getting real with dad

Sitting over greasy eggs and hash-browns at the hi-way diner (pro tip: the meal comes with two eggs but you get a third free if you ask). Dad in our post-tension-overload "effort toward being real lunch" described his racing unwanted thoughts, and how he'll be laying in bed and think of embarrassing things he did in college and get that physical recoil of -- it's not just shame and guilt alone, it's like being punched in the solar plexus with shame and self-loathing (In describing it he did the exact same body motion I do when it happens, the sudden jerk, tense with eyes squinted shut and turned away). And then the thought happens again, and again, and you wake up in the morning and it might not be that thought but another one, a stranger yelled something rude at you on the street last week, you behaved stupidly in front of friends. When things that cause the thoughts happen, you feel like you're in shock, and need to repeat the "story" of the "incident" in your head, rehearse it obsessively until it makes some kind of sense, until it's a complete narrative, then tell the story to a friend, tell it to every friend you encounter until the pain lessens. I knew what he was talking about, I know.

It was good to ease a few of the layers of facade from the parent-child game. There's a lot more to say on the topic, but for right now it feels real good to me to know that there is another person in the world who will go home, obsess kind of delusionally about the amount of calories they are eating, consume nicotine, take profound comfort in animal company, sequester themselves for necessary peace from the noise of everything and the smells of everyone but still need and rely on people they love, and be anxious as hell under a mask of savviness.

fide

I had a "restlessness errand day" which as they usually do involved wandering to some far end of town to a store I would never normally go to and walking the aisles in a state of calm. The best aisles to do this in are rows of light fixtures in the home depot. It is a magical place. WalMart is less magical and generally terrifying; when you walk in there's produce and a vertigo-inducing row of checkouts and everything seems on the up-and-up but the further back you venture into the store, the more it feels like descending* into a warehouse of mothers tiredly barking for their children to come on and endlessly shuffling employees. I got the impression that if I got a job at that WalMart I could just shuffle around the store for hours and hours with a product in my hand until my shift was over. When I buy the 40lb. bag of birdseed I like to carry it on my shoulder like a lumber-jack instead of using a cart so that people will think I am quite brave and strong.

*It is actually more like the the fugue-state atmosphere at the back of the store is a mold steadily creeping toward the front.

These trips are fun because when I make a foolish driving mistake like missing a turn, or turning too soon into the lot of a strip mall, it doesn't matter.

The north side of town has bizarre bill-boards everywhere. "Pet Waste Pollutes Our Water" (said by cartoon fish); "Addicted to Opiates?". There are diners and ethnic restaurants I want to visit but not alone.

I am gathering the pieces for a project of some kind, but so far no medium feels right. Words, yeah, but just words? So inappropriate. I can craft beyond words with colors and shapes, with feathers and hair and string and jewels, but the effort would feel like "not enough." I want something that makes noise and flies.

BUT I have become aware with increasing lucidity that the reason I am often reluctant to undertake and embark and endeavor is a persistent attitude of self-defeatism.

Hello, I am qualified for this position. Or I mean, I will be. No, I mean, I am.

plan:

We're going to pretend January never happened. It was a false-start, on the offense, 31 day penalty.

First down.

more of a "solve your own problems" kinda girl

"Were my friends right? Had I crossed the line from pleasantly neurotic into annoyingly troubled?" -- Carrie Bradshaw

It's time to solve this. I mean, really, what the hell.

