mechanisms are rusted

dr. f is questioning me. her little smile, meant to be encouraging, only seeming serpentine. truly, she is blank to me. she is a stranger who questions me as though having stopped me on the street to fill out some bogus questionnaire. i have opened up to less.

she begins with the common: "how are you / how have you been?" and closes with "you know, it's okay to tell me that you're not." her open concern is not something i find attractive. she reminds me too strongly of this girl i once knew, this girl who fell asleep on my bed watching television while i sat and typed on the computer. maybe she was waiting for me to join her and just got tired of being conscious. eventually i joined her and woke up in the miasma of her copper hair. i smelled her shoulder - lavender. lilac. hibiscus. some flower. i remember turning to the wall and crying as quietly as i could for no reason. i have learned how to be very silent with my emotions, experience them as shallowly as possible, like breathing with a monster or a serial killer in the room. i have always fancied that in the event of such a thing happening, i'd be the one to survive. the ultimate irony is that when it happens, i'll be killed first due to hubris.

you can never adequately prepare to avoid destruction.

i am hemorrhaging in her office today, near tears for the second time. my stomach is a bottle, shaken until furious, the muscles knotting around the glass, threatening to shatter the shuddering container - i will never be whole. i will never be fixed. i now have two houses to burn down - the one i grew up in and the one which squatted next door like a malevolent toad in the woods: its blinking, uncaring eyes. its disgusting, uncaring eyes. golden globes of what can only be described as hate, but which the toad knows not how to feel. i never look her in the eyes - she is always so placid. she asks me what my view of counselling is, what i intend to get from it, and i know it's because i haven't been taking her suggestions, i haven't tried to change. what am i afraid of is a question she will ask.

so today, she asks how old i feel. i tell her i haven't moved a second past 17, and she nods, understanding that my development must have halted at that age. what happened at 17? she asked me what i did. i was in theater. i was in chorus. i spent as little time with my family as possible. my real family was a collection of words on a glowing screen, but each with enough of a pattern associated with them so as to signify personality. all of us, avoidant dogs foaming at the mouth, sniffing one another tentatively, barking wildly at the slightest motion. up til all hours of the night with this swarm of letters. but something else happened at seventeen, something i stalled out on, and have been spinning wheels in the muck ever since.

[XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX]
[XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX]
[XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX]
[XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX]
[XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX]

a father is supposed to have his son's back. is supposed to be the hero-image. is supposed to be something on a pedestal until his son's roughened hands tear it down, blow it up. then climb up the ruins to stand there in his place. the sun shines all around, all around.

later: the perihelion of him to me, the dangerously loose swing of his proximity to my orbit. i can't remember his face anymore, but i remember his bald spot and the flash of refracted light off of his horn-rimmed glasses. his disingenuous, sloppy smile that i have no doubt inherited. the hole in the side of his head, leaking whispers like a busted radiator. his watchband as he played a game of chess with me. therapist watching from her chair. i can't remember what she looks like anymore, either. (once we sat in a pine grove and i planted small cones into a carpet of moss - small, twisted minarets that she swore would remain forever and which i knew would be gone within hours - )

i rushed out of her office directly for the bathroom. it's those brief moments of panic which cause me to detach from the mechanism of paranoia & hyperawareness - panic at a near-atomic level, white-hot terror in my very marrow. it's that old serial-killer business, the old monster-in-the-closet business.

("i know you have a tendency to avoid," she says as gently as possible - "and that's okay ... but know that i'm always going to bring you back")

get somewhere safe. the bathroom, old haunt of mine from family dinners in bygone years. crouching, retching over the toilet, dinner's meat stuck somewhere between mouth and stomach. praying to a god i don't believe in, my face turned to a delta of tears and snot - praying that it would just go down ... or, in worse times, come up. sometimes pretending, because of my mother's harried pounding at the door - "ARE YOU OKAY DO I HAVE TO TAKE YOU TO THE HOSPITAL!" - come out, pale & shiny with effort, nodding, but minutes later, after blankly chewing another piece of dinner-gone-cold, rushing to the bathroom again, hawking up strings of milk and spit.

the bathroom, then, septic white. thankfully, a stall, though disgusting with public use, and the old retch - although now i can't tell if i'm pretending, avoiding, or if this is real. coughing up strings of something - nothing. shudder against the wall. stare at the pieces you have just ejected from yourself, floating in the bowl.

it's earth day, although we all know that earth day is every day. should be a national holiday. proclaims the man with the bullhorn in the square. revs the priuses all around in hearty accord. i am hateful to them and their cause. they are blank-eyed and won't get out of my way. they amble around as if stoned. i am stoned but i walk with purpose, wheeling my bike alongside. it is warm out today. even the wind has tried to calm itself a little, tried to warm to the cheek of the sun, of the sky.

