Reading Nothing Writing Nothing Even Arithmetic Nothing. . .

2002-10-08 8:26 p.m.

When I was younger and in my naivety believed my life to be shit, I would curl up naked on my bedroom floor, feel the rough pile against my raw skin, and let myself cry until the rug was soaked through with saliva, tears and snot. I would burn incense, and the orange smoke wove its way into my eyes like beads of infection, rendering my narrow world a jasmine-scented blur, and I would turn up the music until I couldn't hear myself breathe, sob, or think. I surrounded myself with tactile sensations and in this way I learned to step outside myself, too see how ridiculous my own emotional situation was compared to the very real experiences of my sensory organs and I would forget the fecal-matter existence which I considered my life.

The problem is that I've never really learned to turn this off and often I go through life feeling like more of an observer than a participant, feeling detached from many situations, more attuned to how the air smells or the line of the horizon than what's going on in my own head. Sometimes I can forget, sometimes I can surround myself with friends or music or just live a normal life but there is always that quiet, that reflection, as though I'm just a character in a novel and everything I'm experiencing is spliced into sentences and paragraphs and none of it is quite real. It's the worst when I'm alone with my thoughts, anticipating the next chapter, the next turn of the page. In my car I've often felt myself fading to nothing compared to the sheer number of souls living on the highway beside me. I sometimes worry that I'll fade out of existence and my car will head straight for the divider or straight towards other cars and I'll dispassionately kill someone like what's-his-name from the Stranger. And so I turn my radio up, put on some familiar song, assure myself that I'm still alive, I'm still here, still feeling and still breathing with enough breath left over to sing along. Though I don't know if this is much better. I can see the headline now: "Girl Dies in Car Crash: The Rhythm IS Going to Get You" and the witnesses will say: "She actually looked pretty happy when she was heading for that tree, her windows were down and I heard her scream 'When I say you sucked my brains out, the english translation. . . !' just before she died."

I forgot what I was going on about. Guess it doesn't really matter anyway.



previous next

Hey--what's going on? - 11 April, 2008
I wasn't cool - 30 July, 2004
something you wouldn't believe if you saw it. - 11 May, 2004
Going to 17th and U - 27 April, 2004
- - 08 April, 2004

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