ITS MY HEAD

yes, rebeca

2011-10-10T12:55:00.000-07:00

how i wish

so many things, if i make a list it becomes flat, if i put it in words it becomes flat, so let's leave it open and light, let it take flight

but do you know what it feels like when i listen to tori?

no, of course, you couldn't, the way i like to imagine i know how she feels when she sings them when she couldn't possibly (or was it me)

if only i could roll you up with doug and tara and sprinkle on a bit of jared and what i once could have been and then distill out all of the dross, then you would blind me, but for a second all would be illuminated

red is my favorite color

2011-10-09T02:24:00.001-07:00

i picture the most beautiful and last thing i would see
and dream of sleep

maybe

if

but he says

it's me

i can't win

i still find small comfort in sleep

but i keep waking up

i only want to dream

reality keeps breaking

condensation

2011-10-09T01:41:00.000-07:00

i don't know how much i can

there are echos of me there and there

in tori

in kate bush

in the furs

tears for fears

we know some of each other, somehow

and so i didn't have to be completely alone

i crawled up inside and brought them in for tea and a good cry

there are many others, sometimes only a song, only a line, there are films as well, and i am there, dear claudia

it has been too long now, i am a wild child, semi-acclimated, but never comfortable.

i will hope for the best, but you know, it may all come to nothing. i am glad you are here now, but it is not enough, and i am afraid it will all fall through, and then what, what should i leave in my wake? they know they can't fix it for me, and i really may not make it. i will try, i will, but you would be frightened to know how close i've come, twice now, since i've known you, my promise notwithstanding, when it all comes down, i know there is nothing you can do, you can't save me, however intensely you might wish to.

i'm listening to tori tonight, it's been a long time, she's an odd one, not like me, not my oddness, but not like them either, like most people i feel so alien to. under the pink, i listened to it often, years ago. a line came up, what she meant by it in particular i don't know, but i know the meaning, and i couldn't say for sure, but i don't think it's a good thing in her case either. "you're already in there, i'll be wearing your tattoo". only in my case there was no "the way i was before", he started in on me too young, i never had a chance. i wish i could have known me, but this is all i've ever known, this twisted and perverted distortion of who i could have been.

IF

2011-06-24T20:50:00.000-07:00

i daydream sometimes, i take myself out of the picture. i am glad of some things. that is, i have had some experiences i am happy i have not missed. there are things so intricate, it would take pages to convey the smallest part, so i opt for concise generally, not to pander to the twitter length attention span, but in hope that someone, somewhere, may be able to extrapolate something of what it really is.

there's sometimes a buggy.

to explain would also cause it to lose something, some poetry, some weight. i have considered on lightness, and it has its attractions, and i suppose i could fly were i light enough, but it is not me, no matter how much i would wish it.

i take myself out. i make it a scene, and i zap myself out, and watch it continue without me. but i know it would not be clean, i know it would only be for me. i am trying to talk myself into detaching enough to do it lately.

there was an incident. it was ugly. i don't feel like telling it now, not in detail, but there were children in the park bullying a child. i flew into a rage and yelled and cursed at them. i was triggered. i am horrified at how little people seem to understand what such experiences can do to a person, they seem surprised to hear of the suicides resulting from such abuses, but they still don't seem to really understand. i was so angry and intent primarily on getting them away from the boy i didn't do anything for him, and someone had come and was taking care of him while i was still yelling at the other children. it doesn't make the lambs stop screaming. they scream constantly now.

i have dreams. but you cannot live on them. so what do you live on in the meantime?

A BIG FUCK YOU

2011-05-31T10:27:00.000-07:00

this one goes out to my family. if you can call it that. the one i originally fell into, with all the capricious grace of an indifferent universe. not my husband and son, who try their best and suffer me but it may not be enough. i hope it is, and i hope i make it.

for the record, it's not all their fault. but they are shit, and rather than help me, only added to the difficulty i've had in negotiating this life. added to hardly encompasses the torments they compounded and turned blind eyes to. but i am tired of going through it in excruciating detail. i just happened to notice that my aunt does check this blog every now and then, so this is to you, auntie, and don't be shy about spreading the love, because it is to every last one of you, even art, though it is possible he missed the message i sent him, i'll leave that possibility open, but i am hardly inclined toward magnanimosity as far as any of you are concerned. as far as grandma, i feel pity for her, knowing her story, but i feel toward her as i do toward my own mother, they should not have had children, they had no business being mothers to anyone; they were incapable due to the damage they sustained. and each created more cripples to carry on this tradition. i give you credit that you had the sense not to continue that cycle, but you cannot fall back on the excuse that you felt parents were responsible for their own children. that idiocy would mean there should be no child services, and children should be left to suffer with whatever abuse they are unlucky enough to be subjected to. i hold all of my cousins in contempt as well, except the ones i never knew. i only knew jessica as a baby. when grandma took care of her once while i was there, she was crying upstairs. i was 15. i tried to go up to her, though i knew nothing of babies, i knew of distress and need, and i tried to go and see what i could do. grandma stopped me, would not let me go, insisting that jessica needed to learn - i don't know what, maybe that she'd better get used to it now, the reality that you couldn't count on anyone to help you no matter how badly you needed something and how helpless you were to take care of yourself. i listened to her cry and knew it was wrong, and i was in my own distress over it. i had learned this long ago, but it pained me that anyone else would have to learn it. i don't know why i didn't disobey her and sneak up anyway, perhaps she was watching me, but for whatever reason i felt i couldn't go up. i hope linda did not buy into this notion of child-rearing.

The Insane Spark of High Heeled Girls

2011-02-15T11:11:00.000-08:00

It flips a switch for me. Have they gone completely mad? Clicking across the tile, it is not new, only sad. Women have been damaging themselves for centuries to gain love and attention. This particular trend is new, I think. I don't believe the shoes have ever been so high, certainly not for day-to-day casual and business wear.

I even saw two of them walking through Houston International with them on, traveling for god's sake! And that is a huge fucking airport! These are 6 inch spike heels with narrow toes. I could go on to describe what this does to the feet and legs and spine, but suffice it to say if you do it long enough you will wind up seriously crippled, if not right away, as you get older, the degeneration creeping silently along, even if the behavior stops.

I want to scream at them every time I see them. I want to tell them exactly how stupid it is, and that it is completely made-up, a mass delusion, a conspiracy, the notion that these things are even attractive. Two types especially irritate me. The ones in pants, since the argument goes that they make the legs look sexier, a moot point with pants. I have even seen them wear them with pants that come to the floor, covering the shoe completely. "Why?" I want to scream, "Why, I beg of you, explain your thinking in this, what possible reason do you have for doing this to yourself in this case?" Those, and the ones who cannot walk in them, they awkwardly lurch about, looking as graceful as the crippled member of the herd, the one the lions would take out first.

