So I think to myself when I’m trying not to, and it happens more often than I would like to think to myself, but nonetheless I keep thinking.
I keep wondering where I went wrong. Not sympathetically, but hypothetically, what the hell happened.
Everything is different but it’s kind of the same that I thought it would be, but I never thought it would be anything and it’s not.
So where do we go from here? I mean, where are we going. Which way are we going to take next turn? Are we headed for a sunrise or a sunset? Does it matter to you, it doesn’t but maybe when you grow up, my words will mean something to you.
Maybe so; maybe not.
I wonder what would have happened if we were together. I try not to think about you, but your are always going to be right there, in my way and in every other thought, every other day.
Perhaps if I could turn days into triplets, then quartets, then maybe jazz—non-conformist chaos coming going far away, like the times and the lost days.
I wonder why I left work during the middle of lunch still.
When I realized he saw me beside the broken pieces of our clumpy jagged edges of the glass zebra, he may have been stung like a match head to the temple, that I was the one he saw there, realizing that the pieces of broken jagged clumpy were pieces of my irreparable goddamn heart.
“Shut the hell up,” Jemeriah reminded me. He wasn’t happy that my boyfriend wouldn’t drive to get my wisdom teeth out.
The dentist hadn’t taken into account that I was thin from my recent long bout with adult chicken pox, and the prescribed medication was unlike any other I had ever.
EVER. He wasn’t there when I got home nor were the pieces of the zebra.
So I nodded to acknowledge where I was now, and felt faint and slightly sick with no ease to my love, then made my way out the door. I shut the massiveleadish steele thing and tried to skip unsuccessfully down the stairway to the lot. I sitting there on the bus bench for three hours before I hailed a cab back home.
I remember the way he saw me, and I saw him suspended there in time and space and he still loved me. I drank him all the time he was around me, which was a lot, and I smelled and let him saturate my own suggestion of being near him – I enjoyed enjoying, being enjoyed, enjoying being enjoyed. he had my heart, he mythically stole it, like a slick Incubus, thief as he stole my love and man; I wonder why he didn’t skip class and just fuckin pick me up from serious wisdom tooth surgery.
Oh so earlier …. The dentist, meanwhile was apparently talking to my friends and I occasionally nodded and was probably really druggy, I told the staff I loved them and would see them soon. Then Jeremiah gave my keys to my freshly ex boyfriend and I dozed while he ordered me scripts at the store.
Chasing him down Tennessee in my old Camaro, crying “GODDDD-SSSPEEEEDDD!!!” to symbolize a moment of great length and filled with cheese, I sure as all hell was not getting the message.
I said yes to him that evening as twilight as his eyes were – I was in love, and hell, he knew it would work. He was so intelligent. I didn’t foresee his lack of thought for those years.
I saw him see me later, while I was fake knitting and fake chewing gum. he asked me which was more fun. I said it’s more fun seeing what makes you crack up more.
“What makes YOU crack up?”
“The fake gum because of the Fake TMJ?”
“Fake you!” We both laughed.
I melted. I felt cocky then said, “Fake knitting is stupid.”
“Stupid is faking- stupid faking fakers!”
I want to be more than what I faked and fucked with.
I am gonna take this opportunity to plead sanity and love for myself and psychological esteem and less panic and happiness and unconditional love and have more time to enjoy and learn from it, cheesy perhaps, believe me, I am not selling a story here.
Consider the characteristics or conditions of all the substance in your intrinsic perception, such as the entities which one can identify as a solid state or a liquid state, (or even a gaseous state), and you believe you know by the very nature of the “subject,” to be just what it is, because that truth is fundamental. Now, suppose these primary dimensions of your reality are permuted, a metamorphosis which transforms every element, transcending everything so that it is the not only opposite of what it may have once been perceived as but the same in it’s lack of form and no law of the universe has any law or harmony, (the gaseous factors would really be astounding) and everything is nothing, and all that is or is not, is a contradiction of the same problem.
The concrete is now the abstract.
The trivium is equal to the empty paradox.
The continuum is now part of absolute zero.
The phone buzzed and I saw two new messages. One was a tangible items requiring some thought and input from certain people involved.
The second message was clearly meant to test me although a immediate result was void of reason and consequence and was disguised emptiness. Support of an broken statement that was neither subjective or objective.
Alright, you lost me – I am off the trail of interest; you may kindly fuck off. I can shake off the pixelated perception you painted me. A blank canvass of nothing.
This cognitive action led to my next transitory side-effect which was after quickly reviewing the causal theory of epiphenomenalism (physical events have mental effects, but mental events have no effects of any kind) how very useless it was to philosophize at this time, how tired my mind was, then snip-snapping right on back to my strenuously draining brooding of the undetermined unknown and how that unknown was always about to increase in conscious life.
