Nesting

This is a process of nesting. Sometimes I go through images in art books at the library and find something that has the feel of what I am looking for. Sometimes I gather lists of related texts, books that are written in the kind of style that my new book will be written in. Occasionally, if I am stealing someone I know to embed in the character at the heart of my book, I will gather pieces of information about him, like a stalker, pinning pictures of him to my wall in the office, stealing pieces of our conversation and writing them up on index cards.

It is easy to misdiagnose my intention, but I am writing a book. I need to harness my little obsessive traits and turn them into something. It is part of my process of nesting. I have bought a new moleskine. This also happens. A new moleskine for each project. To finish my memoir I needed a reporter style notebook which was perfect for the task. This book has caused me to buy a soft cover moleskine. This is lighter than the other ones and I have never used this style before so it is fresh for the project. Of course I do not need a moleskine to begin it, but it is a kind of readying. It is a psychological girding of my loins. It is foreplay. I can’t seem to settle into the writing of the thing. I have written a masturbation scene. I think I could perhaps write sex. But this is not my new book. This is my last book with its talons still in me. Maybe I will need to explore his sexuality before I can move on. Maybe there is nothing left of me except sex.

I had a dream when I was finishing the last manuscript. I dreamed that I was cut open and there was nothing inside. This image haunts me. Perhaps there is nothing left for me to tell. I am completely exposed and there is nothing but the furious monkey masturbating inside this human-skin, laughing maniacally. Maybe.