And now a new contender wanders my way at this very moment. The beast. The behemoth. Why? Are you like the delusional Jerry Springer guest, thinking you are sexy, while 50 lbs. of gut spills out of your lacy midriff tank top? Do you think it has an ameliorating effect, counter-balancing your heft and utter lack of any type of grace or beauty? Lank hair, likely dyed blond in a similar ham-handed attempt. As you sit next to me, and I glance over for these additional details, having politely asked me if the seat was free, I do feel a queasy sort of discomfort in the things I'm saying about you now, feeling fairly awful for it, but you shouldn't have worn those shoes and set me off, now should you?

The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys

lost...

2011-01-26T16:14:00.000-08:00

we are all lost; it only differs in degrees. i have seen our differences poignantly; shall i now see our similarities? how bittersweet it will be, how it will always be. are we in this together? can we now be? we weren't once, you know, you turned away, all of you did, and i was alone. but i am determined to forgive your ignorance, and to try to understand it as that, rather than evil, which it has felt like. i will do what i can for you. i will love. the pain and hatred shall fade.

roger waters understands. can you hear? i'm asking you that.

goodbye blue sky

love me, love me...

2011-01-14T11:31:00.001-08:00

i should distract myself. i should get busy so i don't hear it anymore, that fucking prodding, nudging voice, from so far away, inside, alone in the dark, forever. maybe she will always be there, there's nothing i can do for her, poor child. i have to abandon her, for now anyway, and hope she understands someday, that i had to finally take care of myself. she keeps crying for love and attention, only she is so far gone, quite mad, having been locked away for so long, it will never be enough. she can be soothed for short times, but it causes more trouble than it's worth, and when the soothing leaves, as it always does, having been more interested in quelling its own thirst than any concern for her, she feels worse, so much worse.

i want to be a veterinarian. i always have, but my mother shot that down when i told her, saying that i would have to deal with the pet's owner, knowing i had difficulty with people (that my difficulty was because of her and my father makes this statement so much more evil), in her derisive tone that deflated me. and of course i lost all will, strength, and direction as things progressed, as injuries accrued and complicated each other. if i pursue this, it will be a difficult road, but i want it, and i think i can do it, which is an amazing, though tentative and unusual, feeling for me to have.

i hate you, mommy. i want you to know that. to really know how evil you are. if you had any decency in you, you would throw yourself to the ground in front of me and surrender to the sobbing like a child, realizing the role you played in the destruction of all of your children, and beg my forgiveness, and ask what you could do now to help repair the damage you have done, knowing full well you can't, you can't even begin to make up for what i've suffered because of you. but you never will do that. you never will allow yourself to feel that. and you will die, miserable and alone, sitting in your own filth because no one in this world will take the smallest trouble to care for you, and maybe then it will dawn on you, but i doubt it. i know you were hurt as a child, and i am not unsympathetic, but you chose the wrong way to deal with that. i could have dealt with your pain, with unbalance, but not with the cold you opted for, so that you did not feel the pain so acutely.

and how badly i want to let these feelings go. they fucking hurt! and they will never be appeased, never. they need to be forgotten, i need to truly let it go, and i don't understand this part of me that enjoys the pain of holding onto it, i really don't. i think the part of me that wants to live is becoming stronger, and may be able to direct my energy to a better place, and just grieve them and move on, for they are dead, it is all dead back there, and to drag around this rotting corpse is insane.

i want to put myself back together now. maybe it's not too late, after all.

(i need a good hypnotherapist.

p.s. i really hate gwen stefani. she is all pop and image with no talent, no heart. what she pretends to have is just that, a pretense.)

desperate straits

2011-01-14T11:27:00.000-08:00

again, again. what is to be done? i've been moving closer to wellness, but am by no means yet able to stand on my own, or at least i tell myself that. if only...

if only i had a little, if only i had some change, if only if only if only...

i don't have this song and i couldn't see it on youtube from here, the real version, and all the live performances are recent. and for him it seems to have stopped. he doesn't feel it anymore. good for him. but he should stop performing this one. it makes for weak fare. i hope to get to when it stops. at least it's not constant anymore.

i am scared, i am hurt, and i guess that gets tiresome. i know it does because i have taken a walk on the other side of this equation. i cannot deal with them anymore. they will pull me down with them. now they were nuts. only it is not all i am, there is so much more, and i can see the light at the end of that long, dark tunnel. but what happens now? my best efforts may not be enough. i did so want to do something, i have tried, but it always dies. there is nothing here for it to live on. and so i put it in a bottle, but the ether is so littered with them, i am lost in a sea of meaningless bottles, so unsure of who i am, the very few who have heard me impotent to carry the message further.

i want to say so much more, i always do, and the words are not there, not the right ones, and not enough of them. it is so delicate, so intricate, and it is there, but to extract it in the first place, from where it lives, in my dense jungle, and then to clarify, well, that will take time, and it is getting dark again, again, as it does, and my compass just spins.

hello.

can you hear me? am i wasting my time? it doesn't matter. i can't stop it anyway, even if it were a waste. it still makes me feel like something more than nothing, even if i remain lost.

two words will do, if it is all you can muster. but if you have more, i'll gladly take them, for it is a jungle and a desert at once. would you leave me here, alone, with a dull machete and my water low...

Confused States

2010-12-30T08:47:00.000-08:00

"I don't think I am capable of having any friendships, but would you be my friend anyway"?

Steady now, don't quaver, don't get weepy. She just may take pity on you, don't fuck this up.

"Of course I will."

You thought she'd say that. She picks up stray dogs and hippies, and brings them home.

Should you say what you're thinking? No, just think how you would react to someone puking up such a mess on your floor. It's downright repulsive. This will do. Stay still. You just might make it out alive.

How the fuck do they do it? I know they have pain. So what the fuck is wrong with me, that I just can't hack it? It doesn't matter, though. You have to do it. You could break out, but they'd take another in your place, and he'd get even worse, you know that. Like it got you, when he took the out.

Fuck. This wasn't supposed to get depressing. Shit. This is me, trying not to get depressing. That's fucking depressing. O.K. Let's try this again.

I'm fond of my stray thoughts. Like homeless dogs, they keep looking for a home, for sustenance. But so many of their remains now litter my head, and I am losing my way.

Does suicide imbue one with a gravity they could not attain in life? Would they want to understand me then, would I suddenly become fascinating and have penetrating insights? They always ask about the note; and here are hundreds. I never knew who they were; I only have a vague notion. They have always been there, but out of reach. The ones that were in reach, I cannot speak of. Though it may not seem so, I am trying to get to higher ground. But I failed again. Let me try it at a run.

