heavy ghosts (some thoughts)

there could be heavy ghosts. __i like the sound of faraway things. memory is the farthest away thing. to lose someone to time is to infinitely lose them. (goodbyest of them all.

nothing much to be said for Tuesday afternoons. the motion of other people's lives in comparison to my own makes me sea-sick. dizzy too. i can't even imagine being the person i was. LA, 2007, Haifa... all feel soo distant. soo... impossible. i can't imagine any of it having existed.

especially 2007. the air was soo hazy. everything was soo thick and heavy i could barely move. i moved soo little, tried to just curl up and be forgotten about. how is that life? i can't even believe that existed. that that smileless, grey object was one of the myselves. 2007. the year of disappointment. remember that? LA. supposedly the(a) year for miracles. maybe it was. i think it was 'the year of scaffolding' personally. this year would be 'the year of air'. the year that i breathed easier. things made midly more sense.

and still. how far we all drift from one another. let's be real a moment, i'm a new(est) myself to be sure, but there's still that heavy curtain. and every now and then, from behind that curtain i hear a voice, or a phantom hand comes out and taps me on my shoulder and i remember everything that was. and it makes me soo... what's the word? what? i don't know.

____things that make me comfortable, a LIST:

____1. blueberry muffins. with tea. (warmed up? yes, thankyou!)
____2. 2-minute noodles
____3. sitting in the darkness of the cinema watching previews lost in my frozen coke
____4. lip-kissing
____5. people saying to me it'll be ok baby
____6. falling asleep/resting my head in people's laps
____7. heavy blankets
____8. holding a book to my chest when i walk
____9. reminding myself i am no(one)thing. (i love to feel insignificant. it is the only remedy to my narcissism)

where was i?
drifting plainly, silently away. how much i am loving being a new person. a person no one knows. dear friends i have right now: i hope you never know me. i hope there are no ties of love and history that bind us. i hope i am always that kid who comes out and makes dirty jokes and doesn't drink. that is enough. i hope never to anything ever again. all that was too heavy. life is too messy a tangle to be caught up in. yes. i believe that.

(i am soo behind in correspondence).

i am sick you see.
i rode it like i stole it.
i smoked it to the filter.
i sat for 22 hours straight and wrote my paper.
then my body convulsed into fits, i sweated uncontrollably, and i felt almost might throw up. then i worked some more, and eventually fell into a 14 hour slumber from which i was disturbed every half hour with a jabbing percussive pain in the frontal lobe of my brain.

now it is back down to sniffles.
soon it will be my self again.
and i'll ride it again.
smoke it again.
burn it again.
and piss the flames back out again.

my phone is on silent because i hate noise.

there is no language for what i want to say.
i'll try again later when i have a better idea.

cadenza: a letter to monz

____something opens our wings

________Rumi















untitled, [brett walker]


dear znoM,

the thing is i don't know you see... it's not apparent to me. soo many things aren't, and this is one of them. i lack any sense of subjectivity, only that i sense internal (dis)pleasure.

i want to say some things, but first i want to sit here quietly with you for a while. and not say them. i want to not have to say them. i don't want to say them at all.



[removed by the author an hour after writing]




thankyou for the notebooks. they're a beautiful color. the CDs you first made me are that color. i wonder if you knew that. if that's why you picked them. in any case. i like that amongst the battered black volumes of notebooks that brood together in the corner of the second-last shelf of my bookshelf, there will be three delicate scarlet-leaves. 'yes' and 'yes' and 'yes' i'll call them. yes, come here. yes indeed i agree. yes to everything.

only now, i have to find a story for them. one that is a little bit bigger than we are. than i am anyway. it is all soo yesterday.

i'm not making any sense.

(maybe that's the problem i'm not aware of).

with thanks and greatest much love
q

call me and tell me a joke to keep me awake in this traffic

II. "The Ratio Decidendi" of a Case in so far as "the" Implies that there is One and Only One Such, is Probably a Meaningless Category

(the second heading in Chapter 7 of Precedent and Law Julius Stone)








courtesy overduerent


i missed sunset because i was asleep on my sofa. and out there people did what people do, and cars made noises as they drove on to unseen futures. and unforseen futures sat on sofas, a little tired too, and waited for cars they've never dreamed of to come upon them. and we all wait and look around a little self-consciously, cross our arms for a few moments, before feeling still more awkward and uncrossing them again.

it seems (upon waking, my brain resuming its by-default function with little concern for what the rest of me is.does.wants to do),

____Then love until we bleed
____Then fall apart in parts

seems to be a most adequate summary of it. on too many levels. (scratch the back of my neck where little hairs have sprouted, new colonies. i am sprouting protein-flowers. i am just a different kind of garden).

the fan twirling trips me out a little. something about sinusoidal motion is soo calming (the beach) and soo unnerving (the beach). there is something soo delightful in the notion of something novel (shooting-stars!), something soo incredible and new new new in a way that is new, like (new(est)) love or recently discovered flavors of ice-cream or the notion of ratio decidendi, which my brain uses as a toothpick to pick its teeth with. (spits something out, gross dude, and casually discards the pick.)

i'm going to have to formulate a list of healthy escapes from myself.

