i had a horrible dream last night. when i woke up, i was immensely happy that it had not happened and that the reality which i inhabit is far more forgiving and far less paralyzing than the world of stupid, stupid dreams.

angels

every day, and another attempt.

When I am at the bookstore last week, once of my twice-weekly ventures to accumulate a library of my own to carry with me, I am in the row where the F's are and this guy approaches me, and he has a slip of paper, and he says, "You're beautiful. Please call me."
I learn too late- after I have stupidly obeyed- that I was not obligated to call, that it is not within the rules of proprietry to do whatever a stranger tells you at the risk of being rude. He's a genuinely nice guy, but I am afraid of him because he is a stranger. And now I have this person at my side, and they have Expectations of me and of my "beautiful eyes" and I can't bear them, none of them. I turn the terrifying sound off the phone and I hide it from myself so I will not hear it ring nor will I see its lights as he calls, Expecting. I hate meeting people. I wish I was invisible. I want to throw up every time I think of it.
And all of this scares me because if I hate meeting people as much as I do and if I have jump at the every heavy tone of a ringing telephone ring, how am I ever going to get outside of where I am now?
I have barely any of the people I used to have in my daily life. I took them for granted when they were there, when I was in their company every day, and now they have their lives from which I have passed, and I can't be a part of it anymore. That's natural, I guess, except for that I can't move on to anything, because of my fear, and now I am lonely. I also feel as if my brain is splitting and rotting, and I have less than half of my mind left. I am growing stupider by the day.
This is not self-pity, but this is release. Please prove to me that I'm not alone, I beg you. Please don't leave me to the strangers.

hungry

I have lots of questions, per usual. Sometimes I am afraid that all I am capable of thinking, speaking anymore are questions, questions. I feel stupider with every new day and with every new onslaught of questions and questions.

-what is the difference between guilt and gratitude?
-is there any way I can move on in my life without everything, including myself, becoming foreign and therefore paralyzing?
-why can't I think of anything to say to God?
-why is my brain melting?
-is it true that in order to be a good person, you must undergo immense suffering and hardship before you can pass on to the status of a "worthy" person?

hungry

I am marginally invested in my life now, not because I am dissatisfied with what I have because I am not but because I am afraid of the things I have- guilt does not equal gratitude, so am I really grateful? -do I understand the magnitude of what leisures with which I am endowed and of what responsibilities I have? I feel grief and guilt for the amazing things with which I am gifted. That's a really stupid reaction, though.
"Don't judge your emotions," is the next common refrain; I have been told this countless times and I listen unconsciously- "but observe them with objectivity."

I have lots of questions, per usual:

-

emaciated

Bless you! Bless you! Bless you! Bless you! Bless you!
Somebody sneezed seven times, and I only covered them for five.

"wrongfully i rested"

i have listened to a solitary cd innumerably for a week now. a scathing, soothing, invariable repitition: bordering dementia it would appear. turn it back on again and again and again and again and again but it's perfectly rational, for me
sometimes i simply like to know what is coming

sleep

I love sweeping. I think sweeping is one of the gentlest things a person can do. Whenever I’m at a place like a restaurant or the stage of a theater and I see someone in a uniform with a broom, and when I watch their backwards and their forwards, the progressions and the regressions, the opposites that make up the swaying at their elbows, I fall a little in love, especially if they are meticulous. That means they can maybe love somebody who is alive, even if it’s not me. And maybe they already do, at home, or a stranger they see everyday on the street; maybe they are already very meticulously in love. I am not equating sweeping to love: that is too obvious. And if somehow I am, well I don’t mean to be doing it.

lullaby

every thing is clean and lovely and soft around me, everyone is getting along, no one is fighting, no one is yelling, we are all clean and content. i have no particular sadness of my own in me at this moment, this day; there is only the sadness of other people, which doesn't belong to me, so do i have a right to take it from them? i don't really know. i am happily sleepy and i am going to bed and i am hoping to God that it rains again tomorrow.

a little sad today.