Breathe. There must be something light, something less ponderous, something to bring a smile. It is quick, but if I shrug off these chains I will catch it. I'm off.

trapped in a plaintive song

2010-12-29T20:16:00.000-08:00

and not just one. it's a nightmare with a strange beauty. one trap after another, a habitrail, a cube, escape only into another trap. i can see out. i have imagined myself out there, i have run for it, but i begin to suspect terrible possibilities. i won't say truths, because, my mind, you know i can't trust it. as arrogant as i seem, it's a protection. i even believe the ruse sometimes. but really i know. i am crumbling, in more ways than one.

what was lost...and gained

2010-12-29T14:31:00.000-08:00

my brain would like to rest. that was a long run over broken glass. traveling back in time, channeling myself. my younger self, only three then, powerless, not knowing how wrong it was, only that it hurt. insane monster, slobbering, raging. hollow monster, nothing to hold onto. almost, at times, but often only grabbing at a ghostly form.

dad. and mom.

i waited 20 years to tell this tale to him. the tale of the magnets and the belt. i'll tell you, soon. i would never hurt him like that. no, not the actions; i mean just the knowledge of what was done to me. how horrific is that?

i had only given him hints until now. a bad childhood. allusions to a brother i no longer had.

if the cloud bursts thunder in your ear

2010-12-18T12:04:00.001-08:00

the hippies played an eerie rendition of "brain damage" last night. all these things i have in me, portable art, forever changed by it. this is my jewelry; what i decorate myself with.

in order for me to hear them, they had to first be embraced by the masses who could not hear them. but oh, how they thought they did. but i would never have heard them otherwise. i don't know how many really did hear, i know i am not the only one, but i know it is a small number. i have often wondered how they managed to be embraced as they were, what they had that the average imbecile responded to. i don't think i have that thing. so no one will ever hear me. but that is beside the point, and a small lament. though i used to think it would save me, to be heard. i now just think it would be lovely if it could get through to those who could hear, and it may, someday. my words may stay lost forever in this sea of mediocrity, but they will stay, so there is the chance.

i am not finding the words to describe the lunatic to you as i had intended. the way that song entwined around the growing madness in my head and caressed it, so that i was not so alone. i still wish i could speak in music. another frustration, but i will keep trying with what i have, and one day the words will come together, and i hope, build something lovely as well as tinged with sadness and regret.

The Box

2010-12-12T09:22:00.000-08:00

I see it long ago an old movie in my mind I can't see much the box is closed and silent all around no one talks to me but they never did and he did so I didn't care that he hurt me sometimes and I forget that part and I felt anyway and I needed and I fixed on this one thing which is now in the box.

Rising up

2010-12-09T23:07:00.000-08:00

fuck rising up and overcoming. i’m fucking tired. working hard; a generation of untouchables, and the rest of you acting like it’s fucking normal, like some fucking aberrant god wanted it so. some are just poor and stuck, some are damaged from when they were too young to protect themselves, and struggle the rest of their lives with what that did to them. but that doesn’t automatically make them decent people. it makes them pitiable, but sometimes, if it weren’t for the abuse, they’d have been assholes just like everyone else. and it’s still in there, covered over by layers of dysfunction. and you think someone is in there, someone worthwhile, if you can just peel off the layers. and so you try. and all that trouble, all that filth you sifted through, you thought for a reason, was for nothing. her fiction of herself, this online persona which was not who she was in life, combined with the fiction i wrote for her in my own head, of what i wanted her to be, and the two things combined to create quite unrealistic expectations.

then there’s the rich. my god, i could go on about them. english is a wonderful language for scorn, and i am chock full of that. scorn and contempt. it is not what i wish. it is not what i choose over other, more lofty emotions. but they are everywhere, ruining everything. there is a way to rise above, i know, but i have not reached that level of enlightenment. and i am stuck. while all around a carnival, a parade that they march in and they don’t even see where they are, any of them, the rich, the poor, the damaged. i cannot understand their greed, the rich. i want nice things too, i can understand to a point, but they take it so far. and so much of what they want is so completely, i would think obviously, useless. then there is the willful blindness. everyone drinks deeply from that fountain. so few can see anything, and that is my loneliness.

of course, i must rise up and overcome. i must. there are only two other options. one, too horrific to think of what it would do to the only two decent people i’ve ever know, and the other, too horrific to think what it would do to me as well as them, to stay like this. and it never lets you stay, anyway. life is never static. and we must negotiate that while everything whirls all around us, as well as the maelstrom in our heads.

now listen to Goodbye Horses by Q Lazzarus, dammit. Please? it's such a fitting end to this piece. Goodbye Horses

i keep trying to talk to people through music, and so few can hear what i hear, can feel the full spectrum of what is contained there. there is such a world there, a dream world where the beauty of the pain entwines with the possibility of something more...and they give us this small space, this hope, a respite, to help us go on, to show us that there is more...if we can learn to see with new eyes, untainted by the shackles the world wants to keep you in.

the pleasure of delusion

2010-10-12T13:54:00.002-07:00

oh, to sink into the arms of someone fond of me, and i can pretend it is love, full of hope and promise. the excitement of unknown, boundless possibilities, without that painful baggage, full of spikes, which constantly prick the skin. but then you wake up, and one morning instead of the buzzing of life all around backlit by a luminescent dawn, you see the pain, the struggle, the death, the competition for limited resources, and the harsh, cold light exposing it all.

touch

2010-10-12T13:54:00.001-07:00

the frustration of distance
and how we try
what exactly do we think we will touch?
why
always why
what does it mean
all this grasping at strangers
i am grasping at you now
at the air
nothing to hold on to
all the love in the world
could not save me

dissolution

2010-10-12T12:40:00.001-07:00

it is over

it
is

polly wants

forever

i think i should be

under tow

the line won't

break

if

i

don't

i think i want

the safety

of the cage

freedom has a price

my cry opened the door

all i wanted

was more food

cloistered

2010-10-12T12:25:00.000-07:00

don't believe in love
but i want it
in a stranglehold
beating it down
so I can wrap around me
this gaunt defense against the elements

elements walk by
they never see me
but want to fuck me anyway

i wonder if anyone sees anything
i know it happens
i've read books
i can tell
they see pieces

it's hard to see
in flashes
but so much
i should have gone the other way
just opened the view on one piece
and that would never have been enough

i always come here
breaking behind my eyes
the beauty and horror
it's too much terror and wonder for one person to hold

but letting go...

ceremony

homecoming

2010-06-14T11:34:00.001-07:00

listening to nirvana, over and over, because the ipod is way over on the table, 7 feet away.

