Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Opus 36

It's like a shrinking inside of myself. A retraction. Poke a snail with a stick and it'll curl back into its shell. I can feel my bones fold away, starting at my fingertips, rolling down my arms until I'm a tiny ball in my chest. This is a crisis of existentialism. This is when I waver, when I crumble, when I want to dial those eleven numbers of yours and send my electric impulses down imaginary wires to your electric impulses and I want you to tell me it's ok. It's all ok. But I won't because you won't. You never did and so you never will.

Sometimes I can control it. I feel myself slipping away so I turn the music up a little louder until my nose hurts, it's so loud. I slam my teeth down onto my lip until it splits again. I grind into the scar. I dig my fingernails, four white claws into my arms, my thighs, my neck. You have to hold on. I held onto Kerouac today as I floated away on a bench in the park. I left him take my breath away as I devoured his page-long sentences. I sank my teeth into the flesh of an apple instead of my own. And I didn't notice that I was inching forward, pulling my skirt along my thighs. I didn't notice I was mouthing along with his railroad rambling or that I had forgotten where I was or who I was until my music stopped for a breath and I heard everything again. Glancing up I caught sight of a boy staring. By staring he reminded me that I was. I thought he might say something, he looked like he might say something and I smiled to know it was ok to speak to me but then I hissed and stuck my burnt knuckle in my gob. I had forgotten about that too. By the time I had recovered I could only catch sight of his tawny lion head three benches down from me and he was lost to the fuzziness of my shortsightedness.

To best explain it think about when you are drunk and you realise you can't feel your toes without concentrating very hard. And that you don't seem to have a nose anymore. And everything doesn't seem quite real until you touch it. And everything is very far away until somebody takes your hand or kisses you or you drink very very cold water. Then maybe you might see where I'm coming from. Or you might not. I don't really care. I just don't like being alone at night and I am alone tonight and I am so tired of losing myself, floating on, waiting. But here I am babbling on the internet like some silly little girl again. Why can't I just shut up?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You keep floating because you don't have a solid anchor in your life. There's no clear-cut destination in sight so of course it's going to feel like you've been set adrift, or turning in on yourself (never go too close to a mirror when feeling down. Trust me on this.)

But no-one is going to come along and make everything 'okay' just by saying it's going to be okay. A person can't hide in cheap reassurances forever. We're all coming up to that age now where our decisions here will decide if we find happiness and a sense of purpose in the future. Make a wrong decision and you WILL crash and burn. And in real life, there is no reset button.

That's the good thing about writing, though. It's lie is the most convincing; that the only thing between oneself and commericial/emotional/intellectual success is Time and nothing else.

But then according to certain individuals neither of us mean a word of what's being written on these electronic tools of self-perpetuation so to coin an overly-used phrase that denotes a sense of 'I-don't-know-but-I-don't-care-that-I-don't-know-aren't-I-cool' I shall say:

Meh.

Catherine said...

I mean absolutely every word I write on this here internet thing at the moment that I write it but it is best not to go too deep (though you are right). I did delete a long paragraph about the problem of mirrors actually but then I got annoyed and deleted it and came off the internet.

The moral of the story is do not try to convey a brief moment of space cadeting when you are a little drunk and a little down. It comes out all wrong.

Anonymous said...

...

I feel quite the twat.

Anonymous said...

There is too a reset button. It's right here:

http://pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF111-Reset.jpg

Anonymous said...

Really? Let's see-

...

Oh, GOD! Don't tell me I have to go through all THAT crap again!

(Therapist Tom says: He should have saved his game first.)