I didn't want to love Europe. Everybody had, everybody would. Those prone to the blatant acceptance of clichés would rush in earnest towards language and travel. Part of the problem was that I couldn't afford it. Travel was a financial impossibility. Only one language was spoken. Why would you need another language when you already had one? And so I grew apart. If writing is something shared, then I only pursued writing in so much that it allowed for the concrete manifestation of my own thought. Imagine a child laying down on the couch just so they can close their eyes and dream.
I never wanted to drink coffee and didn't have my first cup until I was in my mid-twenties. Not from my parent's cold mug, nor from something leftover in the car after an early Saturday. As I grew, and those around me began to imbibe, I still did not feel tempted. It wasn't that I was particularly put off by it. The smell of coffee beans was engaging to me, as if I could hear some subtle stories behind their whispers. I knew that, if I did choose to engage with these, I would enjoy them.
—He lived, once,
On the pages of chronicles, under a different wind,
Under a different conjunciton of stars, though on the same
Earth which, as they say, is a goddess."
from 'Incarnated' by Czeslaw Milosz
And Milosz. And Apricots. The story has been told. Those things were observed and they were enjoyed, to the point that they have become a part of one's character. They say we speak with our jaw because of bad teeth and soreness in the back. When we move our mouth it's to reposition the joint which has loosened, the one just below the ear. We say thank you to anyone who will listen, who will read, and take a sip and ignore the world which is reminding us of what dies+. It shouldn't feel like the next night at 2:30 in the afternoon.
How much I wish I was that old man standing with his dog in the river, staring with the one good eye at a photographer who couldn't possibly know what was hidden in a grimace and sagged cheek. The dog seems to know, perfectly. But perhaps we're putting that on her. His mouth cups at the corners, making you wonder if he's lost any teeth. At his age, at least a few must've walked off. He doesn't seem to care. He seems content with the wet creekbed of his life.
"Everything is gestation and then bringing forth."
from "Letters to a Young Poet" by Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by M.D. Herter Norton
I wonder if I'm doing to that old man, now, what I've done to those previous. And myself.
Writing is like this. You choose topics you think you know. If you're more temperamental, research is done while living and those things lived develop a narrative. How that narrative is expressed varies. Some take things as literally as possible, discouraging the use of lines between what is fiction and what is not. Some take their lives and reproduce them in as fictional a manner as is possible, while still retaining the essence of what was once a natural life.
The question of cliché is a reoccurring one, but rarely does one recognize when it first appears. An impulse towards the obscure might suggest it. Children rarely care. It is what we covet most from our past selves, the ability to exist without a voice questioning after one experiences the disillusionment of time; that things are finite and you can only accrue so many personal experiences.
"The richest town, the greenest countryside,
lacked the deep, mysterious appeal
of realms which chance will fashion from a cloud;
and we were too much driven by anxious zeal."
from 'The Voyage' by Charles Baudelaire
translated by Jan Owen
It may be necessary for a writer to confront, and re-confront, clichés when they are at their most insecure; to ask the question again and again. They are those bites most recently chewed. We contemplate the taste, then contemplate contemplating the taste. You may notice that repetition and redundancy seem to be that close to losing one's mind. And so a metaphor about one's mouth may be a gift because you rarely question yourself for doing those things which seem most natural. You may concern yourself with eating the food, but how it is bitten is rarely a concern. As long as the meal is pressed in your mouth and goes easily down your throat, only the certifiably distraught would say to themselves, oh you're just like everyone else.
Some pleasures are capable of being appreciated by many, and they do not lose their vivacity, simply because they are widely known. The light doesn't fail to shine through the stained glass of the cathedral just because there's a queue going a half-mile out the door. All these are ways to tell yourself, relax, allow things to happen. While standing in the river, be content that the water is there, the dog is there, waiting for your signal, and there are things worthy of their importance to you.