A Guy Named Vince

I was at work on Friday and ran into my friend Andrew who is also one of the editors of Canon. He asked me if I had heard about my essay. I hadn't.

He then told me that I got second place in the essay contest! Nice! There is money involved. Nicer!

It should be out in two weeks. I asked him who got first. Vince. "Vince C.?" I asked. Vince C.

When I first got to New School, we had to endure a week of registration activities/meetings. One of them was the Liberal Studies lunch. This was where I met the other people in my cohort and got to meet Jim Miller, the chair of the department. He discussed theses. He discussed Vince.

Jim holds Vince in high regard and said that he wrote one of the best theses he had ever seen. I finally met him last semester and he's a really nice guy. He's in his forties and went through my program. He's now pursuing a Ph.D. in Sociology at New School. And he's intelligent as hell.

And I finished behind him in the contest. That's about a guy named Vince. I'm happy. I'm happy with the outcome of the essay and I'm glad that this topic of mine will finally see the light of day. I made some decisions this past week concerning writing and "this topic" as a result of the essay being published.

I need to move on. It will always be a part of me, of course. But I can't keep re-hashing the same shit. So I will move on. My thesis on Hedwig and the Angry Inch will be the last of these issues. My identity issues. I want to start incorporating them into a new form of writing. I'm not sure of the form yet.

But I refuse to put pressure on myself to find it until after the semester. Maybe fiction. Or playwriting. I do want to write a book. About my life so far. And this will all be a part of it. But it's got to be fresh. I don't want to use the same tired words. What I've written during the past five or so years has been the same.

And it's lacked emotion. I actually think that the essay that got second place lacks emotion. So I will try harder. To feel what I write and then put those feelings into words. This is something I'm not very good at yet. And I want to be. But that's for later.

I just spent the last five hours cleaning up the northwest corner of my room. I had two file cabinets that contained old files and dusty piles. The result of my winter cleaning is four bags of trash and four bags of shredded paper. Hopefully the order I achieved tonight will keep itself for a while. At least until I move. Which I really hope won't be this May.

My lease ends at the end of April. It's not that I love this place that much to want to stay. I just don't want to have to deal with finding a place before the end of the semester. Even this summer. I want to relax. Or something. I haven't made any significant progress on my thesis in a couple of days. I've been thinking about it some, but haven't been staring at the screen. I met with Helen today at the Tea Lounge and we talked a little bit about our respective projects.

She spoke with Jim after class the other night and he said she just needs to write. That editing is the fun part. I have a problem in that I can't leave a sentence I'm not happy with. I can't put a period on crap.

So I sit there and look at it and try to think of ways to make it better. And then I think about the paragraph it's killing and wonder if it's in the right place. "Should this be in chapter two," I ask myself (in my head).

In my head is where the words bounce off each other as my fingers rest dormant on the home keys. And I stare. And think. And get up. I can see this thing, this paper I'm writing. And I want to get to the next page. But if I can't get this sentence to work then I'm stuck.

And the pressure builds up to a point where my thoughts can no longer move. "Maybe I should watch the scene again," I say to myself (in my head). And I do. And then more thoughts come. And I can see this thing. But I can't write it into fruition. But I must. And I will. I needed to clean this corner in my room. And I will take Jim's advice. And just write.