Innocence Blog

Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad

The personality comes and goes. My task is to stay aware – aware of my discomfort, my anxiety, my suffering. An insight – as I mature, I find that my path is not so much one of seeking perfection or discovering an ideal state or creating an ideal object of art, but surrendering to my limitations, my deepest imperfections. I don’t become a genius as I’ve always assumed but instead I let go of the ignorance, the fetters that delude me. This means accepting my greatest imperfections and loving the person I am now. Becoming does not resolve the human predicament. Being aware, however, can take me out of my personal drama and awaken me to my full capacity of love.

Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad

My personality is based on an overcompensation. I was wounded probably at the end of my childhood and at the beginning of my adolescence. I made several observations about who I am. I must have observed that I was not as smart as a certain group, that my intelligence was middle range and also that my abilities were mediocre. For the rest of my life, I would attempt to overcompensate for a belief that I am not as intelligent as the smartest group. I always compared myself to the highest, the brightest – they were part of the exclusive club I longed to be in. Similarly, socially I was not the coolest but I watched the coolest with envy and longing. This self division occurred in me early on. I told myself I must try to become unique. I cannot be like the others. Because I saw the smart people and the cool people as unique, as special but I was only average, mediocre, like everyone else. My turbulent adolescence centered almost entirely on this blind cause to become unique in whatever I could.
I saw sameness and difference everywhere. I loathed sameness and worshiped difference – to set myself apart from the rest. Individualism became my creed. My academic obsessions – I had to overcompensate for what I believed was an overall lack of ability. My drug obsessions and self abandon – I had to overcompensate socially. I did not want to be like everyone else – extreme drug use put me into another category. I was unique because of my intensity.
All of this overcompensation and the thick protective skin it has left on me – now that I prose my pain through the character of Lethe, I feel at last I have found the key to not only his drives and insecurities but my own – and everyone’s personality to the extent that all of our personalities are overcompensation for some lack we feel from long ago that has, over the years, attained a level of truth with us. With me, I’m completely identified with my writing – this is my ultimate project to once and for all prove or compensate for my lack of ability and intelligence. We are walking overcompensations, it is as plain as day.
What does this all mean? We are not ourselves – we are a reincarnation of our past selves. The wounded child or adolescent replaying the trauma over and over again by trying to cover it up, by being what he feels deep down he is not. Is the personality not a machine of overcompensation? For my novel – and I wince to say that because the novel is the epitome of my obsession. But what if, by knowing this about myself and others, I can expose it and Lethe is the obvious over compensator – obvious to everyone (the reader) except himself. Rose too. What is the result of blind strife, self hatred, the empty core of the personality – it’s a myth each of us believes to be in the truth. By now, we’ve programmed ourselves into certain protective traits, habits – to keep us from feeling that empty core. We have all had a prolonged exposure to the empty core of our specific lack – now we structure our life on the project of becoming what we feel we are not. What then happened originally? Were those initial perceptions of our death, our lack, mistaken?

Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad

“All in all, today hasn’t been that bad and things are looking up for you already. And while the body is irritating and you always wish you were more comfortable, at least you are aware of your pettiness and discomfort. We do have a lot to complain about and for that reason, we shouldn’t complain. We should just patiently endure it. I can’t say things are not constantly aggravating because they’re not. You seem to fall into a rhythm sometimes and the ugliness and the irritation recedes from your awareness.
Desire is a funny thing- eventually you get all those things you wished for. But what about happiness, which has an elusive way of appearing and disappearing. Don’t go looking for it though. Because it’s harder to catch than a butterfly though desire also runs away. When you’re chasing things, they are bound to run from you. Even the thoughts in my head I chase like rabbits – never to hold them. They rapidly multiply into whole colonies of rabbits. Soon I’m chasing rabbits in three different directions. Whether it’s the mind or the body, you’re mad. And then maybe it’s the moment because things change you know. That’s what I love about reality – it’s totally unpredictable. In the moment, I write a poem saying the body is miserable and everything is wrong. Already conditions (in me and around) are beginning to rearrange themselves. So I write to probe a mood of misery and then find I’ve come to a place where those things I’ve said at the beginning of the poem belong to the perceptions of another person. My tone changes like the feeling over my body changes - And those things I once felt were the bane of my wretched life are now like twinkling lights in a fog bound street. You can’t pinpoint where they’re coming from, but you know they’re there…”

"How do I trust or learn to trust? How do I place faith in simply being myself and not strive so hard to be the world’s next great author? When if ever will I be able to not think about writing. My consciousness, dominated by a few ideas branching off from one main purpose – I must be a great writer. If I was only a writer, then I could take my time. But I’m constantly reminded of the clock. And it removes me from the experience of life itself. I would like to see my writing become something – I would like to let go also. My mind is obsessed. Can it become un-obsessed when I feed that obsession every day, nearly every minute. What is that vital fluid that circulates my veins like hot lava? Will I ever know that the same substance – in the end – will kill me? Like my mother whose spark was too intense, I see her – in me."

Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad

“…Greatness is not assumed, it is earned and I have not earned it yet. These are just my thoughts, they are not public displays of art. Why to write art you need a form, like a poem or a short story, or a novel. Those are the buildings. But a journal, a journal is not timeless, it is transitory, fleeting like butterfly wings. One flap, and they’re gone. We so want to assert our spirits upon this earth. My mother, why hers casts a light across the family, her artwork, a colorful mural once foregrounded, now subtle, behind us. Where will her son come out? There needs to be industry. What will I produce, just these 25 year old thoughts? Language must be handled deftly, it must be learned from masters. This is not a vacation here on earth. We are expected to leave legacies for our children and if our children were never born, those who we love instead, but build we must. We must express the unexpressed, the eternal must seep through the words. And silence must fill our ears with images so resolute that we shy aware from their gaze. Our discussion is only with ourselves, we are forever talking back into our womb until our mother hears us calling back into her. We must warn our families, tell them to stop before they begin. These creatures have spirits. these animals have real hearts. We’re alive and song pours out of us. We’re so much of life we cannot hide from our own enormousness, impossible faith, beyond beyond…”