pay dirt

do you see how

we are

the fucked

can't you feel

the press of words

great walls of words like eyes

like walls of dream-eyes

un-blinking

how can you expect

how could you have expected

the minute you spoke, girl

you was un-natural

who else's brain kills they body

gnawed us to a sausage

let us all think of the most clever ways to solicit reassurance

the wolves say "i worship you and it feels good"
the primates say "touch me, touch me, touch me"

control

the waiting woman keeps her hands busy

vertigo

I had one of the dreams where I was driving through a big city trying to find my exit. The highway system was like a level of sonic the hedgehog, with signs everywhere pointing to vastly different cities, Denver, San Francisco, Baltimore, like I was at the center of everything. The hills became steeper and steeper though my speed never lessened and soon on the way down the hills the car became weightless and me weightless in it and my organs weightless in me like a lava lamp. I couldn't deal with the vertical hills anymore so I pulled off on an exit and got on my bicycle, which promptly flew off the raised highway and got stuck in some scaffolding. I froze with fear and vertigo and reached for it, crying. An old fat man with a beard came and yelled at me to get it and I just clung (clinged) to the pole like luke skywalker screaming, "I'm too scared, I'm afraid of heights, I'm too scared."

star rats

the sun came back

fuck yeah

i accidently made the margin go over here but i'm kind of diggin it

update: it went away again

it doesn't does it

At 8 a.m. she gets out of bed for the third and final time since getting in late last night. She walks around the untidy apartment. Grit underfoot. Dirty apartment. She sorts the laundry and washes half of the dishes, making a mental list of errands. In the shower, halfway between shampoo and leg-razoring, she screams once, then again, and a third time. Then her throat hurts, and she wonders what it sounded like, the closest she can think of is when they show women in labor on television, the low woman-howl of anguish. She thinks, gross. She sits for a half-hour in the tub with the warm water drumming weakly on her head. When it rivulets down her face and around her open mouth, being drawn in to wet the tip of her tongue and back out again in rhythm, it feels like breathing under water in a dream. She hugs her knees and water pools in the soft white cup formed by her body.

i am painfully aware of how boring i am

I don't know how to describe my dreams lately, they are different. They changed about a week ago, maybe. I am changing too, I am not yet sure how, but I think it is in a way that will suit me. For the past few weeks it felt like my life was dying around me, leaving this boring, empty, miserable person.

One can always retrospectively observe their actions or feelings from the past and recognize that, yes, that was fucking crazy. What troubles me is being able to see the crazy in the present, and not being able to mend or soothe it.

My brain is functioning in new ways, never-before-seen. My dreams have changed. They are horrible and vivid but I can only feel vaguely numb in/about them; it is kind of how I'm feeling about life right now -- I've hit my anxiety breaking point again and tripped the circuit breaker, I love when this happens. I thank my body for what I assume is an act of desperate self-preservation, like puking when too drunk.

This last dream I watched out my window while these guys rioted, grabbing all kinds of garbage and mattresses and a wrecked truck into one giant pile and barricading themselves in the fort just as dusk came. The police came after the sun set and then the shooting started, sparks of gun-muzzle light everywhere and yelling. The trash-fort was lit on fire and burned. In the morning there was blood coating the ground and bodies piled everywhere, all mangled with purple, red and golden organs hanging out like fruit.

Things to think about:

Control -- how I am always strictly, strictly under it. But how I like when it's taken away in good situations; i.e. plans with friends.

Not hating myself.

Thank you for attending my personal therapy session.

i will come around

time moves like amputees

an arm without a fore-arm is too swift

and immediate

thus, i crawl

unnatural connections are made

between bone and snow

a bird hammers seeds from the locust pod

my love lies fierce and subtle

good things about today

the walk to get an orange soda at the soda machine and feeling so at home in my neighborhood in the sun-shine and the panaderia smelling so so good and wishing i had brought enough money for a churro all the way home

dogs

a dog is such a good thing; my dog,* a dog that looks and listens and responds so attentively. Dogs give hugs that I can't ask other people for, or when I receive the hugs from people they are often limp and ashamed. I touch my dogs and feel us genetically intertwined, since the earliest people had trash heaps that attracted the most sympathetic wolves. You can talk with your mouth or your body and they listen, and learn, and remember, and seek you out and watch with eyes that don't harbor secrets. I know this sounds like some kind of FWD from your grandfather with a picture of yellow labrador puppies like pudding in a basket, but these are my feelings. Regarding dogs. When I visit my parents' home the dog I raised from a puppy just butts her head into me and whimpers and cries and writhes under my loving hands. She does this for no-body else but me.

this does not negate my love for cats but man, dogs, my dogs.

