best of: March 2003 Archives

but easier than you'd think. still, i can feel one of the more unwell aspects of my self sliding down into a defensive little ball, back against the wall, sullen & shaken & radiant with potential hysteria. everything is deserved here except release, which will most likely be taken by force at some point & so why wait?

waiting is.

a magnificent shiny black bumblebee met a grisly end this afternoon at my hands. well, it was my doing, my hands were holding only the trigger of the kitchen cleaner, pumping away until he flailed into the sink, at which point i finished him with hot water and dish liquid, yes i'm deadly with a variety of ordinary household products. a gangly spider behind the refrigerator was allowed to live, there had been enough carnage in that kitchen for one day. besides, my insecticidal rage is a big chickenshit & i was out of fantastik®.

& there will be no further attempts to mask the sounds of shattering. no word yet about my reasons for trying, insight into my own behavior being entirely inadvisable at this point, i'm betting the why is worse than the what by a long shot.

these words will self destruct the minute it hits me, & if i knew what i meant by 'it' i wouldn't be posting the bloody thing now would i?

fortunately none of this matters. i need to translate that into a dead language & have it inked where i can see it, yes?

i don't want to work i don't want to fix the internet i don't want to sleep i don't want to make cds i don't want to watch dvds, i want to write. i want to sit here diddle these keys until it happens. i want to go noodle with the seven or so things in draft status, garbage mostly maybe not. maybe a revision of an old old poem that turned into an insane essay. the best version of which? i kicked the plug right before saving.

and i am apparently sick of typing out and. i loved my pretty & and the bastards called her evil. fuck the bastards, fuck the dumb shit, give me words, give me sparse stark things & then some whimsy please & follow that with a lush rush of verbiage & keep it coming until i am whining with the carpal tunnel, i want repetetive fucking stress injuries from the staggering volume of words.

assiduous. pure. harrowing. edifying. obvious. erstwhile. reticence. sex. reverie. unfettered. will. ever. fingertips. sex. after. consume. confound. mate. release. limitless. ephemera. and aside from that this really weird weird hope thing. it has no words, & yet i can't shut the fuck up. unless.

hope i have more to say than i think. the emptiness of this text box is demanding i fill it, and whether or not i can comply, i am compelled, impelled, and the next word that occurs is impaled, sometimes i really miss my own point (or nail it, and not know it until well after the fact but not this time. really.) (wait: nail, impale, ... no. nice try though.) the words they fuck with me. occasionally the other way 'round but not this time. no.

the process is frustration in a form pure as the scream screamed screaming down the freeway at something approaching terminal velocity, however these things are memories mostly, i'm slower by far here now at my age although i never touched the brakes, not once.

do i miss fast? is this a loss? am i beyond being that raw? risking it all and more and it was just me, my one bare toe on the pedal feathering the throttle until it was wide fucking open and so was i, flying mindless of consequences, honest i was open to them, i deserved them, whether i was fully aware of it at the time or oblivious. (both. i was both.) this was me seriously bent upon my own destruction, i just failed at it, is all. to this day i never quarrel over getting what's coming to me, i know oh so much better.

i miss the purity of that willingness, that utterly fucked up careless place i survived beyond only by some random accident of fortune. and i miss raw. i miss that reckless existence, fast as the gear ratio would allow at the top end, i miss nothing mattering in the end, this i miss most of all.

no, i don't. yes, no, wait, maybe, yes. yes. no. yes.

fuck if i know.

i tire of my own attempts to explain as whimsy what is in fact just irresponsibility tied directly to the fact i expect the world to indulge me, and if it does (and it does usually) it does in ways that send me skittering along the very vertiginous edges of consequence, from which i come away lucky, almost but not quite intact. lessons are contaminated by the panic or obscured by the numbness that follows, and any advantages granted in the reprieve are generally spent indulging my self-inflicted diminished and incapacitated self, a luxury which is surely not due me; this is no less an injustice than anything else i protest against, but let's leave the hypocrisy out of this, please? oh just humor me, i'm fragile dammit.

and i sit here scribbling something intended as penance, which is aviodance disguised in terms of critical analytical self-obsessed rhetoric. and i sit and consider the consequences i have yet to face and find i'm facing the fact i can't imagine my way out of this. and i sit and stall, doing nothing, knowing it will be my undoing and yet i am sitting here still, scribbling.

and still i offer myself absolution in advance of any evidence i've changed, accepting this dubious resolve as all i have to offer in return, even though the gesture is empty at best and it gets worse: already i've begun to fidget and chafe and shift under the burden, alert for avenues of escape to the extent i'm practically frantic, which leaves little energy for change; whatever is left will most likely be applied superficially to the appearance of change.

and if all i can manage is the maintenance of appearances, that might pass for an accomplishment of sorts and would certainly count as change, since the obviousness is often the worst part of this mess. which means change is within reach, and yes this counts. whether i move toward the goal or move the goal toward me, the amount of progress is the same, and this makes all the difference.

thus the urgency of doing the impossible and my scant chance at success are transformed through the magic of lowered expectations, and the resulting relief from the stress of almost hopelessness is an achievement of no small significance: this makes the hours i spent composing this time not spent, but invested. i close this with confidence soaring, knowing if i can dish out this much unmitigated bullshit in just one night, thereby snatching victory out of the jaws of the most egregious flakiness, well, the possibilities are ... limited only by how easy they are. and how many easy things are there? oodles, baby, oodles. well, several. and how many words did it take to turn one pathetic loser into the force of nature you see before you now? yeah. i'm that good.

