water lily

i lived there once. i still do. wandering by the cattails. swamplands are magical. the kind of magic most people can't see. frogs are greater already than princes, who can be quite nasty.

reverie

i want to be happy, but i don't know how. this means nothing to you; i mean nothing to you (there are shades of nothing, some darker than others), but we pretend. all the pretense; we don't know where it ends, and where the real begins. ultimately we are curiosities to each other.

the wisdom of deadwood

al swearengen:

"pain or damage don't end the world. or despair, or fuckin' beatin's. the world ends when you're dead. until then you got more punishment in store. stand it like a man, and give some back."

deadwood

outside

the overwhelming sadness of the world. the weariness of the knowledge that it cannot be overcome. so much. we must not think about it. you try not to, don't you? i think it without immersing in it. i used to. it will swallow you whole. the pretense is what kills me. people who walk around as if everything is swell. i can't get away from it. i can't pretend it's not there. ignoring it doesn't mean it's not there. the masses are morons. they give the power to evil and greed. so the whole world is controlled by this pathological symbiosis. there are a fair number of people who don't look like morons. at least not to the level of bubba and jim-bob over in arkansas. but they also seem to be morons. it shows in their actions and beliefs. there's the predominance of belief in magical invisible men. then there's the belief in politics and politicians. no matter how many times they are burned and given overwhelming evidence of the reality of the situation, they continue to behave as if politics is the answer. that if they just vote for the right person, all will be well. THEY'RE ALL BAD! that's why they're in politics. no healthy person would ever go into it. it's all pretense. i will get outside of it all. one way or another. eventually, anyway. these are facts i must live with. that you don't want to see them just makes me more alone. i will try to stop thinking about it. i wish i could. i need other things to focus on. then these brutish realities will not keep intruding upon my potential blissful ignorance.

it is never too late to be what you might have been

my heart is breaking, all bittersweet memories, regret, and confusion that clouds my mind still. the inertia, i see it, like a wagon sitting still, all i have to do is push. i do not understand such resistance. what could have been still can be, they say, but not quite the same, i think. the body breaks down, the trade off for understanding, an understanding that is depressing yet still somewhat freeing. freeing of the frustration once caused by the naive belief that the world could be a better place. what could have been...what is stopping me? what will turn the key?

demon jealousy smirks as i stew in resentment

there will always be prettier, smarter, more clever, more interesting, more successful people than me. how do you manage this? you're just somehow happy with the lumps you are? is that denial? i guess. believing what one wants to believe. if you weren't so firmly entrenched in your fictions as to make you unaware, maybe you could tell me the trick. maybe it's something i can practice. i would gladly trade grim reality for happiness and ignorance. maybe hypnosis would help.

i realize that my insecurity is to blame, but to what extent are my insecurities rational? i certainly could do better. do more. be more.

dream of freedom

it was only a dream. i did live there once. away in the wilds. i'll dream still. quiet now. sit up. breathe. it was just a bad dream. they were never real. they walked and talked almost like people.

chatter

some are lucky enough to build. there is greatness. the rest of us, the bungled and the botched, merely survive. some of us talk, we seem to say something at times. there is so much chatter. who can say? am i overlooked, or just a fool? why does it matter to me so much? no, i hang in that stretch between foolishness and greatness. how bland. how disheartening. how horrifyingly ordinary.

is it better to believe you are great yet be a fool, or to feel grossly inept yet be great? how is it possible to know which you are in this dense sea of self-delusion into which we all at the very least dip a toe?

i am my fucking khakis

aren't i? this is not at all thought out. rambling. frustration. confusion. fuck it.

shopping. new clothes, hair cut, glasses. it's nice. i look nice. i could lose a few more pounds. the root is i still don't know who i am. so i guess i am my khakis. other people think so, don't they? they look at you. what do they think? do they take in all that information, the subtleties, the turn of a wrist, a crinkle of the forehead, the general countenance, or is it just a balance sheet? how much did that shirt cost, how much did she spend for that haircut? what is this person worth? then we come to secondary concerns. what falls from the lips. incoherent nonsense. does anyone get it? should they? i could maybe make more sense, but i'm tired, always so tired. but i'll go ahead and post this anyway, because i know if i think about it i won't.

don't worry about me. i'll come to it sooner or later. it's a struggle. a lifelong struggle.

what i need to come to is a place where it doesn't matter to me what anyone thinks. but doesn't the fact that i'm not independently wealthy preclude that sort of enlightenment? being that my sustenance must come from my perceived value to others.