All Apologies was playing in the cab that took me home from the hospital, after my suicide attempt. something about it made me happy, riding home, a beautiful sunny southern california day, having rested up, having been to the garage, where they fix you up (so they say, but really you sit and are kept from sharp object for 72 hours). there was an art class though, and you were meant to draw a circle (this represented the world, specifically your world) and you were to draw something that represented you, i think just a dot, and then around that what your world felt like. so this was meant to show me what, that i didn't know? that my existence was unhappy, gee, you think? but i was happy coming home, having rested for 3 days, well 2 really, the first day was not restful, starting you out at county as they do. have you ever seen The Snake Pit? well, neither have i, but i know in general what it is about, mental hospitals 50 years ago, when mental patients were dumped and abused and neglected. it was kind of like that. there was an obese black woman draped in a blanket (i had one too, it's supposed to be comforting, i guess) and she was in bad shape, ranting and agitated. i had my wits about me, i was despondent, not mad. and i saw two doctors walk by my cot laughing about her. i've seen that kind of callousness in doctors before. the time i was hit by a car, when i was 17, having been on the road for a few months, and gotten involved with some despicable characters, like the one that had just stolen all my money, so i was walking fast to get away from him, he was trying to keep up, trying to deny that he had done it, and i thought the light had changed. i don't know if it had or not, but the car hit me nonetheless. i was thirsty already, i'd only been that thirsty once before, when i was sixteen, and walking home from the bar at 2 am, down a very long, very deserted road, several miles. i think the thirst was amplified by a more metaphysical craving, since i was walking home alone i had not even found an imitation of any sort of pleasure or communion. i knew there was a drinking fountain at the custard stand, about 3/4 of a mile from my house, and the last mile before i got to it, that knowledge sustained me. i felt ready to collapse, but felt joy at the expectation of being able to quench this thirst. i saw the fountain, a dingy little oasis, but it was such a cruel trick. i pushed the button and nothing came out. there was a soda machine there as well, and i had money, but no coins. they only took coins then. i cried in frustration, but there was nothing to do but make it home, which i did. so i was that thirsty, and still metaphysically starved as well. i was begging for water at the hospital. the hospital they took me to. charity hospital, in new orleans. it's as bad as it sounds. close to third world bad. i was on a gurney in the hall, for i don't know how many hours, being ignored. they wouldn't give me water until the doctor looked at me. saying i could have injuries that would make water contraindicated. i begged more anyway, as thirsty as i was, i didn't even care if it hurt me, but i knew it wouldn't, that that was bullshit, but it was policy. and the doctors there were as callous as the ones at county, laughing at the woman. they stood next to my gurney, having a nice chat about their golf games. while i lay in agony for hours.

in the sun i feel as one, married, buried... and it was a mixture of good and bad, i knew what that was, buried in marriage, all apologies, mine, his, all i was ever owed, but still i was in the sun. and i got home, tentatively opening the door. what greeted me was surprising, a house that had been cleaned for my homecoming, and a husband and son genuinely glad to see me home. that was a nice moment. but it didn't stay. whose fault, doesn't matter, both of us, to one degree or another. i tried, but it didn't work, for more reasons than we had hands to fix.

light a fire

2010-05-20T12:20:00.000-07:00

it is cold and damp. a fireplace sits unused, and i cannot get to it. i miss the fire. i remember a time, a fire, long ago. curled up together, dreaming of better days. days when we might have our own fire, warm, happy, home. a dream of home, of warmth, still a dream. lost then, cold and scared, battered. longing for the protection and comfort of a home, so out of reach.

now i sit in my home, cold. having to weigh the cost against the comfort of heat, as i had to weigh the desire for the TV, its size only accommodated by sitting in front of the fireplace. a trade-off i don't regret, such wonderful things brought right to me, things sharper than real life, no need to leave. i can hole up here, protected, for now. still, i miss the fire, it's unique warmth, warming through and through. i'll just go turn the heat up.

i wonder what's on TV.

coming out

2010-05-20T12:19:00.001-07:00

where is that elusive dream? happiness, freedom, meaning? i'll never find it hiding like this in the dark. but i have searched, and have come away scarred and tired. i'll face it again, the world, the unknown. i'll start tomorrow, always tomorrow.

it doesn't let you hide forever, always changing, shifting around you. you find yourself exposed, and all the best spots taken. so pretend this was your idea, a spark of life burgeoning forth. go on, go on, you can only fail, and all the novelty has left that long ago.

angry young man

2010-05-20T12:16:00.000-07:00

i was an angry young man, as there is no female equivalent, sadly. we are left to flounder, without identity, home, or understanding. i stayed an angry young man until about 40; now at 45 i am entering a different stage.i may eventually come through a curmudgeon (again, no female equivalent), but i don't think so. i am angry still, but it is not an anger that wants to fight any longer. it is full of sadness and resignation; it only wants to find a home to hide from all of the horrors, and to nurse these wounds which still remain. and just maybe, if possible, alleviate the horror of someone else.

containment

2010-05-20T12:13:00.001-07:00

i have a name that contains the essence of who i am; a cryptic way of sending that message to anyone who cares. but who could be so perceptive, and who even knows what the wire mother is anymore? we are down to a null set now. i'll keep writing, my words will survive forever, and one day, another lost monkey will find them, and i will sit with them, and smooth their hair, and we will speak of beauty and the soft, and the savage beauty of truth. - softmonkey

cult victim

2010-05-20T12:11:00.000-07:00

let's put aside my dream of riches. i'll settle for comfort and health and be satisfied. but for a mind like mine, comfort is a complicated thing. health as well, for that matter. these things are rare in the world, comfort and health. we forget how rare in wealthy countries. in cases of having enough to live on, the question of comfort comes down to feeling. are we all victims of western thinking, despite our best resistance having taken in a warped view given to us with the explicit purpose of manipulating us to pursue money only to hand it over for shit we never needed? could we be deprogrammed, like cult victims, removed from the source until the lies become apparent? but we will cling, like cult victims, convinced that we sincerely love that which anyone else can see only wants to take as much as it can, wholly without regard for what impact this has on us. it is like racism, in that we all have been tainted to some extent in this culture, no matter how insistent we are to ourselves that such things do not live in us. let us acknowledge that it is there, and then address it from there, in all things unsavory. you can do like most, and pretend the rot is not there. you can even get used to the smell, especially if those around you are full of rot as well. or you can admit it's there and try to clean it up.

askew

2010-04-18T12:01:00.001-07:00

Listen now; I can't hear it anymore. I never could. Yes, I know, but neither does the world make any sense. Or I should say humanity; the world makes perfectly logical sense. So I suppose do we, viewed in the proper amoral light. But that still doesn't explain the madness. Or that empty feeling. Can you hear it?

solo

2010-04-17T14:02:00.000-07:00

It is lonely at 2 am. It’s always lonely, but there are fewer distractions then, and the appearance of a lack of loneliness at other times. Here is my heart. Barely beating. Still, in spite of all of it, I am alive. What fancies fill my time; I dream of that other place. Where all happiness lives, some other world, where god did touch down, and lay upon them a blessing without accompanying it with a tenfold curse. Yes, it is all a lie, every happy thought. It is sometimes too late to be what you might have been. I could have flown, were my wings not broken by lunatics and their children. As it is I can sing, and I will do so, whether you can understand my song or not.

never enough

2010-02-21T09:17:00.000-08:00

I suppose that’s why Jane Seymour is hawking her atrocious jewelry with that fake sincere melodramatic sappy story about her mom (the kind Americans lap up with no other possible explanation than gross stupidity), at Kay Jewelers. I don’t want this to be true. That it’s never enough. My privations have so far given me reasonable allowance to believe happiness will be in my grasp one day. If I can just get enough. But it never will be.

what do i want?