"do you want a bag of weed?"
"what?"
"a patient of mine couldn't afford to pay, and gave me a big bag, you smoke?"
"..."
"i can see you're thinking deeply"
[you have no idea]

"what do you mean she offered you weed?"
"she did, a whole bag"
"did you take it?"
"no. but i'm thinking of calling her back"
"damn. i used to smoke like... like... that's all i did."
"i never did. makes me dizzy."
"then why do you want it?"
"i need something"
"i feel that holmes"
"let's take up..."
"yoga?"
"no. fu&* that, i was thinking like a narcotic of some kind. or promiscuity."
"dude, you wish, you couldn't if you tried and i know cause you always try. then when the opportunity prevents itself you rout."
"i'm not sure you can use rout like that..."
"what _ ev _ er."
"should i get us the bag?"
"heck no."


Q, V4.3, BASIC PRINCIPLES OF RESTRUCTURE

- for every life-problem there is a suitable behavioral remedy.
- alterations of behavior are possible, and done judiciously will remedy life-problem.
- You do not exist. you are simply a conglomerate of habit and chance.
- habit can be remolded to make 'you' better.
- 'better' is a term defined by your own insecurity.
- insecurity can be sufficiently hidden with appropriate behavioral remedies. (buy & regularly wear a hat)
- if you feel like you are being corroded from the inside, that is insecurity. you will need more potent source of escapism. we recommend moving to Seattle for six weeks.


breakfast was a bowl of Kellog's Just Right! cereal and two RedBulls. Lunch i can't remember, that was something that happened before i fell asleep on the couch. dinner is something that perhaps exists in the unforseen future. every coffee, every energy drink, i can feel a tingle running my throat, a tightness in my abdomen as my body gripps intself for another spasm. i simply don't have the energy to do it any other way. i don't have the mental focus.

(mentally i promise myself, after this degree is over, to take a few months to go somewhere far and write a novel. this novel will be about all the things that happen randomly. nonrepetitively. just once, sometimes twice. whatever, just irregularly. anomalies. the interesting things. spontaneously. that i believe in, sparks. earthquakes. shooting-stars. shadows shifting to adjust to the high-beams of a car cutting through the dark too too late into a night... already a tinge of blue (you have to see it to understand the color... it's... black.blue. it's perfect.

if i am any color i am that.

i have to shave tomorrow.
(- self-presentation will affect the way you are percieved)

(i am too often floating)

yearning.

Let it been known that God's penmanship has been signed with a language called love

____J. Ivy
















i don't have a language for what i want to say right now. we are beyond words. i need you to come here. sit sit sit. here,yes, besides me. i need you to close your eyes and be lost in the music of this (these) moments with me. i need you to feel like you're floating. i'm going to touch you. it's important we rub our cheeks together. and hold hands. it's important i touch your hair, and you mine. it's important we scribble our bodies together so we can't tell the color of one from the other.

you can't know, you can't know just from syllogism, from representation by typographical or linguistic means what i'm saying. (and where am i right now? soo far away. soo deep inside another something)

i close my eyes and write blind.

is there a language anyone's discovered yet to cover transcendence? to cover that feeling that overcomes a person when you find: reflective happiness in some alone time, rather than a reclusive unhappiness with it. i am talking about collapsing inwards from skin to soul, i am talking about love (and it feels a little cardboard because no one is here to kiss me or hug me- no mind, love is alleverything enough that even alone, just the shape and color of the piano in the adjoining room, the distinct vibration of the air in this room, the feel of this couch supporting my back, the intense experience of existence can sometimes be overwhelming...

i'm talking about those insane moments you realize how enormous an idea (a concept) (a conception) it is to just be... to be a be amongst all this dust and sand and to be something that has a voice. a voice seems to me to be a most precious thing.