struggle

i want you to know this. i don't know why. i realize now it won't help me. i don't want pity. not anymore. that does fuck-all. i pursued that for years, from anyone who would listen, and got it a few times. it did not give me the relief and healing i believed it would. it did nothing at all. it was meaningless. so if you feel it, don't tell me, i don't want it, don't want to know it.

the cruelty i was subjected to. and these people were not unique. you have or will have children, and you have no idea why you must teach them not to do this, but please do. don't just tell them. teach them.

i was damaged to begin with, by an evil mother who withheld love and protection, and a mentally ill abusive father who crippled me. do you remember, if you did not do it yourself, you saw it, the ones who picked out the weak and the different for their special attention? i was that one. and you did not help me.

it wasn't my fault. i have to tell myself this now. this did not happen because i was less than any of you. i was hurt already, and struggled through that as best i could, already feeling i was someone who wasn't worth loving, and this on top. it wasn't my fault. i wasn't worth less. i wasn't that i was not worth loving or liking or protecting. it wasn't my fault. i tell myself this finally, and i struggle to know it in my heart. i know it in my head. but not in my heart. because of this, i have continued to hurt myself, sabatoge myself, not worked for things i wanted, for the life i wanted and should have had. i could have flown.

i didn't fight back. i was beat up twice, i didn't even fight back for that. i just let them hit me. i was afraid. years of being attacked by my father emotionally taught me i was weak and could not win. that i deserved this abuse. i did fight back once in grade school. third grade i think. a boy always tormented me on the bus, every day. i still remember his name. vicious fucker. there were days i didn't go to school because i couldn't face it. i would cut school, put on my uniform and pretend to get on the bus, and spend the day in the woods behind my house. one night before school i sharpened my fingernails. when he started, i grabbed his arm and dug in as hard as i could. it felt so good. and the look of shock on his face was a beautiful thing. he was used to me just taking it, just being hurt. i was a shy child, quiet, afraid of nearly everything (read my blog entitled shyness is nice...). no one seriously looked into what would make me do something so out of character. i was interrogated like i was a criminal. treated like i was the guilty and wrong one. that took away all of my triumph. i believe he gloated. that was the last time i fought back. the years of the emotional abuse by these children was worse, cutting deeper, ingraining in me more deeply how repulsive i was, how worthless. the shunning, the abandonment to these torments with not one person indicating it was wrong, ever.

i know now in my head that they were far lower than i ever was. but i still can't feel it. yet.

axiomatic for the people

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up" - Thomas Edison

this is why i'm a misanthrope

the cruelty and stupidity of the species. with a few exceptions, but i don't get on with them, because in order for them to be as they are, nice, decent, and kind, they can't look at it full on. or i don't know how they do it. looking at animal planet, there are about 100 tigers left in the wild, and they are killing them for consumption (along with many other endangered species) because they believe they will take on the strength of the tiger by eating it. when they asked one woman involved in the trade how she would feel when there were no more tigers in the wild when her granddaughter is grown, she said indifferently, "she can see them in the zoo".

then looking at zeitgeist-the movie. now that's something else. the people who made it weren't very bright, they told half-truths and exaggerated and made connections that were a stretch. so they come off looking like nut-jobs. but they brought up some very scary possibilities. there is a lot to 9-11 that is dubious. and there are too many similarities with the whole situation to the manipulation of a population toward a war whose only purpose is the ultimate gain of those in power.

another reason i hold the species in such contempt is that they believe in politics. and they have no clue what goes on behind the scenes. they actually seem to think that these people running things are looking out for them. or at least consider them. you are only considered as something they consume, something that feeds them. you are cattle. to be corralled and controlled. here is a description of what i'm talking about, from joseph nye's book, soft power.

"The basic concept of power is the ability to influence others to get them to do what you want. There are three major ways to do that: one is to threaten them with sticks; the second is to pay them with carrots; the third is to attract them or co-opt them, so that they want what you want. If you can get others to be attracted, to want what you want, it costs you much less in carrots and sticks."

he is a harvard professor, i saw him in a pbs program. he is frighteningly intelligent. i think people like him, as well as the people in power, really do see the masses as cattle. literally. the gulf between nye's intelligence and the average person's is about as great as between an average person's and a cow's. the same formula applies to those in power, though they are not as smart as nye, they feel superior in the same way. so they are no more concerned for your welfare than you are for a cow's. and some are less concerned.

welling up

i feel something, i don't know what. confusion is nothing new. do other people feel this? could we get together, make a list? find out what the unifying factor is. understand the what and why. but that doesn't change anything anyway, anymore than understanding the movements of the planets can stop them. but perhaps removing the mystery can ease the mind some. what does it matter? another tortured soul in a long list of them. looking for my own peace. i think i know what it is though. parents who don't love you, and the feelings of worthlessness that brings. and then those nasty little genes they pass on, the ones that make the brain malfunction. topping it off, the not fitting in, even though i wanted to, not knowing how, not wanting to really though, and torn still. becoming what i despise would not do. the inferno.