Why are some people inaccessible?
Why are we made to feel smaller than some, or larger than others, when really we are all small and large in much the same ways? We are all human, we are all souls, so by which standards are our evaluations of each other credible? Why are we allowed to scorn each other, to mock, to humiliate, to have preferences?
But- what would we be to each other without these things?

Why are some people inaccessible?
Why do you feel, in the literal shadow of such people, as you stand behind them, that you are in no way as real as they are? That you take up no more physical or spiritual space than the tiny eyelet on their shoe through which the lace is woven, or the slit in fabric through which a plastic button is pushed? Why do you feel enclosed in a glass box when you are around these lovely people, hearing and seeing but unable to be heard and seen? Why is your reality less credible than theirs?

Why are some people inaccessible?
Why could you not ask them for the gift of touch, for them to hold your hand for a moment or for two moments, to reassure you that you are alive, that you embolden the air of the earth just as they do? Why is it so shocking, repulsive to ask for these most crucial of necessities- validity, recognition, friendship, affection? Why are we all alone when we could be giving each other what we deeply need, clean and pure and whole? Why are these questions wrong and full of shame?

Why are people so inaccessible?

there is no arbitrary title to this madness.

I believe there should be a fortune cookie out there that says: in twelve minutes, throw your cell phone into the river. Everyone should recieve this fortune cookie with their chow mein. And, finally, when everyone's cell phones are pebbles in chilled, electric river water, then we can justifiably throw a party and rejoice in the new, less invasive methods of communication we will be forced to produce.

I don't understand why people do the ugly things they do in the name of progress, consumerism, and model worship.
I went to walmart today, where invariably I lose my patience, because things there are messy and beige-smelling, and because the traffic in the aisles is unapologetic when they run over your shoe. My goal was to aquire an electric blanket, because I am freezing, and chocolate wafers, for making ice cream sandwhiches of my own for my sister. But, inevitably, there is no geriatric section to stock the electric blankets when they are not "in season" (old people are cold year round, no?), and I become perturbed, because i am really cold. But, in the spirit of handling it, I try to find the chocolate wafers, which are stocked year-round in publix, but which are nonexistant in walmart. I am frustrated, and am freaking out a lot inside, because it is crowded, and this one girl in a yellow shirt is showing up everywhere I am (!) and throwing six jars of peanut butter into her cart (!! six jars !!). She is making me mad. The people wearing unflattering shirts are making me mad. I hate that they are all around me, taking up all of the inches of space, and breathing all the free air, and filling that leftover space with carbon monxide and poison and the odor of whatever they ate that morning. The fact that they are all slow and confused and cowlike makes me realize that i am still a little retarded, and I need to calm down, because dear God, what did these people do? -nothing. They have survived the Cold War unscathed. They have lept borders to make it here, to this Walmart, with me. They are buying peanut butter in bulk because they have the consummeristic right to. They are staring into mirrors and spreading lip gloss around their faces and they are glaring and they are overdressed and underdressed and undressed because they CAN, they CAN DO IT. Who am I, but a miniscule person, to stand in the way of their Walmart experience. I am the Walmart grinch, except he turned around in the end, and I never did.
Just like I scorned the Kroger in Towne Lake for refusing to take back my brother's two steaks he bought- which cost way too much money and were superfluous in every way- and for being especially mean about it. Just like I stood in the automatic doors of that establishment and lifted my fist in the spirit of all of my comrades out there and shouted, "I Scorn This Establishment!" I really did it! I love having a part in the fight! I love everyone and I hate no one, even if they own a cell phone, which is a new development for me!
The End for awhile!

people will always disappoint you. you can count on no one.
this is true in many and in seemingly all ways:
you have a friend who you think may understand you, finally, your heart and your happiness and whatever hurts you harbor, and you begin to trust them in such a way that you are able to speak to them truths about you that you would not freely or indiscriminately give to any strange soul; and you think this will be okay, because you believe they may understand. but then- their actions- they take something that they offhandedly think is "in your best interest," a thoughtless action carried out "because it's best for you this way!"- but this is the worst possible thing they could have done in the situation- it is humiliating, demeaning, infantilizing. it feels like ardent betrayal, something laughed off later- the awfulest thing to do. it still hurts, thinking about it. this situation, and the subsequent reaction by this friend, speaks in some ways- it tells you what they think of you, deep down, their basest understanding of your character and your mindset: that you are incapable of making decisions for yourself, because you are crazy. that whatever you decide is the wrong thing, because you have decided it. because you are crazy. it hurts. and now i will remain guarded.

