batten down the hatches…

i’m taking my vitamins and doing push-ups and training because the winter is coming.

the winter is coming, and with it, the increased energy bills, the assault of inclement weather, the rainwater wicking up the back of my denims, the darkness (and more darkness and perpetual darkness), the onslaught of debt-collectors calling regarding my college loans….

…this year, i don’t even remotely look forward to the winter.

and i’ve got to get out of the middle of the city.

the man whistling down his man from his apartment on the corner, the never-ending stream of garbage trucks, jackhammers and other grinding, grating sounds on the alley, the absolute lack of police presence in my neighborhood (and saturation just four blocks south, at the base of the Andra or the Metropolitan buildings) is stripping my nerves.

 

booooooo.

the liking did me better than i ever thought it would.

i want to sleep until graduation.

and then keep sleeping.

it’s very cold in my house. thanks for trying to help, but as usual, it’s beyond any of our control.

inundated with thoughts of the media. steeping in paper topics that require a linguistic tango that exhausts me mentally, but really, doesn’t take that much effort.

i got a package today in the mail that brought me to the carpet beside the dog and in front of the space heater and kept me there for a very long time. and it hurt very much. because i hurt someone very much and i didn’t mean to. and i miss it, too, but i know it’s not like that anymore.

remember how many other things were at play? the hormones and the drugs and the depression and the loneliness and the heat and the distance and the helplessness and the poverty and the angst and the newness and the youth?

some of those factors are still present. what is no longer present is us, as eighteen and nineteen, respectively. and unfortunately, i think that that is perhaps the crux of feeling like we did when we said all of those things, and were stupid enough to put them into print.

it hurts a lot to think about how i used to feel. that summer is excruciating to remember.

i had to close the book.

and she’ll say “oh, yeah, well, i feel pretty happy, too.”

i ran out of chemicals to keep my mood in check.
it is now, i suppose, “destabilized.”

but it’s great.

the return to humanity from the mechanization of my own body was worth any difficult, sweating, jaw clenched-and-locked re-entry.

things make me deeply happy again, instead of just “less ambivalent.”

i find my face uncomfortable from unbridled smiling, especially when i’m face-to-face with certain others.

i find myself forced to relate this to the person/people whom i am face-to-face with.

fingerpicked guitars, barren tree branches, blond hair and crystalline lawns are all more stunning, more worthwhile, and cause for stopping and listening or touching.

i’m twelve again, journaling and pondering and thinking everything is so much deeper and realer than anyone else could ever even notice.

even indiana is more precious and alive and soft and the savior than ever.
you are now free to move about the cabin.

Yes, we speak of things that matter, with words that must be said.

my life is mosty functional.

that is, i feel purely utilitarian. proletariat.

i find little bits of satisfaction in conversation, in sunlight, in passages of books that others have written that ring true.

but for the most part, i work. i make a little money. i spend a little money.

and i do radio. at which my mumbling and my stuttering render me mediocre. but it doesn’t matter because i can play music without speaking, and say a lot that way.

sitting on my porch (MY porch. my somewhat-very-own porch) tonight, i got an idea of what the next nine or ten months will be like.

new house, new street, new corner store (where i got recognized from work. that’s an entry for another day.) new bus route, new bike ride.

new heartache, new uselessness, new nights spent wandering in circles in my home with a bottle and a romanticized idea of what my life was supposed to be like.

perhaps i was wrong in condemning organized religion. i see the merit- it must be nice to feel like there’s a reason to your existence.

but ignorance gets corrected eventually, and it’s never easy to swallow.

i prefer to deal with what is in front of me, and not what is beyond the last heartbeat.

and, apparently, i will do this in the corniest way possible.

so, i will continue to live on my own first principle:

don’t fuck anyone over.

they know not if it’s dark outside or light.

here are few points of clarification:

1.) my laptop is dead.

2.) i won’t be in the eug until the middle of june at the earliest.

3.) my heart is broken.

4.) my manager is the anti-christ.

5.) going out to brunch on a day when you “don’t feel like doing the dishes” simply passes off the duty to someone who feels like doing them even less, preferably with their own mother.

6.) mother’s day is actually a pretty terrible holiday. i know everyone had a mother at one point, but not everyone does at this present moment. and even if they do, somewhere, maybe an entire day spent thinking about her when she’s a grillion miles away isn’t the universally cheery notion that the upwardly wealthy think it is.

7.) today i saw a gaggle of pants-suit wearing women with cotton-candy hair holding spidery-veined hands saying grace over their reconstituted $22 eggs, and then immediately power through three bottles of champagne. at ten-thirty in the morning.

8.) remember my sadistic manager? even she asked me if i was ok today.

9.) no, i wasn’t.

10.) i want to go home.