*i have always thought this could be why many people who have never owned dogs claim not to like dogs. It is a very different thing, "a dog" vs. "my dog."

Is it

a good idea to censor oneself for the sake of diplomacy?

This entry has no entertainment value (ha-ha, do any?) it's just late and I've been thinking about that a lot lately with job looking, relationships, my various collisions with self-expression, etc. A lot of times I am thinking "the fuck do I care" with the concurrent reality that I am still hiding so well in my self.

have an inappropriate saturday story

With everyone trapped inside with each other I've been hearing more stories from my friends about hearing their neighbors fucking, or being heard fucking by neighbors, etc.

Sometimes I hear my neighbors. I regard it pretty fondly, imagining who it is and what kind of sex they're having (presumably, decent). Today I thought I heard cries in my building and stopped by the door to lean against the crack and listen. At this point I became very aware that I was actually listening to the female vocalist of my downstairs neighbor's gospel music.

And then "saw myself," standing at the door, leaning with rapt curiosity to hear my neighbors fucking, and I felt creepy. Real... creepy.

& then

some days for some reason you make little
hair sculptures

my blue suede etc.

you bad enough to peep deez kix

softly

I dream about shark teeth like thick porcelain leaves growing from the pink-gummed sea snapping into my thighs as I lie on the water. There is the moment of overwhelming grief as the muscles tear with wet red rips and I know I will never use them again. Tucked buoyantly underneath this is the feeling of release, and relief, that everything is done with.

hungry like the

I dreamed that I was at work and a strange woman came in and handed me a tiny scroll of paper, the length of a thumbnail. I said "What's this." And she simpered, "It's my resumé." I felt sad for her.

This job hunt causes a lot of regression for me in the lizard-brain, or something. When I think about getting a new job, all of the jobs I've held in my life no longer seem to matter and I feel the way you felt about the concept of a "job" as a child; something completely alien and challenging and something you're not capable of.
It doesn't matter that the job I have now is probably reasonably mentally challenging. I live such a strange mixture of being okay with myself and hating myself/having no self-confidence.

I don't have time to get started on the wording of hiring ads. There is some sort of unspoken pact in the employment world that everyone must talk in empty cliches.

It gets worse, though. Here's me during an interview:

going to buy

a new pair of adidas sambas

this is the first step

I think it is pair #5

they are my horseshoes, nailed to my feet, changing them surely has to change something

it is time to retire what is falling apart and holding me back

Later: the stores didn't carry them or didn't have my size

I'm hard

i just wanted a sbj line to go with rach n j's.

I feel like there's something inside me that is preventing me from relaxing; happiness. The new year doesn't feel like a fresh start, it feels more like I've been presented with a gordian knot when my hands are at their most feeble. I am underprepared. I am deeply disappointed with myself.

Nothing smells right; I feel pasty and fat and itchy all the time. I've been waking up at 5 a.m. every morning and laying in bed for hours shaking and worrying. The right side of my jaw is rusting. My bike is rusting in the snow. I feel fucking dirty. My New Year resolution was to make the voice in my head quiet and stop screaming at me, telling me terrible things about myself. I wish I could talk to someone about it but that would make it worse.

I want to escape this, I need a vacation so bad SO FUCKING BAD DO YOU UNDERSTAND

Later: I always feel the need to qualify myself when I have a bitchy, self-loathing, and/or complaining writing time. I do no feel overwhelmed all of the time, but when I do it is consuming. I just need to be calm and not passive. I need to find a town that I can drive to that has somewhere I can stay and go there next weekend. Does anybody have a job they can give me.