Obviously I only post to dish out teeming bacteria cultures of negativity; please know this is but one half of me. I sometimes find it hard to break free from my own tyranncal head - scratch that. It's not tyrannical at all. My thoughts are my religion. I immerse myself in modern existentialism and online psychology journals. I save ideas on the back burner of my brain and come back to them weeks later. They develope a nice smokey flavor like that.
I wrap myself in NPR and spoken lectures. NPR is, in my mind, the adult version of story telling and comfort food for thought. The internet history of my laptop is wrought with earthy self-help articles and free verse poetry blogs. Perhaps the largest justifications of this narcissism is that I predict all of this reflective musing will in some way force out a selfless and more sympathetic attitude.
The point is: you must understand that the thing I like to immerse myself in least is my own self-pity. Blogging is the release, the purge of deprication, the reason to stop sulking and move on. It is the disposal of this infective analytic thought. As the host of a constant abundance of tide-like mood swings, it is fascinating to me to be forlorn, to be miserable. However, sulking is extremely unattractive. And melancholy acoustic remixes get old after a while. Dan Pink said that we need to get past carrot and stick extrinsic motivation, so here it goes.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Cooperation
I've grow weary of the endless translation of other peoples' rules. In a subconscious fit of childish refusal, my body defies cooperation in even the most innocent of daily endeavors. From this is born acute panic attacks, and sheer terror at the mere mention of my name from a place of authority. It wasn't always like this; I vaguely recall (or more accurately, dwell on) a time when every nerve projected stability and potential. That window is closing. Having accepted this new state of normality, after an exhaustive battle of adolescent awkwardness, the least I can hope for is another involuntary transition into foreign homeostasis.
The idea of this subsequently compels me to start a new life in some sort of underwater pressurized submarine house, but I've always sort of felt like doing this anyway. Perhaps the next course of action should be to bury my lack of control in a smoking gun, or maybe a rusty razor blade, but this notion hardly interests me. I've never been one to entertain typical consequences. My escape fantasy replaces suicide with retreating into a reclusive Adirondack shack, but living off the grid will most likely just result in in a repeat Uni-bomber scandal.
The idea of this subsequently compels me to start a new life in some sort of underwater pressurized submarine house, but I've always sort of felt like doing this anyway. Perhaps the next course of action should be to bury my lack of control in a smoking gun, or maybe a rusty razor blade, but this notion hardly interests me. I've never been one to entertain typical consequences. My escape fantasy replaces suicide with retreating into a reclusive Adirondack shack, but living off the grid will most likely just result in in a repeat Uni-bomber scandal.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Subtraction
He existed as a laceration of my doubts, more than anything else. I watched his car disappear down the dirt road that August and couldn't help but think of the exact distances between the tire treads. It couldn't have been more than an inch and half. Maybe two inches. I realized what I was doing with a scowl. It clicked together in my head like Lincoln Logs, echoed like a public reading: I was trying to block the image out. Where my mother would take a shot of Sazerac to dull the abilities of her memory, I did internal math problems. My mind flicked back to the inside of my closet. I had squatted with my back against the door, whispering times tables to myself while the firemen searched the rest of the house for me.
Truman's leaving awoke that familiar escape inside my head. It wasn't enraged or even awkward. My whole life I knew Truman would just as soon kill you as shake your hand, but I had forced myself to see past that small area of his character. I know now that I was only inviting something to come and change my mind. It arrived in the form of a newspaper headline. The local police were following up on a murder case, searching for a man of average height, dark hair, Caucasian. When Truman arrived home that evening, I was waiting for him in the kitchen. I had spent hours practicing looking casual. I didn't want to frighten him back out onto the street. I didn't speak, only held up the front page of the paper.
He stared at it for a few seconds and then raised his eyebrows at me.
"You're looking rather elusive tonight, aren't you Tru?" I said, my voice faltering. He cleared his throat and waved his hand, as if to dismiss the headline as entirely libelous. The subject was dominating the room and I found it hard to break away from it, but we both knew it was too large a question to leave hanging in the kitchen that night like a wet dishtowel.