"The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space." - italo calvino

breaking through

this is my heart. this is my fear. i know these things, but it is dark in here, so i do not know where they are, where they are in relation to other things, other people. the fear does not want me to find out, it is quite desperate, but so is the heart desperate to get out. this stalemate has gone on for 35 years. i keep telling my fear i am going to stop giving it any credence, cease listening to its insinuations, but we both know that it is an empty threat.

lightness

from a collection of six essays by italo calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium . ostensibly about storytelling, but i think also about living and being. after lightness is quickness. i have let heaviness capture me; movement is hampered. i will study these essays, and take calvino's counsel.

"my working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. i have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all i have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language.

i shall try to explain why i have come to consider lightness a value rather than a defect.

i hope to have shown that there is such a thing as a lightness of thoughtfulness, just as we all know that there is a lightness of frivolity. in fact, thoughtul lightness can make frivolity seem dull and heavy.

Milan Kundera's novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being is in reality a bitter confirmation of the Ineluctable Weight of Living, not only in the situation of deperate and all-pervading oppression that has been the fate of his hapless country, but in a human condition common to us all, however infinitely more fortunate we may be. for Kundera the weight of living consist chefly in constriction, in the dense net of public and private constrictions that enfolds us more and more closely. his novel shows us how everything we choose and value in life for its lightness soon reveals its true, unbearable weight. perhaps only the liveliness and mobility of the intelligence escape this sentence--the very qualities with which this novel is written, and which belong to a world quite differnet from the one we live in.

whenever humanity seems condemned to heaviness, i think i should fly like Perseus into a different space. i don't mean escaping into dreams or into the irrational. i mean that i have to change my approach, look at the world from a different perspective, with a differnet logic and with fresh methods of cognition and verification. the images of lightness that i seek should not fade away like dreams dissolved by the realities of present and future....."

i want to do this; to understand this. i cannot grasp it just yet. i have wasted too many years escaping into dreams and the irrational.

at daybreak--italo calvino

from italo calvino's cosmicomics.

The planets of the solar system, G.P. Kuiper explains, began to solidify in the darkness, through the condensation of a fluid, shapeless nebula. All was cold and dark. Later the Sun began to become more concentrated until it was reduced almost to its present dimensions, and in this process the temperature rose and rose, to thousands of degrees, and the Sun started emitting radiation in space.

Pitch-dark it was,--old Qfwfq confirmed,--I was only a child, I can barely remember it. We were there, as usual, with Father and Mother, Granny Bb'b, some uncles and aunts who were visiting, Mr. Hnw, the one who later became a horse, and us little ones. I think i've told you before the way we lived on the nebula: it was like lying down, we were flat and very still, turning as they turned. Not that we were lying outside, you understand, on the nebula's surface; no, it was too cold out there. We were underneath, as if we had been tucked in under a layer of fluid, grainy matter. There was no way of telling time; whenever we started counting the nebula's turns there were disagreements, because we didn't have any reference points in the darkness, and we ended up arguing. So we preferred to let the centuries flow by as if they were minutes; there was nothing to do but wait, keep covered as best we could, doze, speak out now and then to make sure we were all still there; and, naturally, scratch ourselves; because--they can say what they like--all those particles spinning around had only one effect, a troublesome itching.

What we were waiting for, nobody could have said; to be sure, Granny Bb;b remembered back to the times when matter was uniformly scattered in space, and there was heat and light; even allowing for all the exaggerations there must have been in those old folks tales, those times had surely been better in some ways, or at least different; but as far as we were concerned, we just had to get through that enormous night.

My sister G'd(w)n fared the best, thanks to her introverted nature; she was a shy girl and she loved the dark. For herself, G'd(w)n always chose to stay in placed that were a bit removed, at the edge of the nebula, and she would contemplate the blackness, and toy with the little grains of dust in tiny cascades, and talk to herself, with faint bursts of laughter that were like tiny cascades of dust, and--waking or sleeping--she abandoned herself to dreams. they weren't dream like ours (in the midst of the darkness, we dreamed of more darkness, because nothing else came into our minds); no, she dreamed--from what we could understand of her ravings--of a darkness a hundred times deeper and more various and velvety.