(god i want to dance right now. it seems only fitting. convulse. exorcise. catharsis. reaffirm.

i want to be big. i know that is a vain thing to say, but i want to be soo freaking god-damned huge, that just one of my fingers is the size of a caldender-month, and an eye brow is a European tour. three of my compliments should amount to universal love, and a kiss from lips to eyelid an atlas of sexuality.

ahh. it is impossible to say just what i mean!

there are no words for this.
words stop at the door of existence. they are for describing, not for feeling. they are for sympathy, not empathy.

if you were here you'd know.
here.

there is something soo incredible about heartbeats at night.

portraits of some moments

____Friends.

____How far friends are! They forget you,
____most days. They have to, I know; but still,
____it's lonely just being far and a friend.
____I put my hand out- this chair, this table-
____so near:touch, that's how to live.
____Call up a friend? All right, but the phone
____itself is what loves you, warm on your ear,
____on your hand. Or, you lift a pen
____to write- it's not that far person
____but this familiar pen that comforts.
____Near things: Friend, here's my hand.

________William Stafford





incomplete, Alicia Block



____gol.

'no i look terrible' you said. maybe you did, maybe you didn't. i don't know, but i felt it- and it showed too. in the photos its obvious, all smiling faces and my austere scowl.

and after another night sleeping on the floor, you in a bed- but with a cold, so i suppose it's not much better, and standing in the corner of a room looking for silence, 'how about now?'
'really?'
'i need it.'
'me too actually'
and so sat on opposite sides of an empty room and said prayers for everyabsolutely noth(every)thing.


____jeff & shadi

- JEFFREY!
- yes?
- sorry to storm in i got in i got in i got in!
- congratulations.
- um, can you please show some enthusiasm? I killed it!
- i knew you would, what do you want from me?, i knew you would.
- like scream or something.
- wait, let me call my wife, she'll scream for you.
-
- [ring]
-hello?
-hello?, Shadi?, here Q got in and wants someone to be excited for him
- WHA... he... reall... AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
- [smile]


____mar

that little bitch. you tell her, if she comes near me, i'm going to punch her in the face.
(ps i love you)


____gaz

- you never wear heels
- you have mischievous eyes
- we have the same eyes
- no, yours are worse
- no yours are
- no yours are
-no yours are


____monz

it's 2009.
half a decade we've been friends.
in numbers it's only 5, in moments it's...
in lifetimes it's at least several.

i can't remember not knowing you.

i want to tell you something no one else will understand:

i had a dream last night. i was in a large bed, watching old movies with an elderly lady. one finished, i put on another. she liked that i liked old movies. i felt comfortable. i woke up. i felt the saddest i've been in years. i can't think why. (dear soul: where were you? what was the story in your language?)

i'm listening to brahms and the rain. they interfere with one another so i don't know which sounds more natural. which makes more sense. which is more familiar.

but, 2009...

let's go to seattle.
really?
yes really.
when?
like... this weekend.
really?
yes really.
like... how?
like we'll drive.
to seattle?
yes.
yes!


____sepi

i come out my bedroom. yesterday this is. sunny sunday. i'm in shorts, she's standing in front of the refrigerator filling her water bottle, she's fully dressed.

when will the guests be here?
soon.
ok.

she turns to me. not a word, and shakes the bottle in my face so my entire torso is wet. i stare back at her a moment. her eye sparkles like when i was 13 and she last did something like that. (i'm sorry mom, you've had too hard a time. years since i've seen you be yourself). she's holding the bottle in one hand in front of her chest, i squeeze it quickly from either side. water leaps up like a fountain and she's drenched. she yelps, collects herself, and calmly as anything: right. you're going in the pool.
what?

with one hand to the front of my shorts i'm being dragged across wet tiles and slipping sliding cursing (LAUGHING) pushing against her soft but still-strong body (as she screams at the top of her lungs) we fight our way out the open sliding door (no one having quite the clear advantage yet) and you're going in no YOU'RE going in no YOU'RE going in, and finally

we're both in.

i haven't felt 13 since i was 8.
it's been a long time.

random letter excusing myself from yoga

i actually only had something really short to say, but suddenly i'm overcome with the urge to write. this is bad. (for you). this happens sometimes, i have the urge to write, and... what i often do is scan through my list of facebook not-really-kinda-once-upon-a-time friends and i pick one i haven't spoken to in ages (so that i have some perceived impunity) and i let loose.

but i see you everyday. so this isn't as comfortable as it needs to be. i could go and write on my blog, but it'd take ages to set it up and format and find a pic and all that blah blah blah aestheticisms.

i can't make it to yoga.

i'm going to tell you why.

for 19 days out of every year i fast. it seems innocuous enough. people of every religion have been doing it from time immemorial. sometimes there are secular causes too. (i'm not talking about drought in Rwanda either). Shakespeare has his players fast out of respect. Homer has people fast in honor of the gods.