the flayed nerves are skin deep only, and the skin is thinning; the rain drowns out the sounds of old bones. and it is rain which defines the night, not intent.

in spite of this the girl sits and tells us that she meant to go dance in the rain, but it ended before she had her chance. her words change nothing; she winces, understands, and falls silent. the rain fills what follows and she shrugs and begins to ache.

she aches and envisions things and drifts toward the end of night. the rain begins again and the girl begins to realize she has missed her last chances at the things she envisions. she searches the worries which once beset her younger selves and finds nothing resembling a night like this, but nearly everything else. she considers what passed her by while she was preoccupied thinking one unfounded thing after another was after her, toying idly with the irony of it all while resisting regrets with the belief that all she really missed were chances to regret different things.

she dozes and the night passes and the the rain remains and the day begins before the dreams end; the girl lingers between, the storm speaks to her there. she sits and listens intently, sifting through each nuance for any meaning maybe hidden within.

the girl drifts and aches and sifts and finally finds one pure thing but in that exact instant it hits her and she remembers nothing matters and fails to notice the answer as it falls from her hands.

she allows a wry smile and settles into the rest of whatever this is in spite of whatever it was meant to be. she envisions nothing and is interrupted by a lull in the rain, left alone with only the sound of her own breath, wondering when it will end. and the rain begins again and the girl remains silent, still waiting.

enough inauspicious signs recently to shift the mood and shake the confidence. around the edges, the stirrings of early resignation have begun: this would be the defeatist faction assuming the position. eh, it's ok, let 'em cower. however we've been a wee bit full of ourselves lately, perhaps so much so that a bit of humility had to be restored? is this the universe keeping the feckless ego in check?

the feckless ego mutters expletives and assumes a disdainful expression, somehow managing to concede without admitting anything or changing position. oh, it's ok, let her highness carry on, all affronted and quiet indignant, after all we need that attitude around, right?

sweetness and light couldn't be with us tonight, so the misanthropic and disgruntled elements have the floor, but there is no consensus among their discordant voices, and in the end no clear purpose emerges. each view has its point but misses making sense from any other perspective; the voice of reason is also absent this evening.

we will sort this out eventually, or rather it will sort itself, this loosely associated multiplicity never solves anything beyond the occasional crossword in a waiting room, it is what they do, they wait. if any agreement exists, it is that most things are out of all our hands. waiting is.

and home is of course brooding over my absence. however here things need doing and finding and arranging into logic. here the spaces are thick with energy, not at all unlike the humming compressor of the displaced refrigeration unit amidst the clutter, which is anything but random. here illumination falls in deliberate ways without revealing any reason. here a tiring and difficult day hangs heavy in the air not at all unlike the smoke wafting from my ashtray, dammit. i could expend all my healing energy flinging it into the shadows and know it is not my place to do so, and then do it, defiant, on my slow unsteady way down, out, and on home.

and exactly what in the name of all holy fuck will i do if/when i get what i want?

in my life i have wanted, and i have gotten, and in general there was little or no aforethought given to the aftermath of the getting. nedless to say there has been some ... unpleasantness? generally involving me bitterly muttering 'be careful what you wish for' and then forgetting all about that and doing more wishing and, well, this time is different. it is. shut up. no, really, this time i'm going to brace for the impact. anecdotal evidence suggests that the resulting ruin increases in direct proportion to the intensity of the initial want, which in this case would bode ill except that the usual delusional emotional component is mostly absent, replaced with a rational practical approach which ...

is doomed. how doomed? utterly. and completely. doomed. measurably doomed. think richter scale. so what i'm saying here is i want ... doom? well, no, i mean yes, well, you see for years i've been deliberately settling, a sedimentary process and yes it was a relief at first and now? now i am damn near insensate underneath layers upon layer and i am longing for cataclysm. (saying this i accept it and yet i would also welcome any non-ruinous outcome. as long as i can feel again.)

i am as aware of consequences as i am ... aware, for what that's worth and with this in mind understand that the specifics of the outcome do not matter, as long as i'm not numb while whatever happens ravages me. also i ought to mention that this does not in any way interfere with the wild optimism of these dreams i'm hiding underneath the steaming pile of fatalistic cheer. not that it's steaming, or even a pile, it's just that it would be disingenous of me not to mention steam. or piles. so let the record show that they were mentioned. offhandly. in passing.

so. ah. mm.

except of course here i am, home, unwasted; the nausea is entirely unrelated. it's simply what happens with the goddamn gravity forever in flux, don't you just hate that? never knowing what force is necessary and ending up either floaty and uncontrolled or leaden-limbed and overwhelmed, and you just never know.

but this is my new normal and i am learning to begin considering these aberrant forces as an enhancement of sorts, a woof in the fabric of my existence (and at right angles to the warp threads, that's what a woof is, which makes woof the word of the moment and the moment resonant with woof and this pleases me greatly, you have no idea) and i am almost not nauseous now well a little but i've had a bit of an epiphany there: between the demanding pangs of hunger and the vague urge to puke, i will pick the i-might-puke every time and consider it serendipity, and yes i have issues, such issues, the issues i suppose are the warp threads and the gravity woof woven in subtle relief providing the pattern, do you see it? have you seen it before? i am seeing it now, and it is my very first time, excuse me i am rapt and i am willing to call this rapture.

woof.