"how much of your life, do you think, is fantasy?" she inquires. she doesn't write anything down. i stare at the books on the shelf: i can name them all, now. "CHANGING FOR GOOD," "EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE," "THE POWER OF NOW (by Eckhart Tolle)," the DSM-IV ... others. i stare at the books. in rare moments of rawness, out the window at the blocky Oakhurst plant. the boring, shiny cars creeping up to the stoplight. the blinds are uneven.

i have a cigarette before i get on my bike and ride up the hill.

i am surrounded, now, by shitty art and those whom i keep myself deliberately peripheral to.

this isn't home, either.

blind spot

suddenly, there it is, in front of me. the first jacket-less day of the year. and this:

"A way to avoid second-guessing yourself is “to have other people make the decision so you don’t later obsess about having made the wrong choice,” he said. “You might still be unhappy, but you’ll just feel dissatisfied, as opposed to also feeing angry at yourself for not having picked another option.”"

and now, though the words have always been there, someone has arranged them in an order and i am feeling the effect.

"now the real work can begin."

that's what i keep running away from. doing any real work. just devoting an absurd amount of time to thinking about it: it's incredibly easy for me to just over-think a subject, draw out all of its possibilities, all of its consequences, all of its meanings, sub-meanings, sub-sub-meanings ... then i convince myself, entering into a strange loop (ingeniously constructed) that not thinking about is wrong, that i would somehow miss something important if i didn't consider everything from every angle possible (impossible) -

something to consider.

>>

tattoo ideas:



either a representation on the back of my hands, or a sleeve of the labyrinth pattern. down to the elbow.



shoulderblade?

.. and the words "steal compass / drive north / disappear". somewhere.

don't comment. i'm eventually gonna get them all. ... maybe not the sleeve. maybe.

crazy guy in the corduroy jacket who haunts me.

everywhere i go, there he is. and he's hatefully insane, too. talks to himself with the distinct and intentional purpose of others hearing his bile. the coffee shop, the library.

the past few days: ripening with the warmth of the sun, but still tempered yet by chill, stiff winds out of the north. i am to meet old friends for lunch today. i am become suddenly so mobile, backpack a part of me all over again, wandering the street from destination to destination, returning home only briefly to refuel - light the bowl, down an emergen-c, maybe eat something. grab a sweater, drop off something. pick up something. then out the door again and not home til morning. that's two nights in three days i haven't slept in my bed. i don't miss it.

dr. says i think in extremes. says i walk around with my heart four feet in front of me. i am disgusted with this characterization of myself.

last night: night five of a bender. perhaps night six, tonight? probably not. but it's so nice outside, i can't rationalize staying inside and doing the same thing i did all winter. besides, when i drink, i write. i've been writing - short abortions of poetry, but it's something. now that i'm chronicling it, i won't be able to anymore - watch. maybe i shouldn't talk about it.

read a little 'vanity of duluoz' last night. kerouac-cobbled prose after, jerky and wild. delved into an old green notebook. the ink is blurry with the effects of a drugged out bike ride ending in pouring rain. shoved it in my backpack this morning after smoking a quick shower and hit off of a fresh green bowl. earphones in, cigarette lit, and out the door and away!

in other news: a sudden windfall, which i have definitely cut into these past few nights with my exorbitant dipsomania - but i'm thinking maybe it's definitely time for a tattoo. i was also invited to go to puerto rico for a week this coming july. might save up to do that, too.

i have three undeveloped rolls of film. their contents are a total mystery to me. tomorrow i think i will have them developed.

the hetrarchical hagiography

revisited my novel yesterday. touched lightly on the meta-worlds of sorry and claudia and moe pelican and edwin oak. it's this damn hofstadter and his authorship triangles, and his axiom schemas.