2010-02-21T09:16:00.000-08:00

What do I want?

Practically or fantastically?

Practically it’s hard to say. So many difficulties to move around, and my mobility in question.

In a world where my finances are taken care of, but by whom, there is the problem. How do I feel if this dependence is removed? I am afraid of the answer. I do not want to look at it. It is conflicted. It is not one thing or another. Variable variables. Maybe it would all be different in a different situation, with the fear and stress removed. Maybe. Maybe we could come to who we are in this place, and then figure out from there. Maybe. Always so many maybes. They never sleep. They cluster over there, some hopeful, some churlish, some lie - white lies, malicious ones, who knows which is which in this mélange?

little light, shining

2009-12-22T21:11:00.001-08:00

step.

What's wrong with you, girl? Your legs work, use them.

come now, it's ok. come over here, it's all going to be ok.

the voices come through a veil of water. i never see them; they never see me. i see something, a representation, but i can't be sure what it means. they look human. but they say things i can't understand, things that almost make sense, that would make sense if i were like them.

we all are alone. sometimes a lucky couple come through the mist and find each other, but it is more rare than they believe. many imagine they've found each other; so much wishful thinking in this world. they did love their fairy tales when they were young. they still do.

you can hear me.

i have this moment i've wanted, and my mouth hangs open. thoughts fly through my brain but they won't stop. this is how it is. so close. the truth is, i've stopped wanting it. no, it's mixed. part of me still wants the fairy tale. and now i've lost you. but you know, don't you, how hard it is to say? to say anything, to get out that one real thing, get it out whole, so that it still makes sense when it is outside of you. translate it into language, an imperfect medium, and so difficult to master. if only i could speak in music, in shapes, but i cannot. i long to be a master. maybe one day i will put it down, and it will sing.

Dear Kate Bush

2009-12-22T18:39:00.000-08:00

the soundtrack: And Dream of Sheep
Under Ice

Heavy with seed, you take me.

here they go again. another lunatic fan. yes and no. but i will be relegated to where i don't belong, of course, of course. trying so hard to say something that will be heard, and to just be, to put words together in a manner that will scream my own name, and take a shape that looks something like me.

i know what you are, you and the others, my imaginary friends. and that's ok. i need imaginary friends, when real ones are beyond my reach. i know you speak to me, i know what it means, when you speak in tongues, and i translate you into my own language, and it becomes mine. it always becomes mine. this is why i cannot speak to the others, though they claim they love the songs as deeply as i do. they love different songs.

it is a magic thing, to give something that can be heard, that i can take for my own. that makes me feel, for two minutes, not alone. though at the same time more alone than i felt before, teasing me with a taste of what it might be like to not feel alone.

It's wonderful. Everywhere, so white...

you are all full of shit

2009-12-15T01:29:00.000-08:00

i'm not saying i'm not, but i don't pretend the same things you do. you walk around thinking you're you, that you are something more than a facade, a facade running around powered by the approval of other facades. you will look down on those that are not facades, those who don't have the approval of your spurious peers. most of them warrant looking down on, but not for the reasons you do. most of them simply lack enough intelligence to manufacture that oh so lucrative facade. in short, this dissertation ends the way they always do, lamenting the varying levels of unpalatability of nearly all of humanity.

elevation

2009-12-08T23:09:00.001-08:00

I can't say. Life if so many things, all at once. Step back and look. Way back, away from your tiny portion. Imagine. Not pity, that's just another way to not see. Let your tiny life go, step into another. See all of it at once, bustling, struggling. All the life, all of it. Struggling for a toehold, competing. Germs, plants, all of it. The plants are curious, fighting as we do. Against each other, against us, bribing us, all presumably without consciousness. This is indeed strange, but of course in no way indicates a creator, it only indicates a strangeness we do not yet understand. That is all. There is no chariot pulling the sun across the sky. Grow up and realize wanting a thing to be true is a poor excuse for believing. The way you like to pretend humanity is something it is not, something elevated.

message in the ether

2009-07-25T13:13:00.000-07:00

it is the idea
it is understanding
it is seeing the horror
and finding a way to go on

i struggle
i reject those who live as if they know
who think their beliefs are paramount
beliefs based only on the desire for them to be true

talk to me
tell me something real

nonsuch

2009-07-13T13:12:00.001-07:00

this is what i do. always thinking. always escaping from thoughts. thoughts trying to get free, and then bring me along. to say; such a delicate operation. just the right edge, not too wide, not too narrow. it’s quite a trick. not to confuse, or over saturate. that fine edge we skate along, and we are free then, unbound. a most elegant trick, a supple confusion, filled with just a hint of something beyond our ken, but oh what a something!

i could've been wonderful

2009-07-13T13:10:00.001-07:00

But I'm just fucked up. Maybe permanently. How many people does this happen to? Damaged as children, innumerable tragedies. I should have died before, when it would have hurt none but those who richly deserved any pain they might have felt. But I was weak. I've always been weak, not by nature, but weakened. Now I'm stuck here, to make the best of it I can. Gaining strength so slowly, geologically. So by the time I die, maybe, just maybe, I will have a moment in which I will see infinity; then my light will wink out, forever.

anathema

2009-07-13T13:04:00.001-07:00

long stretches of nothing i try to
say

the answer

but the question

what was it

brightly dark

relentlessly intricate

half formed

push ahead

as if

it had
weight
and lightness

an end

pieces

2009-07-13T13:02:00.001-07:00

scraps.

these pieces burn. these make me smile. they whirl, they dance. a maelstrom. i try to make sense of it. a blizzard, haphazard. i have been more and less confused for as long as i know.

except those few times. dreamy times. alone. a doe walks by, with large understanding eyes, containing all the peace and sadness and inevitability in life. i want to be away, dreaming, alone, leaving no one. i think of them, these phantoms, not real to me now. they could be all around me real, if i step this way, if i swirl this thought just so. i could help them build their homes, and in doing so, build my own.

fuck jesus

2009-07-13T12:57:00.001-07:00

i was beaten down, damaged, crushed to the point that it was all i could do to draw breath. for so long i wanted to stop even that, but i guess there was always the tiniest, most fragile hope that things would get better, and the thought that i could always do it tomorrow. i thought something would happen. some savior would come and change it all. i waited for that. i was conditioned to believe that. jesus. fuck jesus and all the assholes who tell that lie to defenseless children. this lie can allow you accept terrible things, thinking if nothing else, god will make up for it when you die. a decent god would not let me suffer like this indefinitely, leave me in a situation where i am powerless to save myself. he'll be along any day now.

