tonight is walpurgisnächt.
the walls between the worlds suffer a slight spiritual hernia: the dead pass into our world and, perhaps, vice versa. bonfires are lit to keep the spirits away. to keep the light, holding to it like the doomed survivors of "Darkness". then, tomorrow is May Day, Beltane. the sun and the light return to the world.
it has rained here for the past three days. the trees, budding in panoply, sagged under the weight - it was not quite cold enough to freeze on their boughs. the cats huddled indoors. curry ventured out once or twice, but only nosed cautiously near the steps of the porch, unwilling to proceed. today: cold, a stiff, pugnacious wind. i went out for a brief errand and it punched me in the chin, forcing my head up and my eyes to water. i tripped over a loose brick in the sidewalk and inhaled sharply, my heart speeding up a beat. that happens a lot. the long-melted snow combined with the odd temperatures have left our roads and walkways a peculiar ruin. i'm not yet used to the new topography.
that goes for a lot of things, actually. terra infirma.
>>
at johnny's house, both of us a little tipsy, stoned out of our minds. he heats up two butter knives by sticking them between the coils. at their tips, a mess of scalded metal, black and gray variegation. we balance an iota of weed on it, press the knives together, and inhale rapidly through the remains of a bic pen's outer shell. these are knife hits.
JOHNNY
...i don't care about any of that shit, man. i only care about two things in this world: the work, and someone to share it with.
the coughing rasp of his fingers sliding on the guitar strings, and how all of the muscles in his body twitch when one snaps. ryan is sitting quietly by the bookshelf, knees pulled up and arms wrapped around.
i start in on some babble, trying to understand what he means while trying to understand how i feel about what he's said as i'm going. i feel like it's a good quote. a quotable quote, even, a phrase that shows his character like nothing else. his steely determination to the Work. his references to Abigail. his swerving, bilious suddenness, staggering around the living room in the dim light as though hit by a bullet, right in his gut. his rant is punctuated by near-manic laughter, as though the sound of it is the only thread keeping his seams pulled together. he pinches his nipples and does a jig. we do more knife hits. i punctuate the awkward silences after his campfire tales with an ironic "your turn," and point to the stove.
he brings up cities we could move to, in the fall. as always, i am vacillatory. i don't commit to either new york city or - really - anywhere. in one particularly inspired outburst, i blurt out my desire to say fuck it and go live in the woods. johnny, wiser than i in such matters, immediately corrects the spoken desire and correctly interprets it as social frustration. i accede, and admit that i am too hooked into modern conveniences. plugged in, i should have said.
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it's a struggle to continue writing in here. the reason i never kept a diary was because, secretly, i just wanted someone to read every entry. every dated passage was written from two perspectives: 1) my own and 2) myself in the future, reading over it, disgusted with what burbled through the spaces between the words. thank god for the internet, where the availability of even a possible audience is enough to get me to say something. not that i have anything to say that is of much worth anyhow. comes from a lifetime of indecision, of hesitance, of preferring others' opinions to my own. how do you break out of such a mindless cycle? chalk it up to a rip in the schematic of my brain.
in that vein: other random exploits including an apocalyptic hangover on friday (category 5), another humiliation at work on monday, cold fingers throughout. made a list of things needing accomplishing on sunday and have checked off three thus far. some of them are impossible dreams. i tend to insert at least one of them in every to-do list i make.
now the fun part: deciding what tags i want to use on this post. categorization, you've always been there for me.
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