but the odd thing isn't really hunger pangs, those are easily enough managed. it's more... unforeseeable reactions... things you might do or say, it's alot like being a rawer you. more you. more thoroughly you. you, but more raw. (like organic food. i know i'm titillating your taste-buds right now, but do try and concentrate, i'm opening up to you here).

alot is made of 'symbolic meaning' to physical demonstrations. this is something 'Faithful' people love to say. I find it usually is a half-baked excuse to cover up some flaw of reason or dogma, and i'm very suspicious of 'but think of the symbolic meaning of the act!' type expositions. So i don't know about that stuff. But what i do know, is that when you fast, perhaps because your sleep cycles are skewed, and because you are hungry and your fuse is a little short(er), and because you feel a little lost, and a little disconnected from the rest of humanity... there are certain whispers you hear.

little things. nudges from shadows. unexpected patterns in the fabric of sofas. people's faces alter just minutely.

i feel strange strengths open up within myself. i know that's a weird thing to say, but there... some people have a statue-esque grandeur to them. they look at you with a certain steadfastness, be it of cause, or purpose, or (very best!) of selfdom. Selfdom is obviously one of my made up words. It means: the quality of being yourself, owning yourself. I am very concerned about this point, of being myself. I feel very much that life is a long-process of drawing closer and closer to being who i really am. free of... frills and insecurities and fears and inhibitions. Given our young age, I suppose there is still soo much uphill to climb.

But this is why the fast is such a strange time. Dichotomy abounds, so that while in certain regards i feel soo powerful, and so pleased with certain of my qualities, i am simultaneously filled with rather extreme measures of self-loathing and disappointment. Certain qualities i thought i had mastered make their recapitulation, and i see that, despite i aspire to a most empathetic manner, intent, and approach... i am still soo far from being a person who is a 'source of love and solace to the hearts and minds of people everywhere'. (i particularly like that phrase).

this is perhaps why i retract a little from the company of men and women during my 19-days of fasting. a desire to concentrate on these crucial questions. a time of questioning, and a time of silent groping for mute answers. i wonder if there is ever a question of importance, that can be answered conclusively.

1. do you love me?
2. what is the definition of gravity?
3. how can there be an all-knowing god and still be room for free-will?
4. will i ever forgive myself for being me?

those BIG questions. the most fundamental ones. The ones that are our bricks, and more often, the schisms between our bricks. (and how much i hate walls).

I like yoga. I like it alot. I enjoy the counter-intuitiveness of it. the sensation of being soo strained and tested while remaining completely motionless. It is an exercise in potential energy (like moments leading to first-kisses). (magnetism) (watching something fall off a table, with a certain god-like pleasure from knowing it would happen any second now). (that tension).

i also like the meditation at the end. that feeling of being lost in a silence and a dreamless, unrecordable pit of nothing... if memory cannot absorb it it is nothing. (and being something of an existentialite, i yearn for nothingness and blackness and disappearance in a very real way). it is like slipping into a crack, a moment away from yourself. from the burden of carrying yourself (and the heavy bag of memory and fantasy and consistency of myself i carry). (how i hate knowing all the decisions, all the probabilities of my self. (which is why from time to time it's important to do something so atypical, soo uncharacteristic, soo distant from yourself so as to confused even you, who goes home and stares at the mirror and says:
how'd you do that?
how'd you think to say that?
i can't believe you're actually wearing those jeans!
i can't believe you drive a smart car.
i can't believe you wrote this random-ass letter to someone.

things like that.

i'm not coming to yoga. but i think what i'll do is this,
when i'm done being philosophizer-unextrordinaire,
i'm going to take you to the coolest place by the beach somewhere, and you can tease me about being a misogynist, baby-killing, imperialist consumer-lover,
and i can call you a jasmine-scented, organic cow-pee-pie-eating hippie. and we can laugh. which is always a most wonderful addition to any almost wonderful day.

in the meantime, enjoy your earliest morning, and yoga, and (don't hold your breath), and i'll see you after March 21st (when i can eat sleep drink normally again) at yoga and you can show me how fluently you can pull off the one-foot-in-mouth-whilst-dancing-like-a-freakazoid-polaroid-tree-hug-position.

with best
sincerity(ily)

Q person. ya know, that guy.

fragments (thoughts)

pk by .littlegirlblue


QUESTIONS THAT SOMETIMES TROUBLE BE, A LIST:

__- what happens after?
__- do you love me?
__- how are you feeling?
__- how's life?
__- what was Haifa like?
__- why do you believe in (a) god?
__- how long since you had sex?
__- where do you call home?
__- wanna hang out sometime?