There are the places at which you are not, or perhaps where you would rather be, not be, won’t be, the list within the list within the list is infinite, but my point is that the location of where you are (or where you ain’t) is probably the most important place you could ever be. Where you’re not is: any, some, or everywhere you could be, certainly, of course when you have but a critical amount of “time” remaining to reconsider every place where you ever were which led me to this last circumstance in which I was currently entangled, where I was not was anywhere but where I was, at a condition labeled as the end of one’s lifetime; this is the place where you last were, and your mind works itself backwards, instinctively and recklessly, and flashes these excruciating images, words, colors, lines and limits, gaps and speculation, theories, people, pets, regrets, media, motions, accidents, mistakes, recoveries, tastes, dreams, nightmares, mischief, games, fame, humiliation, embarrassment, acceptance, awards, rewards, faith, apathy, remorse, anxiety, true faith, true love, true sex, true blueness of the purest skies, waters, and eyes; good fortune, good graces, all those artistic creations….
The worst part was always there: The realization of having to contemplate how anything could be even worse than the worst realization you can contemplate. To me it was feeling that I was departing without saying goodbye; abruptly leaving the party early, sneaking out irresponsibly and silently, the one who didn’t even say, “later on,” and never came back.
During these mangled, mingled conjunctions of deliberation, I disappeared.
I had made an important decision that drizzly December lunch hour, a choice that might have been a major turning point, or one that made me realize I couldn’t trust myself, control molecular mutations that were implanted in my DNA, but were fertilized by the irony of life and made me older, smarter, and a riddle unto my own psyche.
I left the office promptly at 11:45 am and it took the usual 3 minutes to get from my desk to the elevator to the front door and down the dozen stairs to the front green and I swiftly broke right up Maroon Hill two blocks west, slushing hurriedly up to the garden gates, and then made haste past the goat petting zoo.
Temporary images whirled past me as I lost more seconds of my hour and tore down to the Landing, the hillside slanted toward sea level and my spine started to burn as my speed increased, the spring humidity filling my lungs with heavy water and my terror elevated to a state of shocking horror for that which broke so many on the same journey to the ends of the earth, the beginnings of the ends of the furiously confused souls who came before me, live amongst me, and will be as unclean with sense of extreme compound awe, as we run past the calm, self-controlled, the composed egos whose filthy poised smirks made our thoughts race faster than our throbbing hearts as we stole away from the sun and found ourselves caught between the past and the future, between the land and the sky, the true and the false, not by choice, but by the means in which we ran though life with desperation and glory. We were born running, we choked on our conscious intensity, and eventually we realize would all die running.
I just wasn’t sure where I was going, but I had to keep on, or let the world stop and close me in its carriage, the cradles of the casual, the place you stop to take a breath is the last exit on the last highway.
Gravity pulled me down the street and I lunged forward as hard as I could, fearing and seemingly unfearful of the fact that my little heart felt determined to blow up in its madness to pump blood into my pulsating limbs, but also my clear head, falling into the ground, falling before I could get anywhere, falling before I reached the new race, the next step to the next step, the next path that always awoke and stirred my soul.
I stumbled on the gravel and drove forth to the liquid at the end of the Landing, the people and children and dogs and boats were the same day after day with faces of security and familiar sanctuary.
I dove into the shallow water and cried the familiar war cry of the storyteller who finally realized to give up on ever ending a tale. Nothing ever ends anyway.
Does one ever think that when one approaches the front door to answer it, the casual ritual often prevents us from employing our critical thinking – measuring and inductive reasoning – which may have spared us a new experience and not have ever impacted our conscious subjectivity and embedded an apprehension, or a logic, or a system of your interpretation of that moment forward; and you wake up and decide things and going to be different. Remember, you have options; you have three doors to choose from and millions of pages to reference. You are what you know, that’s what page I am on this evening. I am writing them as quickly as you try to figure out why the hell you are trying to figure out what the hell I am talking about you; you turn to face the same brick wall you built of systems and neurons – you flip the page over and it is blank; so you write… you write as a ritual – and you will not be anxious about the knock at your front because you don’t want to answer it and your writing intensifies.
“Great to see you; you look spectacular.”
I didn’t tell her I had never jumped out of a plane before, or that I didn’t really think it was an activity that I had condemned long ago; in fact I had recently signed a petition to ban parachuting in our county, but I did look spectacular, so fatefully, I returned a smile and looked at her dizzy, unsuspecting gaze, her unawkwardness at my rigid side, she was breathing happily while the little propellor aircraft whipped us about
“What?” I knew she didn’t know that I had heard her.