then, there is the Return To What Was Once Your Safe Place: ace was that place, for me, after i left high school, and felt ungrounded. ace, and its people, brought me back to life- and then i was taken from it for a time, an unbearable time; and when i returned, overjoyed, i was disheartened to see that the people were not the same people- the old people had gone, and been replaced with new people- and it was startling, because i had not been expecting strangers. after being with these strangers- who sat in new seats, who coveted my own routine seat, who spoke different languages amongst themselves than that to which i had grown accustomed- and none of these things are their fault; it is natural for new people to adjust to themselves, to their surroundings, and make it their own Safe Place. but it is not my Safe Place anymore. and it is because of these strangers who deserve to be there just as much-if not so much more- than i do. i realize i can't go back to what it once was, i can't go back there, because it doesn't exist anymore. i cried when i found my stuffed rhino- the grey animal with white eyes, because the pupils had rubbed off, and whose face smiled up at me every day; the eyeless stuffed rhino who was with me in the severest and the most joyous of times- torn to shreds, its face unrecognizeable, destroyed by the teeth of a dog who doesn't know anything. this alteration was unspeakably disturbing to me. because i had always known that my eyeless stuffed rhino would be there- but then, it shocked me, destroyed. i can't go back there anymore, to ace. once again- i don't know where my Safe Place is.

and then there is the simple, everyday hurt of reaching out for someone's voice- just to hear them talk of themselves, of their lives- reaching out to everyone you can think of, everyone you know, and having not one person answer your calls, or desire to talk to you, because they think you're annoying, and you know they're right. dear God, this self-deprecation is getting old. so you know what? i'm not doing that shit anymore.

i love my body and i love my mind, and i don't want people anymore. i won't apologize for anything anymore, because that's so fucked up- it's sick. i'm done with it. i'm not trying anymore, i'm done with this fruitless, everlasting trying- it's sick- and nothing happening- nothing-. i love my words and i love my thoughts and i'm keeping them, thank you, i'm not changing them for anybody. you can do whatever you want to me now, you can never speak to me again, you can never see me because i'll be still invisible, not even here; you can think whatever you want of me, and i honest to God don't care. i have me now, and that's enough. i am strong now: nobody, nothing can touch me anymore, now.

chalk

i have been thinking about it, vaguely, in the cracks of dim places in my mind- and i don't miss my boyfriend, at all. i love not missing him. i love the completion i have without him, more complete than i was even in that time with him. i love my fearlessness; the unexpected, torrential release of anxiety and panic when he said goodbye. i am calm now. i am happy now, and my happiness comes with no condition whatsoever. i will never allow anyone to dictate my thoughts so entirely as i had allowed him, not ever again.
what i do miss is that devotion that comes with loving a person, that surrender of self-comfort, the giving nature of love. i wish to take care of someone, to fight for their happiness, to serve them in the way God meant for us to serve our other human beings, our families, our enemies. in a way, my boyfriend was my enemy; he wanted things i did not want. but i loved him, anyway, for want of someone who would accept my offered love with greed. it was false and it was short-lived, but for that time anyway, i was devoted.
i think i should be devoted, anyway, to people, and devoted in other ways than the hurtful ways.

i don't care if this is badly written.

well, well. look at what we've arrived to.

