Settling in...1 September

This is a rather different entry in the sessions on the days of my life… this one involves a request for your opinion, so please read carefully, assess objectively and let me know the various options and consequences involved to handle the situation, if you care to that is.

Ok, so I love writing and have been using it as an outlet for many expressions and conflicts since I can remember learning to write. The ‘official’ diary entries, however, started at 13… jump 16 years and I’m introduced to the worldwide waves of writing websites and other people interested in writing. All good, although I was weary, I mean, who are the people writing, really? I’ll never know. Are their names and facts and stats truthful or fictional? I’ll never know. Will plagiarism happen when they read one of my pieces and then create something better or similar? Or is that simply inspiring someone else, because all creation belongs to the Universe and we don’t actually own anything or have any genuinely original human thoughts? Will people use my work for their own personal gain / release / expression in a context I would prefer they didn’t? Will anyone ever know the journey their writing takes? My feeling and thought: I’ll probably never know.

It appears there is no guaranteed truth on writers’ websites, fake names, false information and fictional stories, so if a real name / opinion is typed, can it be trusted? If a non-fictional story or autobiography is typed, is it authentic, or merely for recognition / attention? If writing is awesome, then how do you honestly give credit, where credit is due? I don’t know. Thus, I was weary, but posted a few stories here and there to test the waters, and see what the results would be; after all I’m told that in this day and age opportunity’s ships don’t come to you anymore, you have to find them to sail. I also thought, what’s the point in having writing sitting unused on my bookshelf; surely I created it for some reason a tad bigger than collecting dust? Especially with the internet seeming more far reaching than the oceans.

Life took over and Eish! London happened in person, before it made the internet about two years or so later. The time after that first year, and up until now, is nothing I would wish on anyone, ever. My one consolation: my writing. I went back to the writing sites and absorbed others’ pain, sadness, difficulties, emotional struggles, relationship challenges and wrote about my own, publishing it to release it and get the negative energy out of my soul so the cancer of it wasn’t stuck within. As my time is limited online and my real life has had so many hassles I’ve lost count, my pool of reading became concentrated on a few poets. Sometimes the connection I felt to their work would blow me out the water all together and my imagination and emotions reeled in the experience.

Then there was one poet… one poet where the connection became unfathomable, his poem of the day could echo my experience, his topics were fluid with my thoughts, his word choice succinct with creations I had not published and activities I was doing on dry land… then, eventually, I dared to post a few comments noting similarities (I wasn’t so bold as to write that many of his poems made me feel like I, personally, was Jim Carey in the Truman Show! Especially as the poet appears to have been born in the 50s) and the poet’s responses I found rather weird. After a while I made another literal connection to a book I was reading and a poem he wrote that were so in sync that I commented I have a lot to say to God when I eventually meet Him, because the weeks of co-incidences were ridiculous! To which the poet replied that he didn’t know heaven had a complaints department… I replied with a ha ha, just maybe, wink. Taking the comment in the jest and venting context in which I had initiated the sharing of my frustration. One of his next poems? Summed up as: some people are never happy; and entitled: … Complaints Department. A narrative poem where the main character goes to heaven, moans about everything, and is sent on a walk that leads him into hell where the doors have no handles and the character is permanently banished to hell!

Now I have sat on this for a month not knowing what the etiquette or reaction is that I should have in this situation. Naturally, I stopped commenting on the poet’s poems, but I still feel completely personally offended and am of the impression he has told me to ‘go to hell and stay there’, but I know I can overreact to situations and I know that the guy is a complete stranger and writers’ sites are for personal expression of whatever, so my opinion may seem rather vain? The feeling offended, do I leave it; even though it’s eating me up that the poet did that? If the poet’s previous comments have freaked me out before, then would a comment about my feelings on this one only be opening the door for more of the psychotic? Is there an invisible line of any sort when it comes to commenting on other peoples’ work, or is it complete freedom? Then there is the nationality divide, the poet notes himself as American and from my minimal exposure to Americans I have encountered, mostly, insensitivity and brash, forward behaviour; as a South African with British heritage the tone is more too manners and sensitivity, so would it be purely a cultural clash I’m experiencing?

Yes, I’ve been reading the poet’s poems since, and the co-incidences continue … as a writer I know that my imagination is incredible and the stories I create in my mind are often out of this world, but are my feelings here in the realms of imagination or has a line been crossed?

Dipping into the writers’ sea appears to have turned into a swim through choppy waters for me and I’m a land lover. When on solid ground I have maps and I know the lay of the land, the social etiquettes, the body language I can see, the vocal tones I can hear, the context I am in and the reaction of the person I am speaking to. The vast expanse of internet I fear is putting me way out of my depth as I’m not sure on the rules of the space when it’s all one large, undivided, mass of identical drops… the more I’m in the water, the more it appears the waves are encroaching on my shores of land and this mergence is going on, but the people I know on land, and know well, are not ‘into’ writing / swimming, but I don’t ‘know’ anyone in the water around me, they are all virtual strangers, and it doesn’t feel safe, but it is intriguing me to the point of addiction and obsession… I have no idea about what is going on… and it’s scary, it’s unbalanced and makes no sense to me…

Are internet sites / writer’s websites reality, a reality, a simulation, or reality avoidance?
Would that make my feelings reality or simulation? Genuine or created? Real or imaginary?
Because I can’t use any of my 5 senses in the sea of writers, and I’m not sure if my 6th sense is faulty or not…

I know I think too much, but I figured if I release this too, then maybe the Universe could help me come to peace with the ordeal…