I held my self perfectly still. I grimaced after a minute of this trying activity. The little plane shook and shivered. When she nodded at me I realized I could use this time to take the opportunity to stop this madness once and for all: My new life of urgent truth had to begin now! The little aircraft dipped frightfully through an air pocket and I began to get the heebie jeebies and slow quakes jolted my arteries. Meanwhile I realized I hadn’t many seconds to begin this new path in life, I had to plot my thesis after I jumped out of a plane, landed and recovered. My hand moved to my side pocket and I compulsively rechecked the presence of my ID and paperwork. The parachuting certificate I handed to the pilot was legitimate after all; the online class was quite expensive and I didn’t cheat. I just lied. Of course, last night at Trick’s Tavern, I realized that I would have told her anything. I needed someone to make me feel interesting, and I suppose that is why I tell so many stories to those I am sure I will never see again and I am beginning to think that is a dangerous self discovery. To make matters worse, I was starting to be concerned about this and other self issued discoveries, and this was a rather bad time to start a rapid decline of self doubt.
“I heard you say you were adopted.”
“True, but please don’t forget what you don’t know.”
“I wish you didn’t listen so much.” Our conversation was confusing. I just started to talk about nothing.
“The sun isn’t going down any quicker. My sundown is high…. Have you ever heard of thought disorder?” I looked up at the ceiling of the airplane and recited the definition from Wikipedia, ” ‘In psychiatry, thought disorder or formal thought disorder is a term used to describe a pattern of disordered language use that is presumed to reflect disordered thinking. It is usually considered a symptom of psychotic mental illness although occasionally appears in other conditions. It is also known as knight’s move thinking referring to the nonlinear way a knight moves in chess.'”
“What?”
The noise of the engine grew louder.
“I said the noise of the engine is getting loud.”
“Don’t worry, anyway.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“True.” She looked at me but I stared out the window at the gravity.
The pilot’s husky orders startled me but I stood up and waited.
The rollercoaster and the hash brownies experience was cupcake compared to what ever happened next. I have little but flashes of the freefall, I did everything wrong and the ride home was long and my whole heart ached in every part of my body.
When I woke up from my nap that evening, I called her and informed her that I couldn’t see her anymore and had to dedicate myself to a new religion – one that would make me a better self. Then I told her that she made me see that I was a liar and a thief and I thanked her and hung up the phone. Well, I actually didn’t totally hang it up on the cradle; it was crooked and I wonder if she heard me playing the blues on my harmonica for the next two hours. Nothing happened for awhile after that. I memorized the words to Ave Maria and took a shower with my cap on. I drank a beer and waltzed down the street to Mrs. Armstrong’s house, two blocks away.
My piano lesson was louder than ever before that Sunday morning; the expressive and impressive strokes brought my instructor’s maid to tears, I closed my eyes for minutes at a time, hoping to get the liquid to soothe my windburnt eyeballs, and I occasionally pause to flip my bangs off my eyelashes and as awkward as this was, I reminded myself to smile when my teacher would criticize my artistic profile and she would smile and nod at the keys as she told me to pick it up again; but I laid it down even more until my heartache broke and let the sunshine ease in, then I would totally stop and slam my fists down like a defeated classical pianist in a cartoon. Like Schroeder. I went to the window loudly when Ms. _________ had to pick up a long distance phone call, and her cat walked across the keys of the baby grand as traffic groaned down the slushy highway in front of her house. The cat was deaf, I thought while a tickle of a giggle hummed in my throat, and the damn thing had no talent. I wished that Ms. ______ would come back so that she was not speaking to her far-away friend about the crappy student playing crappy impromptu for no apparent reason. But the doorbell rang, the distorted volume of the cheap tone made me shove my hands in my pockets like a guilty thief, and the cat got away from the tune.
“Bobby, go home,” she cupped her hand and she spoke to the door at me, “Go home NOW.”
She reminded me of a dial tone.
I wonder who invented the dial tone. Did that same person name it? Was it named “Dial Tone”? I could probably Google it, but I knew myself too well. I did not care. All I cared about was the free association bullshit which prompted me to relate a tone to a human being.
Today was the day I decided to change my life. I also changed my phone number, got a PO Box, a puppy, and a laptop. I almost added a handgun to that list, but after dry-heaving in the alley next to Paul’s Pawn on 12th and Hell Street, I delayed that purchase for my next life change. I chucked my old cell phone in a dumpster, I admired the lack of contacts I didn’t have on my new one, and I slung my leather laptop case over my shoulder, gave a nice little blind kid two dollars, and strolled through the east side with my new dog in a cage on a Ryder I had bought from a teenager who seemed to be a legitimate salesperson.