 

 

so instead, i’m watching almost famous over and over again.

and spending a lot of time at the beach.

to destroy is always the first step in any creation.

here are a few things are a funny, and a few that aren’t.

funny things:

1.) fine dining. here is a silly part of society.

the entire concept of the absolutely excessive treatment of food is kind of moronic. but i can value it as some people’s art form. however, the idea of going to an “upscale” establishment is a bit like going to church. you put on your sunday best to impress the other diners. but the difference is that in the restaurant world, the kids putting the stuff together are dirty-fingered ragamuffins like me, and non-english speaking twenty-year-olds named (really) Juan, Manuel, Wilmer and Raul. my stained apron, my use of the vernacular, and my ways of making things more efficient are only incorrect because they aren’t stylized in the way that some rumpled geriatrics think they should be. come on, old people. i’m paying for your social security, while you’re leaving me change and sticky butter-pat papers face-down on the table. besides, your time is up anyway.

why complicate everything with formalities that you, or someone like you, have constructed?

2.) My coworker’s attitudes towards me. everyone that i work with thinks i’m an absolutely ghettotrash idiot. and granted, i am not the most eloquent speaker. i stutter sometimes, i stammer frequently, and i invert words within a sentence like syntax is just a set of vague guidelines.

but in reality, i’m almost done with my college degree.
which none of them have.
and i never say things like “supposabley.”
and i don’t pluralize with an apostrophe. (“egg’s,” por exemplo)
and i can spell “apostrophe”
and i speak several languages.

and i’m literate.

sigh. maybe someday i’ll drop a knowledge bomb on them.
or continue to contain my laughter every time they end a sentence with “at.”
suckers.

now here are some not funny things:

a.) that thing that you think is funny and how it makes me feel. and how i never thought it was funny when you felt like this.

b.) the future in general. i feel really, really constricted by everything and terrified by how that makes the exact present seem less valuable. it’s like watching a storm coming, but knowing that even if you get into the cellar, you can’t be saved. so you just stand watching the twister coming, mouth ajar, marvelling at the force of it all.

which brings me to….

c.) mayanmar/burma and the cyclone/hurricane that hit them. and while tools in team-related t-shirts are tipping back coronas and taking tequilla shots with straw sombreros on, there are 10,000 fewer people in the world, which puts at least ten times that many people in absolutely soul crushing pain. and we could not care less until sheryl crow and oprah go over there to save the natives with coloring books and makeovers.

in conclusion-

i’m a little conflicted. because in some ways, yeah, i see the irony in everything. and i see when things don’t make sense in a silly kind of way.

the difference between comedy and tragedy is that in comedy, no one is taking themselves seriously- no one ever gets actually hurt or truthfully angry.

and some things are like that. jobs, busywork and kids in class who use the phrase “in so far as” literally every single class period for an entire quarter. has not missed a day yet.

and some people are in more pain than i could ever imagine right now. however, i do not think this makes my feelings any less valid.

i’m hurting. and just because it’s not as much as other people, or even as much as you think you’re hurting, does not make it incorrect. or able to be “gotten over.”

that’s part of that whole “mental disease” thing.
and that whole “being a human” thing.

xoxo me

is this what you’ve become?

today, i lied three times:

i lied to the parking police to get out of a ticket from last night.
i lied to 1 person to say i didn’t feel like going out.
and i lied to another to say i didn’t feel like having them come stay in.

the last two were because i have no interest in socializing. at all.

i would, in fact, very much like to be left alone.

and i would like to stop constantly feeling guilty for an invisible infraction.

whatever it is i’ve done, i continue to do, or i will do in the future….i can’t atone for enough.
whatever that may be.

i’m tired of….

dropping things
being hurt
not crying
injuring my fragile hands
working within the constraints of time
feeling like there are a lot of loud and heavy objects bearing down on my at all times.

my head is a kinetic lightening storm.

today is may day.

when i was little, i put flowers in my hair (really. back then, in may, there were flowers.) and wrapped crepe paper around a pole, or tied it to a stick and waved it.

but isn’t that how it is.

unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense.

i’ve been meaning to say something, but meaning has been something i’ve been struggling with.

i’m unsure where it stems from, and i’m completely in the dark about where it goes from there.

and just when i think something means something, or doesn’t mean anything,

the light turns off and there i am, bumping into the nightstand trying to find it.

and all you see is where else you could be when you’re at home.

 

“you have to take responsibility for your own happiness.”

 

you’re very smart, so i think you’re right.

thusly, i shall…

1.) stop letting you make me feel worthless and invisible.

2.) continue to focus on myself because

• i am the only person i can count on.
• and i am the only person who can make myself better
• and i am a lot less negative than you think
• and the negativity that rages through me comes from the fact that i frequently feel invisible, worthless and static. when i’m in my own home. they call this a “trigger.” and your finger is usually on it.
• and there are a lot of people who do believe in me. so i’m going to listen to them

i can’t blame you for my sadness.

so i blame myself for letting it in.

see? responsible.

 

some days, they last longer than others.

baaaaaaaaaaaaah.

i’m inside-out. all yucky and red and ugly.

like, hey world. here are my innards.

like that exploded bird zach and i walked past in the woods.

ew. i have never felt so filthy as i did after seeing it’s little guts all strewn about and bloated.

sick.

mmmmm i don’t feel well.

on the upside, today in the computer lab, i ran into my friend aline! i haven’t seen her since she left for equador last summer. she is a very amazing and beautiful and intelligent woman. just thought i’d share that.

because for all my bitching, it’s not really that bad.