"Did you kill that man, Truman?" I directed the question at him as if it were a guided missile. I wasn't angry. I was curious. I wanted to be free of all doubt before I let him leave. He gave a terse nod. I sighed and pointed the newspaper toward the door, hanging my head. He unhooked his hunting jacket from behind the door where it had been disrupted from it's stationary sleep so soon after being deposited there. I watched from the window as the car drove smoothly down that dirt road and the math started up again in my head.
Truman's leaving awoke that familiar escape inside my head. It wasn't enraged or even awkward. My whole life I knew Truman would just as soon kill you as shake your hand, but I had forced myself to see past that small area of his character. I know now that I was only inviting something to come and change my mind. It arrived in the form of a newspaper headline. The local police were following up on a murder case, searching for a man of average height, dark hair, Caucasian. When Truman arrived home that evening, I was waiting for him in the kitchen. I had spent hours practicing looking casual. I didn't want to frighten him back out onto the street. I didn't speak, only held up the front page of the paper.
He stared at it for a few seconds and then raised his eyebrows at me.
"You're looking rather elusive tonight, aren't you Tru?" I said, my voice faltering. He cleared his throat and waved his hand, as if to dismiss the headline as entirely libelous. The subject was dominating the room and I found it hard to break away from it, but we both knew it was too large a question to leave hanging in the kitchen that night like a wet dishtowel.
"Did you kill that man, Truman?" I directed the question at him as if it were a guided missile. I wasn't angry. I was curious. I wanted to be free of all doubt before I let him leave. He gave a terse nod. I sighed and pointed the newspaper toward the door, hanging my head. He unhooked his hunting jacket from behind the door where it had been disrupted from it's stationary sleep so soon after being deposited there. I watched from the window as the car drove smoothly down that dirt road and the math started up again in my head.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
An Update
I'm just floating in this state of thorough, heavy, wrapping exhaustion. It's contenting. My muscles feel weighed, as if they are lead pipes for my blood to flow through. My head ebbs and flows into and out of consciousness as thought it were a red and white fishing bobber. My eyes are a dying camp fire.
It's only eleven, but it feels like the morning after a war has ended. When you can feel an entire city of people breathe through the hangover of death and napalm. I should be concerned about how malleable warm temperatures have made me, like this increase in daylight is making me stretch my roots out. I should be packing for tomorrow, I should be going to bed, but I don't want to peel this Band-Aid off quite yet. I love this feeling.
It's only eleven, but it feels like the morning after a war has ended. When you can feel an entire city of people breathe through the hangover of death and napalm. I should be concerned about how malleable warm temperatures have made me, like this increase in daylight is making me stretch my roots out. I should be packing for tomorrow, I should be going to bed, but I don't want to peel this Band-Aid off quite yet. I love this feeling.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
An Excerpt
Summer was a season of imprisonment for my younger brother. Like most families with neighborhood age offspring, he tagged along constantly. Jack and I undoubtedly felt that he was contaminating our scatters outdoors and indoors and dealing with this harboring of exasperation manifested itself into locking him in the basement most days, after which we would realize we had nothing to do. Playing with Legos or struggling with Jack's older brother's baseball Playstation games were infinitely more fun when we had someone to blame the failures on. So he would be released from the cellar, scowling; but his expression of victimized disdain would be temporarily relinquished when we included him in whatever we were doing that day. We all played boisterously, fought constantly, and broke things pretty much all the time.
This forced my brother to develop survival skills, at least until he found his own friends to pick on smaller kids with. He soon discovered that if he was charming enough to make us laugh, he would be better equipped to duck the punch when we struck out in MLB 2007. As the smallest one on the couch, the power to amuse and disarm was extremely helpful to him. A person who is making you laugh is a very hard person to slug, a concept that probably saved him from many a bruised arm.