i can't write right now. if i could i would. i'd write about the things i love and the things i love writing about:

women, and all the things about them, eyes and their regular breaths when they sleep on your chest, and their ugly toe-nail polish, and their getting annoyed over nothing, and the shape of their hands, and still difficulties unfastening bra-straps,
__and my piano has gathered soo much dust and isn't speaking to me, and the rain (after i asked soo soo nicely) promised to sit besides me a few days just to encourage me to feel better and i might find someone who wants to wear a big jacket and sit out on the wet grass with me under the dark.heavy night and listen to the beach and the rain (and not know which from which) and kiss for no reason other than that seems to be the sort of thing a person does in a situation like that and i could use the affection anyway, i can always use the affection,
__and failure which is a meanspirited little bitch who hides and could jump out at any time and slap you back into red-faced tears
__and my father and my sister and my mother, and my friends, and the feel of my friends' breasts and needing to go to the gym because i have too much bottled up too too much too much inside that if unreleased lodges itself in muscle walls and cardiac arteries and mute shadows
__and i want to talk about time and the line i really wanted to use today, somewhere, somehow was:

you find you are soo far from yourself. from where and who you are. like falling asleep on the train and waking up to a new world.

also, she tried to challenge me and said:

____LESSON 1: How to be succinct.

____(take everything you just said to me and turn it into: "I miss you")

and perhaps she was right, perhaps that was what i meant. what writer actually knows what they mean?, none that i know. the bulk of us interact with words like blind-men with piano keys or photographers with foreign landscapes, never really understanding whats or whys or hows, but just blahblahblahing and spitting it all out and letting our fingertips do the talking and in the end stand back and think: yes. that is actually what i did mean. who knew.

and i take her up on her lesson;

____"when we hug i use your heart"

and i think about that feeling. and how addictive it is. and the last time i had it. and a list of sad old names scrolls through my head. a list of places. a list of moments... first few times Mar and i had chai at Douzan. helping Ashley move out of Westwood. Vanessa's occasional: HELP! or SOS emails/texts/phonecalls (followed by: what happened dear?, like clockwork, sure as tragedy, once ever few months i'll see the carosel come around)

but what am i trying to say that's lodged in my throat that i cannot quite say?

____(maybe i'm just hungry. maybe that's all it is.

(and my mother looks at me worriedly and says: no baby. the whole world doesn't hate you. you just impose your misperceptions of the world onto yourself. if you feel like you hate you, you decide everyone else must too. they don't. no one hates you.
me: some people do.
mom: few.
me: yeah. maybe.
mom: yes. definitely.
me:
mom:
me:
mom:
me:

mom:

me:

mom: more tea?
me: yes please.

huh? (what?) What? (nevermind.) [some... everything(s)

untitled, [brett walker]


____i. (i miss LA)
these raindrops are fat. they make massive splattering noises on the windshield like bug-collisions on interstate roads. she lifts her foot up a bit and the car slows (but makes more noise, she doesn't understand that). tropical weather confuses her. rain in the summer: sticky and moist so that it looks like palm trees are sweating. she misses summer. a different kind of summer. a summer somewhere else.


____ii. (things i need to say just right now without censoring, A LIST:
__1. loneliness, i think, is a thing like a shadow. a consistent potential energy, a constant possibility. like plates and cutlery that are always liable to fall off a table. a thing that is always in a cabinet or under a sofa, or cut diagonally across a sidewalk: ready and breathing imperceptible breaths and crouching and yawning and waiting to slowly slide up to you and put its arm around you like the longest lostest friend you've never had.

__2. why am i having problems discerning the relative sizes of things? so that Wednesday afternoon looks like a small-sour-myfavorite!-green apple, and my forearms are like prunes and the fan whirring above me is identical to the storm snapping palm trees outside.

__3. Every sidewalk turns back onto itself. Even maps and globes return to the same point. Birds and dogs. (nothing ends. how can something end? nothing_ever_ends. ends make no sense) Even stars the next night are back in the same place: home. (home. home. home. home. home. Where is home now?

__4. i'm going to find you. i'm going to push your hair out of your face. your eyes will be pretty. when it's dark, eyes are always incredible. i'm going to hold off for a few moments to feel the electrical surge (i need that electrical surge, i'm addicted to it, it's my crack), i'm going to listen and hear the world inhale and hold its breath as the universe expands and expands and expands to make space for our soon-to-be-maybe-never-this-happened-before-whatwhatwhat, and then, like falling (breaking (being stolen away from yourself (losing a piece of paper in a gust of wind (grape-juice (lost (and when i look up, you'll look back at me and won't regret me and i'm going to grow roots and will my hair to dust and my skin to stone and that will be just enough and i want to just be there and...
______________________(exhale q. exhale.


