Sonnet 31

  • In some waking moment, during some marinate,
  • Happens the chance to grow, to coagulate,
  • To stare silently without fear, without past,
  • Without clear definition of what ceiling to commiserate.
  • In that waking moment, a chance to contemplate,
  • The haze of hours, days, and years prior,
  • The maze of friends, foods, palm trees, power,
  • In some flurry of peace and frenzy, all baiting to conspire.
  • In this waking moment, everything is worn,
  • Every fame, every calamity, any claim to cats or unicorns,
  • All the bounds and boister of forlorn inanity,
  • Plastered and brining, a clump of shame and vanity.
  • The sprinkler just died, the garbageman is amuck,
  • Trapped in your world, Howard the Duck.

Notes

I've been grasping at every conceivable method of inducing myself to re-emerge as of late, everything from extensive caffeine regiments to murky bouts of insomnia countered by regretful amounts of rest, in a desperate attempt to return to some former glorious creative and productive self. This was written during one such attempt, to become a "morning person", trekking off to work as early in the AM as I can manage, before anyone is awake, before any alarms have been blurn, before before.

So 6:23am NB express train, notepad drawn, not fully conscious or awake, no stimulant yet to enter my system, scribbling. My handwriting has deteriorated significantly from lack of practice alongside weaker than normal hands (from a probable onset of carpal tunnel), so a few words needed considerable detective work to figure out what I meant to say during the transcription phase, namely "inanity". Could've easily been "sanity" or "calamity" or "banality" or a host of other "-ity" words.

Gist of the whole thing is my ongoing struggle with feeling relevant, having purpose, expressing confidence in what I work on, making sizeable contributions, and just believing that my intuition is correct and matters. I've been shelving a combination of these emotions throughout the past few years but it all came rushing back after attending Startup School this past weekend, not because of any of the talks, but from the few conversations I had with strangers.

I basically turned Kanye on everyone. And it was resuscitating.

A notable mention goes to a lucky Spotify find in the "Bonobo Late Night Tales Continuous Mix", which has been on steady repeat for the past week; a parade of horns and melancholy and soul and ambient and Benedict Cumberbatch. Amazing stuff, give it a whirl.

— Huy on