Winters saw us overcompensating for the absence we felt during school hours. Jack and I both understood that, because I was a girl and he was a boy, during school our friendship was nonexistent. This was tragic, but abandoning our association for six hours was necessary for the sanity of everyone involved. However, after the last bell and on the weekends, we were kept warm by winter coats and the sweat produced by endless shoveling and tunnel-making. If a successful hole through a snowbank could be dug, the day was not wasted. The Big Dig had nothing on our frozen architecture. This chain-driven relationship was something I could put in my pocket and forget about as I grew up into learning that I was supposed to be friends with girls instead.
This forced my brother to develop survival skills, at least until he found his own friends to pick on smaller kids with. He soon discovered that if he was charming enough to make us laugh, he would be better equipped to duck the punch when we struck out in MLB 2007. As the smallest one on the couch, the power to amuse and disarm was extremely helpful to him. A person who is making you laugh is a very hard person to slug, a concept that probably saved him from many a bruised arm.
Winters saw us overcompensating for the absence we felt during school hours. Jack and I both understood that, because I was a girl and he was a boy, during school our friendship was nonexistent. This was tragic, but abandoning our association for six hours was necessary for the sanity of everyone involved. However, after the last bell and on the weekends, we were kept warm by winter coats and the sweat produced by endless shoveling and tunnel-making. If a successful hole through a snowbank could be dug, the day was not wasted. The Big Dig had nothing on our frozen architecture. This chain-driven relationship was something I could put in my pocket and forget about as I grew up into learning that I was supposed to be friends with girls instead.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Charles Bonnet Syndrome
Dear sir,
More specifically, I see beautiful people in Eastern dress. I see children with huge, gleaming teeth. It's not like a dream, it's like a movie. A boring movie, but a film all the same. I've lived ninety-five years and this is my first hallucination.
It is curious to me for two reasons. It is first because these people have waited most of my life to introduce themselves to me. When I say most of my life I mean my adult life, for no one questions the illusions of a child. No one calls a child schizophrenic, but rather prone to meeting imaginary friends. The second reason this is curious to me is that I have been blind since the age of forty-three.
The last time I saw anything at all (apart from those I have mentioned just now), I was going to school in Paris. I was living with a friend and going out drinking every night and dancing on the weekends for cash. My friend and I would use this cash for cigarettes, mostly. We would sit on the fire escape and inhale and exhale with the cigarettes perched between our lips. I always allowed the smoke to absorb into my eyes. I liked the feeling of pain and the feeling of seeing through the smoke. This was obviously very damaging. I was blind within four months of living in Europe and had to be deported back home to my mother.
The figures I see now: I do not recognize them. I had been fascinated with Freudian determinism but I assure you I have never in my life met this population of illusions. The only person I have ever seen and recognized is that of myself in a bathrobe and tobacco pipe. The mirror image of myself was then divided into four other people and at that very moment I shut my eyes because I did not wish to experience this horror any longer.
I wish to be very clear, sir. The only reason I am seeking help now is that I have become very bored and tired of meeting these people over and over. They do not age. They do not develop as characters. They do not even change clothes. If they acted as real people I would be most excited to entertain them in my life, but not so. I would much rather be blind again.
Regards.
More specifically, I see beautiful people in Eastern dress. I see children with huge, gleaming teeth. It's not like a dream, it's like a movie. A boring movie, but a film all the same. I've lived ninety-five years and this is my first hallucination.
It is curious to me for two reasons. It is first because these people have waited most of my life to introduce themselves to me. When I say most of my life I mean my adult life, for no one questions the illusions of a child. No one calls a child schizophrenic, but rather prone to meeting imaginary friends. The second reason this is curious to me is that I have been blind since the age of forty-three.
The last time I saw anything at all (apart from those I have mentioned just now), I was going to school in Paris. I was living with a friend and going out drinking every night and dancing on the weekends for cash. My friend and I would use this cash for cigarettes, mostly. We would sit on the fire escape and inhale and exhale with the cigarettes perched between our lips. I always allowed the smoke to absorb into my eyes. I liked the feeling of pain and the feeling of seeing through the smoke. This was obviously very damaging. I was blind within four months of living in Europe and had to be deported back home to my mother.