i have, weeks ago, found a room in my house, endowed with a valuable window, a room which at that point was left unoccupied; i have painted it a certain blue, the exact color of even, satisfactory breathing; and i have made it my own. it is for my art, exclusively, because there is no other space, and the space i have claimed is ideal. there is a roof outside of the windows, facing the trees and the wind, and if i choose i can sit on the roof like i used to and have my music play me straight into the happiest sort of summer there is. i am ready for spring; i love the warmth, the vibrance, the energy coupled with the calm of the world righting itself again, filling once more with hues and shade. i am ready for spring.
and now i can paint, as messily as i want, without any worry; i can leave my paints on the desk, out of order, and my brushes in relative disarray, and walnut oil spilled onto the desk, and it will be alright; because i will be back, either to continue or to arrange things to my mind's ease. there is nothing like painting to transform you- when i am painting, i am someone else entirely, someone calm and focused, thoughtful and concentrated. my thoughts are splayed on canvas, openly and with reason, among all of the color, and i am new.
this really had no point to it, except that i am not tired and thinking of these happy things is so soothing.

oh

i live here, surrounded by everything i could ever need, things which could last me twelve lifetimes. i am provided with necessities- unquestioned necessities- pillows, bread, blankets, warmth, light, water, air, toothpaste, soap, etc- i am never lost for anything. food is always around. we have a washing machine, a microwave, a mop. we are well equipped. i have my own room- i have my own bed- i have my own things. and even more than that, i have been given other gifts- music, books, softness, color. i can laugh and i do, often. and i am also not without love- i have a family, i have more people than i can count, some whom i don't even know, but who love me because i am one of God's; and i have a cat who loves me very much and whose love i reciprocate. my life is open in front of me- and i am so unspeakably grateful, fall down on your face grateful, so humbly grateful. i want to take it all and give it back to the God who gave it to me, give it to others, share it with them. i have a profoundly happy life- i want for nothing; and even if i did, it would not matter, as long as i had my God-. i want to multiply all these things and let them keep others warm, too-

shouting

i have lost my words and they have been gone awhile. even so, it would be really nice to talk to somebody. i want to listen to someone, to give them what they need. i would love a connection right about now. i want to love somebody and help them. i want to get out of myself. i want to put my all into somebody else.

ocd

perfect: whole or complete
without mistakes

it is neither whole or complete
nor without mistakes.

it is okay that it is not whole or complete
it is okay that it is not without mistakes.

it is perfect because it is neither whole or complete
nor without mistakes.

protect & survive

OH MY GOD NUCLEAR WAR

in this moment, an accumulation of the past two hours,

i am paralyzed with fear of impending nuclear war (!)

so much so that i cannot move from this spot on the floor (!) between the couch and the table, this compact position in which i have sat rigidly and flinchingly for two hours (!!) straight!

bomb shelter- i must have a bomb shelter!!

tomorrow morning after i wake up and before i ready myself to leave i resolve to construct a nuclear fallout shelter in the closet within my closet, behind my hanging clothes, and in this shelter i will conserve all that i need!

signs! i need signs!!

i will read all the pamphlets. the government will know what to do!!

no, but really. what is it about these dark quiet nights that make me so crazy scared of improbable things? i mean, commercials! i cannot see commercials! i cower at the bright yellow flash of those sharp thirty-second intervals, flash flash flash, the stonily informative voices, puerile and omniscient, reassuring the interminable fears (you will be realized-!) and telling me, white-eyed, do not abandon your fears (they will be realized-!)!

of all the ridiculous things-!

when i turn off the television, those commercials unspool behind my eyes, crisp and precise-
don't close your eyes!
don't turn out the lights!
don't climb from the hole in which we have buried you!
don't emerge into morning!
because- if you do- all of the potent dangers will succeed those suicide missions- poison fire hurricane war radiation sickness vomiting bacteria biohazard chernobyl explosions bombs death destruction mutilation horror!!! any and all things sinister and terrifying.
the emergency broadcast system-! that is when the breathing stops.
there in my ears, from the radio, the tv- sirens! alarms! screaming!

i will protect you-
you will survive!

really, and seriously, i need to get up, turn on every light, maybe play some happy music. something full of light and air and morning. but i can't get up because i am scared! a baby child scared! the kind of scared you are in the worst of your nightmares!

what a silly silly girl.