of course i don't really mean fuck jesus, there is no jesus. i only say that to be inflammatory, to piss off the jesus freaks whom i despise.

the weaker i was, the more i was kicked, the more i was dismissed, the more i was taken advantage of. by christians. the "a few bad apples" argument holds no water. it's more like a few good apples mixed in with bad and mediocre apples. bad and mediocre apples masquerading as good apples, all too happy to endorse these fictions if it means their own is validated. this is a sad state of affairs that extends beyond christians, this mutual endorsement of fictitious merit.

the emptiness

2009-07-13T12:36:00.001-07:00

I thought I could fill it up. I thought the bitterness would leave if I could do this one thing. But it seems to approach impossibility to be a good parent when you are broken. I have been a good parent, considering. I wait for it to play out, wondering what I could do now. My son is 19 now. He has been loved, an accomplishment I do not discount. My greatest fear when I learned I was pregnant was that I would never be able to love anyone, that someone else would have to grow up knowing that pain, filled with this voracious void, a rabid animal all mouth and razor-sharp teeth, stopping only when exhausting itself from ripping at that center where something should be, where something tries to be again and again, futilely.

the folly of youth

2009-07-13T12:35:00.001-07:00

They have the arrogant, proud ignorance that can be found in those who have never had to struggle to survive and have reached an age to begin to think, and are so enamored of those incipient thoughts that they tear off in high spirits and overindulge. I imagine they have been overindulged by the type of parents who are forever thinking well of their offspring (and patting themselves on the back for having produced such progeny) in spite of inconvenient facts.

shrinkage

2009-07-13T12:32:00.001-07:00

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. - Anais Nin

cormorant dream

2009-07-13T12:27:00.000-07:00

a cake under glass

covered in sickly icing

they said "oh, how delicious!"

more than anything

i want to decorate it

with this dead cormorant

soaked in black oil

and say

how delicious

imaginary christians

2009-07-13T12:26:00.000-07:00

If only they really were as imaginary as their god. But they are here too. It seemed like such an intelligent site, something more than the interminable dross which inundates the internet. I can only hope it is a fluke, a lone lost soul straying from the abundantly available sites which nestle them in placating falsehoods. It seems people are waking up to the damage they inflict on the world; would that i could accelerate the rate.

neutrino love

2009-07-13T12:25:00.000-07:00

if i could understand

i could change it all

neutrinos hear my thoughts

they stop their lives
and build me a home

made of waves

i was safe

for .03 seconds

lies

2009-07-13T12:21:00.000-07:00

to get past all the lies, then to grapple with the bitterness of the truth along with the deception. once we were young; they could tell us anything. lying is the great american pastime. still they persist. those who prefer not to see are plentiful enough.

2009-05-16T13:48:00.000-07:00

a beautiful tortured thing
provokes false empathy
i am beyond rage
this is humanity
after all

open

2009-01-15T13:59:00.000-08:00

here it is. still. it won’t go away. the wound. it opens less now. I think it festers, always. sometimes it seems better. I rise above; it doesn’t hurt. I can see the future. it is bright and open. I just have to take it. but it won’t stay. it keeps opening.

triggers.

and it opens.

still there. old, very old. all the desperation, desperate moves to get away. then giving up. rat in a cage, being shocked. no escape. just settle down, let it hurt, no escape. and the desperation, you spit on it, you laugh, you sneer. you fucking, fucking assholes. worthless, so much more worthless than what you look down on. born under a wing, knowing nothing, fucking nothing of anything real. run about, buy trinkets, suck each others dicks.

you think you feel real things, so sure of it. sad face, happy face, just faces.

you can’t help not knowing, the wing never knew either, and you, under its shadow, can’t see out. don’t mistake it. but you can’t hear. you will anyway, think you can hear. you can’t hear me tell you that you can’t hear. I wish you could hear that much. so you could know, just a little.

irony

2009-01-14T09:25:00.001-08:00

I have forever been fruitlessly agonizing over the meaning of this strange life. To understand where I fit in it; how to maneuver around these others that vaguely resemble me. I have wasted a lot of time, of life this way. I have made some headway, but not enough to balance what was put in.

The world around me is humming, while all around lay artifacts of my confusion. I stand ready to move, to clear the rubble and then, then I don’t know. I’ll step into something new.

the right life?

2009-01-06T10:52:00.000-08:00

There is another side. The side that wants to find someone uncorrupted, someone who gives me hope that there is more than I have seen. To find that young person and help them, lift them up, help them to stay above the horde and soar. I know they are out there, but they are so hard to find. A needle in a stack of needles.

(N)ever

2009-01-02T07:28:00.000-08:00

It was going badly. So it was only a matter of degree. Not only, as if only a difference of mere unhappiness or agony; only a difference of discomfort and misery. How badly it would have gone I could only guess. “If only” never matters. It was.

Still, I imagine the day before and the day after. Always, this old movie in my head, filled in with memories of memories. Always sad, the pain always stronger, more poignant than what happiness I’m sure there was, what must have been a milquetoast happiness, mild and unremarkable. And I try to trace a trajectory of where I would have gone. It could well have been worse. I never considered that before. But I remember vague plans I had to escape my unhappy circumstances that might possibly have been realized had I not been shocked into a two year long catatonic state. Probably not worse than what happened, but one never knows.

He could have done worse to me had he lived. The things he did do, the ones I shrugged off as inconsequential, though they weren’t, had he stayed, he could have improved upon. Any number of things, from actively damaging me further, to abandoning me, even though alive. Mon Frere.

There was a sister, a mother, a father, who ranged from useless to destructive.