The figures I see now: I do not recognize them. I had been fascinated with Freudian determinism but I assure you I have never in my life met this population of illusions. The only person I have ever seen and recognized is that of myself in a bathrobe and tobacco pipe. The mirror image of myself was then divided into four other people and at that very moment I shut my eyes because I did not wish to experience this horror any longer.
I wish to be very clear, sir. The only reason I am seeking help now is that I have become very bored and tired of meeting these people over and over. They do not age. They do not develop as characters. They do not even change clothes. If they acted as real people I would be most excited to entertain them in my life, but not so. I would much rather be blind again.
Regards.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Waiting on the Stairs
February. Monday. After a long streak of nights electrified by the joy of being absolutely nothing.
I sit and cease to exist until the quiet hours of the morning thrust me back into warped existence. Covered in the mucus of structured work and destination. It is foolish to think I am the first to tear through this banner... after all did not Shakespeare at some point litter his own floors with crumpled up pieces of paper? The difference is that my demons lie below me in the PVC pipes and his were right there in the lines of scrawled ink.
Is this what evolution has prepared me for? Escaping into a mirage of painted symphonies and walking the dog? At some point I start to wonder when the hurricane is coming, just so I can ignore the danger and taste the rain. I keep putting on an extra layer, leaving the light on at night, as if growing up is a crumpled check I forget to cash. And now:
A Few of My Favorite Things
I sit and cease to exist until the quiet hours of the morning thrust me back into warped existence. Covered in the mucus of structured work and destination. It is foolish to think I am the first to tear through this banner... after all did not Shakespeare at some point litter his own floors with crumpled up pieces of paper? The difference is that my demons lie below me in the PVC pipes and his were right there in the lines of scrawled ink.
Is this what evolution has prepared me for? Escaping into a mirage of painted symphonies and walking the dog? At some point I start to wonder when the hurricane is coming, just so I can ignore the danger and taste the rain. I keep putting on an extra layer, leaving the light on at night, as if growing up is a crumpled check I forget to cash. And now:
A Few of My Favorite Things
- Getting back in the car after filling the tank up. alllllll the way up.
- Grilled cheese for breakfast
- Snow, for god's sake, this was the oddest winter ever. While 2011 went through puberty one of the reasons I actually like Massachusetts was invalidated. I WANT SNOW.
- Climbing stairs. I don't know?
It's coming down stairs that freak me out.
It was one of those stupid moments in which two people are approaching each other and neither person knows which way to go. I dodged and she stumbled around me. My teeth started to form "Sorry" but something about the situation stopped me. I stopped moving altogether and glanced in her direction. Late 40s, short, stocky. She trudged around the carpet in large galoshes and hid her brow under a knit cap, soggy from the rain. A ragged coat hung around her body. It looked as if it failed to keep any cold out. I struggled to see her face more closely but wasn't invested enough to care. She was carrying a backpack in one hand and a large drawing pad in the other. Homeless? Not frequent enough in this town to be a definitive explanation. Suspicion and paranoia bristled on my neck. I put my hands into my coat pockets and shrugged.
I was barreling down the stairs minutes later when I saw her again, this time from the back. She had planted herself right in the middle one of the steps. I saw that what she was still clutching wasn't a drawing pad at all, but a white rubber bathmat. The before encounter still chilled my core. I swallowed hard and spun on my heels to escape the way I came but she craned her neck around to look at me before I could get away. I could feel beady eyes slicing into me like a laser cutter. Her wrinkled cheeks looked weighed down with years of neglect, and her eyes were as yellow as her finger nails.
"Excuse me," I said, leaping over her bag onto the following step. Almost out, I thought, few more steps.
"Cold hands?" she gestured to my pockets, still filled with my clenched fingers. Her voice was wet and smokey. I wondered if she had been drinking the rainwater.
"Uh, yeah," I smiled politely, avoiding eye contact.
"Or a weapon..."
I was already down the hall. My anxiety was spiked and this last comment propelled me past being rational. Did she really think I had a gun in my coat pocket... Maybe I should start carrying one.
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