My father was the first to notice something was changing. i had dozed off, when his shout wakened me: "Watch out! We're hitting something!"

Beneath us, the nebula's matter, instead of fluid as it had always been, was beginning to condense.

To tell the truth, my mother had been tossing and turning for several hours, saying: "Uff, I just can't seem to make myself comfortable here!" In other words, according to her, she had become aware of a change in the place where she was lying; the dust wasn't the same as it had been before, soft, elastic, uniform, so you could wallow in it as much as you liked without leaving any print; instead, a kind of rut or furrow was being formed, especially where she was accustomed to resting all her weight. And she thought she could feel underneath her something like granules or blobs or bumps; which perhaps, after all, were buried hundreds of miles farther down and were pressing through all those layers of soft dust. Not that we generally paid much attention to these premonitions of my mother's: poor thing, for a hypersensitive creature like herself, and already well along in years, our way of life then was hardly ideal for the nerves.

And then it was my brother Rwzfs, an infant at the time; at a certain point I felt him--who knows?--slamming or digging a writhing in some way, and I asked: "What are you doing?" And he said: "I'm playing."

"Playing? With what?"

"With a thing," he said.

You understand? It was the first time. There had never been things to play with before. And how could we have played? With that pap of gaseous matter?


There are seven more pages, i don't know if i'll get to the rest.

the distance of the moon--italo calvino

from the short stories, cosmicomics.

At one time, according to Sir George H. Darwin, the Moon was very close to the Earth. Then the tides gradually pushed her far away: the tides that the Moon herself causes in the Earth's waters, where the Earth slowly loses energy.

How well I know!--old Qfwfq cried,--the rest of you can't remember, but I can. We had her on top of us all the time, that enormous Moon: when she was full--nights as bright as day, but with a butter-colored light--it looked as if she were going to crush us; when she was new, she rolled around the sky like a black umbrella blown by the wind; and when she was waxing, she came forward with her horns so low she seemed about to stick into the peak of a promontory and get caught there. But the whole business of the Moon's phases worked in a different way then: because the distaces from the Sun were different, and the orbits, and the angle of something or other, I forget what; as for eclipses, with Earth and Moon stuck together the way they were, why, we had eclispses every minute: naturally, those two big monsters managed to put each other in the shade constantly, first one, then the other.

Orbit? Oh, elliptical, of course: for a while it would huddle against us and then it would take flight for a while. The tides, when the Moon swung closer, rose so high nobody could hold them back. There were nights when the Moon was full and very, very low, and the tide was so high that the Moon missed a ducking in the sea by a hair's-breadth; well, let's say a few yards anyway. Climb up on the Moon? Of course we did. All you had to do was row out to it in a boat and, when you were underneath, prop a ladder against her and scramble up.

The spot where the Moon was lowest, as she went by, was off the Zinc Cliffs. We used to go out with those little rowboats they had in those days, round and flat, made of cork. They held quite a few of us: me, Captain Vhd Vhd, his wife, my deaf cousin, and sometimes little Xlthlz--she was twelve or so at that time. On those nights the water was very calm. so silvery it looked like mercury, and the fish in it, violet-colored, unable to resist the Moon's attraction, rose to the surface, all of them, and so did the octopuses and the saffron medusas. There was always a flight of tiny creature--little crabs, squid, and even some weeds, light and filmy, and coral plants--that broke from the sea and ended up on the Moon, hanging down from that lime-white ceiling, or else they stayed in midair, a phosphorescent swarm we had to drive off, waving banana leaves at them.


to be continued...

cities and ghosts

there is a city that is said to be haunted. as you walk through you see old concrete buildings, long abandoned. the houses are full of dust and cobwebs.
in a third story window a woman sits, looking far away in the distance. she cannot see you, being so close. it is said she cannot be persuaded to come down, remaining only to look at something which is no longer there.

-inspired by italo calvino's book of short stories, invisible cities.

what is your city like?

take me to tv land

hey there mr. blue sky. ELO (Electric Light Orchestra). sears commercial. and this beautiful washer dryer set. front loading, bubble door, sleek, horribly expensive. when i get them i'll be happy. mr. blue.

baid-aid. i thought that sickly sweet, i am stuck on band-aid had rightfully died in the 70's. the repulsively cute kids. stick them in a commercial. honey, act really cute and everyone will love you. that won't screw them up at all.