Now, how can I, with all of this, imagine you? How could you, no matter how well I tell my tale, imagine me? How are we to weigh each other?

now

2008-11-14T17:00:00.000-08:00

and if they became remorseful, if they said, "how could we have done this to you?" what of it? they could give me nothing now. i needed then, but what if they had tried their best? they didn't, but if they had, what value would there have been in that? would i have taken it from them, starving as i was, taken their best? what would that have made me? something if i saw now, i would loathe. their best was rotten. they were no better than that.

eden

2008-11-12T09:01:00.000-08:00

at least i'm not ordinary. i could search for hours for someone with something to say and find only the most mundane and trivial thoughts imaginable. so no one reads and fewer understand what i say and feel. i begin to think less of myself, not in my usual melodramatic way of distracting myself from my true flaws and weaknesses, but by looking honestly at who i am and what i want. i don't know fully yet, but i must leave behind this neurotic desire to be discovered and adored. a fantasy of being showered with money for the privilege of a view of the mess in my head. not that i can't be a writer someday, i still think the potential is there. but not as i am now. not for the reasons that have been driving me. wrapped up still in that old childhood fantasy i thought i had left behind. to be saved. to sit pitifully until god or my brother or some kind-hearted philanthropist looks on me and is moved to pick me up and carry me off to eden, where i would never have to struggle or worry again.

racism and stupidity

2008-10-16T15:49:00.001-07:00

i am in a predicament. i live and work (especially work) in an area with a harrowing level of racism and stupidity (the two seem to be inseparable). racism is tricky. the hardcore ones are easy to spot. at the very least their stupidity is easy to spot, which in itself is enough of a basis to reject them as having no worth. it is difficult to grow up in this country and come out of it with no racism. we are not so far removed from institutionalized racism. those people are dying out, but they brought up children with as much hate and ignorance as they could effect. the stupidity of racism offends me as much as the injuries it causes. people who are not subject to it have no idea what injuries are inflicted. they go beyond the obvious economic injuries. if you have not been subject to it, you should try to imagine walking through your day, having a substantial number of people who come into your sphere hating you without even knowing you. people you pass by giving you hateful looks, the girl who fixes your coffee treating you with disdain, people so repulsed by you that if the seat next to you on the bus was the last empty one, they would choose to stand (in lesser cases choosing that seat only after all the other seats were taken). understand that the cumulative effect of these interactions would try to force into you a sense of worthlessness. in social situations and in school and at work, having the people you could engage with in a friendly manner greatly reduced, and never knowing who those people were. it is invisible, and can be explained away with excuses. "he doesn't have the experience" was often code for "i'll never vote for a black person". because people won't admit to it, even the ones who are grossly racist, you don't see it. but it acts on the people it is directed towards. every generation there are more people who are intelligent enough to reject this ignorance, but many take in what they are taught. they are often only taught a sense of discomfort and difference, and that is enough for them make prejudiced decisions. it is lessening, but still distinctly there. and i cannot tolerate that.

the wrong life

2008-10-07T14:51:00.001-07:00

i have been thwarted. perhaps it is why i am so filled with the desire to destroy those who had estimable lives within their grasp, and are unforgivably deficient. why i am filled with loathing so powerful that when it rises i must put it away before it eats too much of me. i do not say such a life was made impossible for me. and i have not given up. but it was made difficult to the point i have not yet been able to overcome. the variables are endless, if i had done some things differently, if some knowledge had come into my view earlier, if this or that had been slightly different…but it is what it is. and i am here, in this wrong place, surrounded by those i loathe. i imagine others, risen above, separated from the rabble by design, having intelligent conversations, doing things filled with meaning. i imagine myself there, but by the time i get there so filled with bitterness there is nothing left for me but to be completely separate.

the meaninglessness of capitalization and the foibles of unconsidered conformity

2008-10-07T14:47:00.000-07:00

i see no need for it. is there any reason for it other than convention? because that is no reason. i am bending somewhat lately on the names of authors and the titles of books and movies and songs; things that need to be clearly set apart as distinct works as opposed to my free-floating thoughts.

while we are speaking of convention, to do things simply because it is what others have done is the same as saying, “i would like to be part of the herd, to do without thinking for myself. i do not mind being manipulated into doing things that have ramifications that i will not bother trying to understand”.

diamonds come to mind as an example of such a thing. i see no use for them. have you reasoned it out and come to a valid conclusion for why they are valuable to you personally? is a diamond really prettier to you than moissanite (“moissanite would often fool a jeweler into thinking it was a natural diamond”)? is a diamond really pretty to you objectively, or because you’ve been influenced to believe it should be? if anyone does find objective worth in diamonds and other sparklies, i would quite like to know what it is. the following article i found illustrates the methods of manipulation and the reasons behind it.

“From 1880 De Beers were able to control the supply (and price) of diamonds but how were they going to control demand during a period when sales began dropping dramatically (up to 50%) in the 20s and 30s onwards through the great depression?

Just as platinum started to become popular in diamond engagement rings, diamonds were becoming less valued. Platinum was banned for all but war use during WWII and so the platinum diamond engagement rings as we know them today almost died out.

The answer to the problem was a new marketing campaign commissioned by De Beers that began in 1947. Perhaps you’ve heard the slogan “A Diamond is forever”? This was to mark the beginning of a change in the history of the engagement ring.

Subsequent campaigns would convince families to hold on to their diamonds as family heirlooms… and it worked! Used diamonds were not being released back into the industry which in turn created the demand that De Beers were seeking.

Jewelers were unofficially educated by De Beers to instruct men that two to three months personal wages were an ideal price to pay for the diamond engagement ring.”

weakness

2008-09-29T14:56:00.000-07:00

the weakness of allowing damage to fester and continue to tear you inside. there is no way to explain how to let it go. it just happens. not without action, without effort, struggle. maybe these actions fill in enough to let the other go, lest there be a vacuum. it feels better. don't forget that. don't let go. without pushing forward, the current will take you back.

mellow

2008-09-29T14:53:00.000-07:00

well, mellowing. slightly. who knows where i'm going. mellowing but still needy. not that gaping void of all consuming need, but needing, needing things, maybe thinking i need things that i don't, misdirected by corporate needmongers. but to know what one needs, to know how to get it, that is wisdom. that way lies happiness.

the ineluctable weight of living

2008-09-29T14:42:00.001-07:00

half-formed meaningless ideas are all i have to offer here. and they change from day to day. swelling up and ebbing like the tide, thrown about as i am by life, having no anchor or safe harbor. and i talk and talk and talk and somewhere there is someone with ears but my words will never reach them.

still desperate, still lonely. but who isn't? i have become hackneyed, and bored with myself. time for another change. i would change, but for the mire. it will come, but slow, as ever.

untitled

2008-09-04T11:41:00.000-07:00

if i say to you, i like rain, maybe i elaborate on puddles, a deer comes to drink, and i've left you so far behind. many worlds away, this strange life, so distant right in front of you.

water lily

2008-06-05T20:44:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-05T20:41:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-05T20:35:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-05T20:26:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-05T20:15:00.001-07:00

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

2008-06-05T20:13:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-05T20:10:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-05T20:08:00.001-07:00

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

2008-06-05T20:05:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-05T19:53:00.001-07:00

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

2008-06-05T19:42:00.001-07:00

"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

2008-06-05T19:39:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-05T19:33:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-05T19:29:00.001-07:00

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

2008-06-05T19:28:00.001-07:00

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

2008-06-05T19:25:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-05T19:19:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-05T19:17:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-05T19:16:00.000-07:00

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.

requiem

2008-05-26T14:10:00.000-07:00

nobody talked to me. at all. maybe I don't remember. but it's altogether possible. they could do that sort of thing. all of them. aunts, cousins, uncles, grandparents. I remember my father's mother being all dramatic falling down almost, like it was about her. like it hurt her more. like it wasn't her fault. albeit indirectly, and more his, but still. and I don't think for a moment that she felt that, and that was the reason for her histrionics.

my mother didn't, my father, all wrapped up in themselves, as if it wasn't their fault either. my sister never talked to me under the best of circumstances. well, that's a bit exaggerated, but not in essentials, we were very different, never talked beyond superficialities.

nobody asked how I was, if they could do anything. not that that would have meant anything, or there was any answer that would mean anything, that they could understand the smallest part of.