____iii. (lay down your arms)
paper grows around me.
mounds.
__(it is the internal organs.
_soon the heart will beat on its own.
and its white skin, white eyes, white hair, white soul, white paperskin
will wrap around me like sails.
like the froth of a crashed (never to be recovered) wave,
____what Who taught me to love her?

and she is soo silent. the fan occasionally pushes a page away from her
white cheeks, and she makes a little gasp.
i lose myself.
such stillness in a lover.
such stillness.

(white feet with white toes and white ankles with white soles
and i learned how to love and how to lie(break)(die) simultaneously.

a new book on the table. (400 more freckles) (she is complete)

come my love,
together we can merge, annhiliate, disappear.

fear and self-loathing during the fast (a monkey-wrench to the fairytale)

i can't block out the sound of dance music from the bar next door. some kid sits on the rail besides me and shouts nonsense into his phone. he has hair cut like a peacock and is too ostentatious to be tolerable. for a few moments i wonder about standing up suddenly so my chair falls backwards, picking up my table with one arm, grabbing it around its leg, and throwing it full pelt towards the son-of-a-bitch to cause maximum damage. a few moments later, i decide against it, and turn the page of my book. the wind shifts and i lose my page. MOTHER F*CKER i howl to myself. (and flip it back too easily to where it was. no problem. no problem at all, we're ok here. we're ok).

i'm frayed. my glasses hurt my face. i touch my skin on the drive home and it feels like a foreign material. when i was 9 my grandfather took me to the San Diego zoo and i rode an elephant. my face feels like its hide. my breath smells of decomposing internal organs. my blood is acidic, and in my mouth, there are two loci of pain. (this is where my fangs are growing out). i can't tell what time it is. it is too loud. i put on my headphones and skip through 15 songs in 2 minutes. i cannot replicate the sound of silence accurately enough. i cannot tolerate silence itself, it is the too-loudest thing.

someone sends me a forwarded email about how transcendent they feel while fasting. i grit my teeth and try and diminish the effusive rush of homicide i feel towards them. they tell me how when they neglect their body and concentrate their thoughts on 'the spiritual' they find freedom. (i haven't drunk in hours, i spit a mouthful of sickly saliva at the floor by their feet. this intimidates them into silence). as an individual, i have a non-healthy repugnance of my nails and inhalations and erections as it is. (though i take great pains to venerate these same said qualities. this dichotomy forms the basis of my internal self-loathing, and will no doubt be a point of tremendous suffering to my future wife and children. who will no doubt eventually abandon me to my filthy confusions, thereby allowing me (in my head) to achieve the meticulous and well-planned self-sabotage i have already resigned myself to experiencing) the Fast does nothing but concentrate my disgust and disable my usual aspiration towards the sublime. it perturbs my usual equanimity so that i spend all day concentrating on the shape of my fingertips, the peristaltic motions of my abdominal muscles, the redirection of blood into my groin.

it fills me with lust and fear and i am cold and hot simultaneously. i'm irascible and jealous and my insecurity makes a reprise in szforzando notes. my misanthropy grows uncontrollable. for 19 days every year, i am overcome knee-deep in the filth of myself (while everyone else flies around feeling liberated of their skin, i, for 19 days, am forced to retrace every mistake, every misword pronounced, every misdecision relived, ever scar bruise or hump is traced and retraced and right now i want to throw up 26 years worth of myself and screw it all back to oblivion.

for 19 days i hate god and religion, and stop-lights and anyone else who wants to tell me what to do. (and i can't stand the colour of sunrise and i can't tell 4am from noon, and i'm narcoleptically falling asleep in every whichwaywhere and i caffeinate myself from sunset to sunrise just to manage the things i'm supposed to do to get through life.school.normality etc etc.

