(27 records of a saddle)
(the saddle feed)
(drops of ink)
(introduction)
(rss)
A Woman’s World, Defectors and Umbrellas
I’ve been feeling lost.
Last year I met an Australian student of Chinese philosophy in Beijing. A friend had shown him my website, and he praised me on the “confessional quality” of my writing. From that point on, I started to wonder what was so confessional about this website.
Do I have a fascination towards confession? A certain idealization of it? Or is that the only way I know how to write?
For many months I went back and forth between trying to embrace this “confessional quality” and trying to reject it completely. Now that I’ve been working full time though, I don’t really have the time to both engage in this mental struggle and to actually produce any real writing. So, for the time being, I need to find a way to lay it aside.
The embodiment of that struggle, the records of a saddle, which once were the core of this website, feel like too much a burden to add to anymore. They were an artifact of a certain stage in my life that seems to have come to an end. I am declaring them complete. It’s time to move on, but I’m not sure how.
Even though I doubt it will be helpful this time around, in an attempt to lull myself out of my gloomy state, I return to what’s worked once in the past: self-quotation. Finally, it’s time for Part 2 of A Saddle Forgotten. You can read the introduction of the Part 1 to better understand what this is all about. I originally had elaborate plans for Part 2 alluded by the “To be continue” teaser at the bottom of the page, but I’ve totally forgotten them. If you read on though, rather than writing about Neuromantic, I have something else that might serve as a suitable replacement. I’ve also taken a bit of liberty with the format. Since what I’m quoting is mostly pieces from the last few weeks rather than years earlier, I’ve allowed myself to make most of my additional comments in the body of the quotations, where they are invisible – which perhaps defeats the whole purpose of this exercise. There are, therefore, no “Saddle Says” sections, just brief interludes between quotations. I apologize for that, and hopefully will return to proper form in the next part.
Essays:Contact me at saddleblasters [at] gmail [etc]
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