last night: tentative plans, breached in the glassy brown light of bourbon & beer. maybe some hiking, in the woods, said james. new york city, in the fall, said johnny and ryan. and all the while it's cold in the summer city, and the wind makes the dead leaves skitter all around on the sidewalk. this town, one street in particular, is full of ghosts. i have got to get out of here. i've been having panic attacks, for no particular reason. especially at work. last night i had one at johnny's house: it gets hard to breathe, suddenly, and i lose my balance, all sense of orientation. it's like the universe is paying back for faking epilepsy in fourth grade.

it never fucking stops, you know. you think you've got it by the balls, but it turns out the only balls you're grabbing are your own, and don't you look like a fucking moron then.

and every girl has the same face. and every moment has millions of possibilities linking it to the next one, which is really only one of many possible outcomes, and the bifurcations are driving me insane. i better figure out that there is only now and deal with it, or else succumb to some kind of insanity; be shot through the heart by Zeno's arrow as it flies from point A to point C on its way to point B (on its way to point D, (on its way to point E....))

and so i drink again. bourbon is better than beer is better than being sober. and if i end up like Papa Hemingway, insane, owning many cats, and a shotgun, oh well. people tell me not to talk like that. but i do. and then they get mad at me, because it never fucking stops.

my therapist wants to put me on anti-anxiety meds. to stop the "hum" underneath it all.

johnny says the hum is what makes me make things.

it's like locusts.

last night, too much to drink

back to camel lights? marlboros make my lungs hurt. i need to quit smoking.

THERAPIST
...I think, I think that you're...searching for something, and ... whenever you don't find it, you get frustrated and turn to using. or abusing."

ME
... it's funny ...

THERAPIST
What's funny?

ME
the prefix "ab" on the word "using" is the only thing making the word negative. the prefix "ab" means, away from. Away from using? Ab-use. Use away from.

THERAPIST
What does "using" mean, then?

ME
When you ... damn, it really is one of those words. When you.. um, are acquiring? No. Taking... Using .. see? damn. When you ... are trying to achieve something, when you're ...okay. Let's say: When you need to get to a goal, and something aids you. No - see, that's not it either.
(pause)
I don't know.

THERAPIST
So when you "ab"-use something, you're taking that thing's function and using it away from the goal.

ME
But... what is the goal?

THERAPIST
It's something different for everyone, isn't it.

********static*********

my dreams last night: the color red, predominant. red tongues, red walls. red dress on the red-eyed woman. firestone jewelry, glittering white fire. fire leaping out of the totaled car, leaping licking flames against the black skin of night - the girl with blood sliding like a hand down her face, half in, half out of the metal wreck. her dress had fallen over her body and i could see her cunt, now just another gory slash in the company of so many others. like a child with a pair of scissors snipping idly at a piece of paper. you know, to make a snowflake.

a party, a veritable gala. huge chandelier. big old house with a lot of people crammed into its foyer. the wings lay empty, almost eerily so. what would it sound like if there had been no house built there. in the middle of the forest.

someone at the party jumps off a cliff and splashes soundlessly into the sea. then they all start doing it. from my view on the third floor: penguins, hustling themselves off of an ice floe. the house inches closer to the edge, picks itself up and shuffles towards them in ashamed lemming-fashion. i run out of the room and try to escape before it hurls itself to the pitch-dark sea. i am successful, though by only a stuttering toe-hold on the edge of the cliff as it plunges down to the waves behind me. it's one of those instances when i feel that logically, i should have plunged with it, but because it is a dream, i allow myself to suspend logic and continue on living. most of the time in dream, i am a camera behind my own head. i am a brilliant cinematographer in my dreams: i work all the angles.

**************

plaid shirt to work tonight? warmish weather. maybe rain tomorrow. wash away the dirty snow. ryan says: "one more blizzard before spring, i guarantee it." he "grew-up-around-here." i said we should put a wager on what date the huge snowdrift in front of the museum would melt by. i was joking. there was no bet. but now i'll be watching.

big band of green and pink coming westward, crawling in on the edges of the radar like moss, vanishing, and doing it all over again. i am watching for green grass. i am on the lookout for that first warm day. the sun and the birds. the surrender of winter, snow plunging heedlessly from roofs and impacting the ground in huge heavy splashes. the thaw's begun, i'm waiting for the capitulation.

sometimes i feel inordinately crazed, of a sudden, spasming with fury, frenzy, and desperation - like a dog that's been poked one too many times with a stick. then i settle down and realize it's nothing.

such big words from such a little mongrel.

such dramatics, such histrionics, from such a little man.

it's a wonder people like me. i am unable to see how.

cigarette.