(mentally i commit myself to apostasy as soon as the fast is over). (every year).

i don't dare interact with my friends and i try and spend as much time alone as possible. thus i feel lonely. my body is not a thing i am familiar with. it smells and moves funny. my muscles lose their tone and i start to morph into a blob of myself. a smear. (i exhale and hear my ribs crack. my bones are turning hollow. i'm osteoporotic now, great). i've ignored my soul for a week now. all my thoughts are centred on life and living... on being alive... on survival... on nutriton and replication and anhiliation. i am all beast. i don't shave or do my hair in the mornings. my eyes are black around and in and out because i cannot distinguish night from day. i refuse to answer my phone.

finally i rise from the coffee shop. it's too damned noisy. the wind is soo pleasant, i need the air, but it can't pick one direction to flow from and it makes me dizzy. the soda water i'm drinking fills me with sails and i feel white sheets inside my abdomen dragging me around. my head hurts from the 2 coffees, 2 energy drinks, and load of sugar i've consumed in the last 90 minutes to try and keep me awake long enough to read the 120 pages i have to present tomorrow morning. i am failing on all counts. my own body is reneging on me. my soul feels neglected. all i can think about is f*cking and eating and measuring my own grave to fall in.

why do it then? she says.
____- because every year i have it's been the worst year of my life.
____- how many is that?
____- like... four now.
____- the four worst years of your life?
____- yes. (and also the four best).
____- i don't get it.
____- the worst years of your life are where the stories are. that's where... things happen(ed).
____- you do this to collect stories?
____- isn't that the point of life?
____- you're crazy, no! the point is like... to be happy. or something. like that.
____- bullshit. you remember stories. you remember 'lessons'. it's like... wisdom.
____- i think you're insane.

i hate your guts. all of you. i want you all to die.

(in 4 hours i'm going to wake up and pray to be forgiven for everything i've just said)

Memorial Day Weekend, Hollis Brown Thornton


i have nothing to say (add) (reclaim). only that Beirut has some music out and the dark circus only Beirut knows about makes me want to curl up into a little nothing in the corner of a room where the adults are laughing and playing cards, and be small and tiny and again (always) (never-stopped) a lost child, am nothing better than.

in other news i am observing slowly while my body diminishes again (once a year i destroy myself through-and-through). i collapse into narcoleptic fits at all hours, and occasionally refuse to sleep before 5:30am out of rebellion. (though no one seems to care whether i do or not). (the barista at the 24-hour coffee place is happy for the company though, and we talk a little, before we realize we're running in different directions and she goes back to her counter and i to my staring idly away).

also there is the problem of law school that has grown and gathered its strength and now sits at every doorstep smiling at me more intimidating and more obscenely busy than the last doorway. i have too many everything's to do. i should not be sitting here. i should not have gotten up only at 10am. i should not have gone to sleep at only 9pm. i should not have anything anythinged. i should not have. i should have sat in the library till i merged with the books and led the rebellion back to a tree age. all those pages quietly (the silent shall inherit the earth) creeping back towards soil. when the kids show up in the morning every Principles of Tortuous Liability cover is plastered into a tree-trunk or indeterminate liability is etched ever so faintly on a leaf.

let's get shakey after school. let's break the rules. let's do that. let's go crazy.

i am tempted, out of a spite that has no real origin, (only that during the fast i am overcome with a general dislike of anything slightly organized or authoritative) to call a sprint race, me and my soul. i run through 14 terribly reprehensible experiences, and see if my soul can hang on tight enough to be standing with me on the other side. OR, if through that bastard's sneeky push-pull-gravity-party-trick, (s)he'll manage to derail the self-loathing express back off the sprint track.

always it is too hot.
i will not slow this cant till it rains i stand by this.

there is no good excuse for being human.

7 images of the beach at night (mikrokosmos)

__tombs full of soundless bones,
__the heart threading a tunnel,
__a dark, dark tunnel:

______Pablo Neruda








untitled, Lina Scheynlus


____1.
another satellite. barely perceptible. an ant. darting.
space's bread-crumb. everyone soo hungry.
edges past something blackest black.
winks momentarily,
__and is gone.


____2.
my head is on a grey rock. perfectly smooth, time does that. eternity irons it all out.
the ocean is a lunatic, and mumbles to herself the mess she's gotten her hair in,
she froths at the mouth, and a thread of saliva finds my foot,
i look up a second, and close my eyes
again to sleep.


____3.
my bedroom floor, my hair, my bed, sand everywhere.
i bring my dreams home, and hang them out on a line.


____4.
- what about it? the air.
- why do you always do that with your chest?
- exhale?
- [laughs] no! (yes
- it's a prerequisite for being alive.
- no!, i mean, ya know...
- sigh?
- yeah
- there's less air than i remember. this worries me.
- what?
- huh?
- nevermind.


____5.
besides us a young couple sits. laughs. i see the red of their cigarette eyes.
i remember how i always feel left out of everything.
why?
because i am.
how?
i is soo small.
what about my i?
no, mine is different.