I remember coming home afterward, and all the food people brought. I could not eat, even think of it, and I wondered how anyone could. at a time like this. it felt like an insult. do you remember the line in four weddings and a funeral, the speech at the funeral?

by W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one:
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods:
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

when I heard this, I cried, for this was how I felt. how could they eat and talk of mundane things, and go on with their lives and pretend that nothing had happened? had they no hearts? they had not. it was a difficult world to live in, for someone with a heart.

I was 14, and alone. always had been, except for him. but I don't think he knew how I felt, or felt the same. but we were alike, he and i. my sister told me once after, that he and I were closer then they were, even though she was one year younger than him, and I was 5 years younger. that was probably the most honest and meaningful exchange we ever had, and I've never forgotten it. it was one of those things someone tells you after someone dies that always stays with you, and helps you, makes you feel better. because I did not know that at all, being so much younger than them. but he didn't feel it as strongly as I did. I don't think he did, don't think he could have.

there's nothing like it. he was all I had. no one can grasp what this did to me, what I was left in, that he had been my only hope of escaping. I did not have it in myself to get out, and after that, I was so...I can say crushed, but it falls flat. I know you can't know it, can't feel it. but I couldn't do anything. except hurt. so much. for so long. years. so many years. for 2 years, non-stop. literally. then not constant, but predominantly. and very strongly, for 20 years, but little by little, lessening, but coming up still strong, intermittently. 27 years later, I am almost well. I have been recovering from this and what my father and mother did to me for all this time. and from what you all did to me, and neglected to do. not that it was your problem. but those who tortured me because I was weak, an easy target, there is nothing recriminating enough to say about them. perhaps I should not say you all, and my resentment is lessening. but I can't believe my life would have been so much different anywhere else. which means any of you probably would have behaved the same, and perhaps did, likely did, to others in troubling circumstances, whether that be to torment or turn a blind eye, or just not bother to offer any kindness.

shyness is nice...

2008-05-26T14:08:00.000-07:00

my shyness was crippling. shyness is fear. it isn't cute. it isn't precious. and for my parents to completely ignore it the way they did was another instance of their criminal neglect. to leave me there and to then exacerbate the situation by giving me daily proof that my fears were justified. then i went to the other extreme in my thirties to prove to myself i wasn't afraid of people anymore. i would be obnoxious and aggressive. but that was just more fear, mixed with a lot of hatred and resentment.

the smiths-ask

Shyness is nice, and
Shyness can stop you
From doing all the things in life
That you'd like to

Shyness is nice, and
Shyness can stop you
From doing all the things in life
That you'd like to

So, if there's something you'd like to try
If there's something you'd like to try
Ask me - i won't say "no" - how could i ?

Coyness is nice, and
Coyness can stop you
From doing all the things in
Life that you want to

So, if there's something you'd like to try
If there's something you'd like to try
Ask me - i won't say "no" - how could i ?

Spending warm summer days indoors
Writing frightening verse
To a buck-toothed girl in luxembourg

Ask me, ask me, ask me
Ask me, ask me, ask me

Because if it's not love
Then it's the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb
That will bring us together

Nature is a language - can't you read ?
Nature is a language - can anybody read ?

So ... ask me, ask me, ask me
Ask me, ask me, ask me

Because if it's not love
Then it's the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb
That will bring us together

If it's not love
Then it's the bomb
Then it's the bomb
That will bring us together

So ... ask me, ask me, ask me
Ask me, ask me, ask me
Oh, la ...

identity

2008-05-26T14:06:00.000-07:00

kelly, janice, jessica probably, i don't remember any of the others. a vagabond, drifting, it occurred to me i could be someone else, and i was terribly desperate to be. janice was chosen for janice joplin, who i imagined myself to be like. an intense tortured soul, misunderstood and damned to misfortune and misery until the self-induced end of a life for a brief time removed from its tormentors, but not released from them. it did not grace me with the epic heart-wrenching eloquent tragedy i imagined; it felt plain and homely and awkward. trailer trash waiting on tables in a cheap, run down diner in some godforsaken wasteland.

bromide

2008-05-26T14:04:00.001-07:00

what is that tear, the one that sneaks out of one eye? the mouth didn't twist and the brow did not furrow. the lip didn't tremble. you look at this trite movie, trying to move you, but you go anyway. it doesn't take you to where it pointed so proudly and flamboyantly, with all the bromidic charm of a sit-com. just one tear. then it's gone. but these untruths are still there. that is the tear.

waterfall

2008-05-26T13:52:00.000-07:00

Waterfall

It played on Singles just now. "Oh, I love this song." (says the bridgette fonda character. A classic example of the line in the song In Bloom: He's the one Who likes all our pretty songs And he likes to sing along And he likes to shoot his gun But he don't know what it means don't know what it means When I say He's the one Who likes all our pretty songs And he likes to sing along And he likes to shoot his gun But he knows not what it means knows not what it means )
I used to love this song. I felt it, knew it before I did drugs. I think I was about 12 when it really peaked. The song is the same, but I don't know the waterfall anymore. So I loved this song. It was part of me. I longed for that waterfall. It was the waterfall itself. Almost. As close as i could get. The waterfall it spoke of wasn't for me, or I just wasn't using the same waterfall. It probably was heroin. I think that would have been my drug, my waterfall. The only reason I didn't do it was I didn't have the opportunity. This truly horrible man I met, hitchhiking probably, when i was 16, injected something in me he said was heroin, if it was, it was very weak. I felt odd and (diffused?) floaty? But mildly, and not pleasantly, but not unpleasant, and confused. Maybe not so much confused as not thinking clearly. The point is, I took an injection of something I had no idea what it was from a person I knew was no good on the off chance it was heroin. For the waterfall. I am not there anymore, but was for a long time. They pushed me there, to the place where I dreamed the waterfall, even if it wasn't real, even for a little while.

May This Be Love (Waterfall) Lyrics
by Jimi Hendrix

http://youtube.com/watch?v=aKlRAIKef3g

Waterfall
Nothing can harm me at all
My worries seem so very small
With my waterfall

I can see
My rainbow calling me
Through the misty breeze
Of my waterfall

Some people say
Daydreaming's for all the
Lazy minded fools
With nothin' else to do
So let them laugh, laugh at me
So just as long as I have you
To see me through
As long as I have you