Today was the day my life decided to change me. by Wendy Clark (Hudson)
An abstract concerning the alarming disorder which is wrecking humanity/civilization/economy/aliens.
Ah, the discomforts of the last of the true spirits; the lack of triumph surrounding the bus pulling out of the San Francisco Mental-Plex, the sounds of the hysteria fading and the scent of damp dirt and dank cigars feel like sunlight in your ears; you fold your letter you wrote to your mother, the one you didn’t send to her because she wouldn’t have taken the news of your early release as a good thing, you rip up the yellow legal paper she will never see and you think about eating it, even though it wouldn’t taste as good as the garlic chicken and powdered toast you were still digesting from supper that evening, but you decide to go ahead and you slowly chew all sixteen pages of it, you hope you will digest these words and then salvation shall surface.
I stopped before I started to think about it again and I made myself a big bowl of spagetti and tried to locate the remote control so I could watch the new episode of “House” and I didn’t find it. So I started to think about it again. I made of list of what could happen if and when I couldn’t stop thinking about it. For an instance I recognized that nothing was ever the same and this kept happening over and over and over and over and over and under and over and the thoughts would never actually stop until my brain lost it’s energy and I died – though even that was a theory because many religious people would argue that there is life after death, which made me think that, damn! I needed to get some sleep. My eyes were dry and saw the dreary droplets of hope and love and then I thought about steam and vapor, solids, liquids, gas, wash, rinse, repent. My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the bored… I laughed out loud and wondered why I was standing in a shallow pool of mud rather than a deep one, metaphysically corrupt and meta contained in this slingshot I called my sanity. I was not as deprived of intellect as most everyone who got in my narrow passageway to getting through the day, but I couldn’t grasp if I was better off or not. Then I decided not to decide.
I stood in that spot, undecided and undeciding until I had to make a decision or something. I blinked hard, I slammed my eyes down and it hurt, and I decided to cry.
Everything I say comes back to taunt me. It doesn’t -haunt- me; haunting would be the verb I would use if I intended to say that there was another force behind it; meaning that one cannot haunt oneself but may surely taunt oneself – in word, thought, and deed; everything I say (if even in my own internal monologue – “Internal monologue?! She is crazy!” dialogue taken in context from “Scrubs”) is everything I imagine I am, and everything I think is impossible to say, which leads me to actually blame my old college roommate whom I shall call “Justin Tochber” for his own protection – but one night while we were being clever geniuses in his dorm room, two short doors from mine at the notorious Cash Hall at FSU, JT told me of an amazing way he had learned to become so darn smart (and he was just that); he told me that a mentor of his had asked him to try an exercise to increase his awareness and become a master of all that is brilliant – and this I will share with you, reader, but I must warn you that I may:
A. Be unable to explain it enough for you to actually be a student of this meta-mind play
B. Find something cooler to metagrobolize about while I get bored trying to explain it without actually being in human contact with you
C. Taunt myself for thinking that this was something I needed to write about and thus involve other people – shaming and humiliating my self
D. Laugh at you for being stupid enough to try this for several days and forget that you had a choice to ignore this exercise
E. Laugh at you for thinking that this is a stupid exercise
F. Forget what I was going to say here. Damn it.
Here is your mission if you choose to accept it, grasshoppers of the cyber world:
It’s simple: close your eyes (or leave them open and blink naturally, I don’t really care), then do this with your mind – Think about three separate phenomena at the same time. Then keep doing that all the time, for as long as you can; change ideas if one has run its course, but trade it with another one of equal or better value. Continue doing this while you are conversating, working, studying, driving, flying a helicopter, getting eaten by a shark or a panther, having intimate relations, sleeping, and especially when you are trying not to think about three ideas subsequently.
So I beg the question, does this mean I have thought disorder? Where did I put the receipt and how am I going to find it when I get home? What can I do to get these students I teach to pass the CSAP?
How where do butterflies sleep at night?
Choices are all in your imagination. As Ellis so weirdly wrecked another part of my and many other tender highly intelligent college kids lives when we read both past as well as the end of “American Psycho,” the words that finally proved that nothing was anything that it seemed except to oneself – This is not an exit.
But seriously, please do not exercise reading that book. If you already have, I would rather not discuss it.
(The author is mildly concerned about you. Please practice safe thinking and encourage others to do the same. The author would also like to make sure you know that this is an exercise in writing random thoughts as a release and as a target for the bullies and the readers who don’t understand abstract thinking and see it as something to shake their fat ugly head at. The author would recommend that some individuals can’t enjoy another’s love of stream of consiousness and asks that they please go read something they can relate to, berate, and blow smoke in the grass. The author is smiling at you right now. You know who you are…. or do you? Hmph.)
The Space You Left Behind 