk, quickly writes a response on another piece of parchment, seals it with abundant red wax, and hands it to another messenger who happens to ride by, because messengers never stop, not even on Sundays, not even on Sundays in Chile, and he rides his horse the almost nine hundred miles back to the port of Buenos Aires, where he hands the parchment to a fellow on a ship that is about to set sail for England, but this time the weather isn’t clement and it takes three months, not two, for the ship to reach its destination, and once there the fellow who took consignment of the parchment hands it to a messenger who rides his horse the two hundred miles to reach the farthest extremity of Cornwall, where the rain has finally stopped, and the green-eyed woman hears the knock on the door she’s been expecting for over six months, and she opens without asking who it is, certain as she is that a missive from her lover has arrived, literally snatches the parchment from the messenger's hands, shuts the door without even thanking him, hurriedly goes to her armchair by the window, sits, unrolls the parchment, and reads: OK.

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Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025. I believe, and I’ve been believing this for a long time, that editing a piece of writing by anyone who’s not the one who wrote it is an act of pure violence, disguised as one of collaboration or help, or benevolence, even, an implicit I'll do this because your writing needs improvement and I’m here to get you there kind of gesture, an act that in some cases may be an end in itself, a form of harmless, innocuous, and unconscious narcissism, but that, in the vast majority of cases, is driven by the desire to ensure that the written text appeals to as many as possible, people who will one day buy it, and buy it in large numbers, so that the editor in question can generate revenue and profit for the publishing house they belong to, and perhaps even earn a promotion and a higher salary, who knows, but the truth is that it is the imposition of an outsider’s vision onto a work that originated out of someone else’s mind and body, and that in a way still resides inside that mind and body, an intrusion, however well-intentioned, that reshapes, distorts, sometimes even erases the original pulse, and the violence here doesn’t refer so much to the penetration of the author’s thoughts and their remodeling according to someone else’s canon, as hideous as that is to me, yet a practice inexplicably welcomed by many writers, oddly, but rather it refers to the presumption, even in complete good faith, that a work of writing must be liked by as many as possible to be deemed good, an idea largely, or I’d dare say exclusively, driven by money, which in our civilization is considered the only gauge of success, or by career advancement, which is an indirect way of saying money, the top priority for so many, understandably so, as people have families and bills to pay, but I reject the notion that success should be measured solely by money, and sometimes I wonder what would people think of Elon Musk, for example, if he hadn’t made so much money, would he be even known?, I don’t think so, but let’s assume, paradoxically, that he was known anyway, that he somehow got exposure to the general public, would people pay attention to what he had to say?, or would he come across as a weirdo spitting out nonsense around the clock?, he must undoubtedly be a super smart guy, someone with a way above average IQ, I’m sure he is, but the question is would he be listened to, would he still be viewed as the oracle, the custodian of absolute truth, that he is now?, given the foundations upon which our society has been built, I seriously doubt it, but I digress here, or maybe not even that much, and going back to editing, I must mention one last thing that’s been bothering me forever, one that makes my skin crawl at the mere thought of it, the idea that whoever glorifies the (external) editing process proceeds under the deepest conviction that there exists a set of rules that must be abided by, lest a piece of writing fail to be liked by many, a corollary of which is that writing should be the answer to the what-do-people-want-to-read question, or at least highly influenced by it, another corollary of which is this whole fuss about content, no matter how horrific the writing is, there must be content of value behind it, because that’s what readers want, I’m sorry, but my idea of writing is the diametrical opposite of all this, based on no rules, no quest for magically attractive content, no fulfilment of readers’ desires, which doesn’t mean that I don’t respect readers, I’m a reader myself, and a picky one at that, but if I heard a writer say that they wrote something because that was what readers wanted, I immediately lose any respect, what gives me hope, though, is that this whole need to comply to rules, styles, readers’ desires isn’t really real, I think it’s a construct of the how-to-write industry, one that has become extremely lucrative, find me a well-known writer who became such because they complied with all that shit; there isn’t one, do you think that Dostoevsky or Hemingway or any one of the truly greats became a great because, before writing, thought about how they should write in order to appeal to as many as possible?, so anyway, editing makes no sense to me, it’s pure violence, and I will continue to write stuff that I like, with plenty of mistakes, and no prepackaged audience expecting to receive, and consume, a certain product.

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“diaries, uninterrupted” is a new series released with no particular cadence, whenever I feel like it. These are imaginary journal entries -- generally one to three per issue -- written in a stream of consciousness style, meant to be read in one gulp of air, without pause.

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