____6.
i hug my knees to my chest
watch a wave surround the rock beneath me
i am an island unto myself
i am a mermaid
(everything is black and white


____7.
half the moon, but bright. soo too bright.
nosy. wants to see everything.
the clouds won't go near it,
work their way around.
sclera to sclera we meet,
and i lose.

auto-insomniac (thoughts)

void, Visual Age


i've had the car a while now, it is familiar now. i drive it easily. Russian dolls. increasing in machinery. my soul (1). my body (2). this car (3). one inside the other. Russian dolls.
____ease around a corner, now press gas, 3:30am, yellow lights, blurred road, driving a little like a drunk, swervey-like. it's ok. i did dream of her a few times. some months ago it was now. i know it sounds stupid, but i really think... how can i say this so it doesn't sound lame? (what? okok- basically, i don't know if it was my soul reaching out to her; or hers to me. but for whatever reason, i think we drunk-dialled each other. spiritually. just... to say hey, ya know? we kinda stumbled onto each other. it was weird. random bursts of conversation float through my head.

besides my front door the Black Sea sleeps. like a dog or something like that. it is always there, sometimes purring at me as i come in and out. people like us, it's always around the corner, the next episode or whatever. tonight i avoid it. though i'm tempted to sit besides it for a while in the stale moist air (like tonnes of spit evaporated into the air. it's soo hot and sticky). pretend it's martha's shadow. a cigarette or two. maybe listen to southern bar music. i don't drink or smoke. when i want to destroy myself, i intoxicate myself with unique molecules my brain makes all on its own. it's like a finely powdered glass. i can shred the whole of my insides, all of it, without lifting glass or lighter. it's all me baby. soo clean.

not sleeping. 3:57am. not sleeping. think about it Q, a year ago, it was the worst worst worst time of your life, remember? (i mentally try and avoid remembering, i think away, think away, think of piano keys that's safe, piano keys) and now look! you're much happier, you look soo much happier. look at you, you're actually eating again!

the fan twirls. after the library closed, i walked to get ice-cream. i stopped for a frozen coke instead. and walked around and made small talk. then i rolled past a friend's house and talked to him about a letter we're going to write his wife when his divorce date comes around. "i know what you mean. a pivot point. to mark real history. to curtail the blurring of memory. a requiem" exactly, he nods with red eyes. i feel a little ill talking about it. i send out a text message. coffee? now? it's 2am! she's already in bed. i feel left out. fine fine fine. we go to coffee, but don't talk about his letter anymore.

i'm making a habit of lying on sand in the evenings looking up, bivouacking, bare back and sand so all my clothes are covered in grains. my car. my hair. all the time. i have seen too few shooting stars. in 26 years one. in the last four nights 4. (also two satellites). they move soo fast in their eliptical orbits.

(4:02am) (i'll get breakfast soon, and just sleep sleep sleep forever) (never wake up) (never want to) (never again) (don't know why) (no reason why) (don't need a reason why) (don't undersatnd any of it) (can't) (won't) (are there stories in all this?

the car turns a final corner and i'll be home soon. i notice there are no cars on the road. finally. i have inherited the earth. it is mine. it is mine and no one else's. this new me has finally won the game. last bastard standing. this saliva sky. this toxic light. these empty streets. all mine. (hurrah). all i ever want(ed) was to be a writer. to writer to myself about the few things i like to writer about and it be soo weird and usually no one likes anyway, no one reads anyway, no one gets anyway, no one cares anyway- really wouldn't cause anyone too much trouble ya know? just another night-owl in another dimly lit room trying to exonerate himself from himself. trying to ameliorate everything i've ever said. trying to undo all the decisions. reform my eyebrows into more distinct shapes. sand the cracks out of my forehead. rewritering myself into a form that's more... appropriate. more workable. that's all. a sculptor who doesn't like getting his hands dirty.

(under the stars she shows me another satellite. i'm terrible at spotting them. i stare at the same single spot, the same single dot for half an hour i swear and don't look away. in a few years my glance will reach its surface and someone will feel self-conscious. are you blind! right there! ooohhhh. i have goosebumps. she finds that funny. she pulls me into a spoon and holds my hand on her chest. she smells like girl. i tell her that and she laughs at it. my face is in her hair. i kiss her neck and she giggles softly. still. she doesn't turn to kiss me back so i roll away, pushing aside an ocean of sand. i'm covered in it, i'm white as a cloud. i'm a heroin-piniata. she pulls me back into the spoon. (i'm soo confused right now.
____(at last i ignore her. and the smell of girl that she has. and the feel of her breast which she's holding my hand near. i look back up and wonder about that too-fast moving satellite. stuck. turning around itself. over and over. dark night dark night dark night. unable to sleep. unable to stop. where there is no breath for it to have.

(4:11am)
i swear alot nowadays.

f * c k .