01. Watch the television for two hours. Keep a tally of every unbelievable actor, noting the number who appear in programming and the number who appear in advertisements.
02. Dismantle a clock and catalog each part. Put it back together with a blindfold on.
03. Shatter a mirror. Cower from the bad luck.
04. Map out the joints in your skull. Name them after your favorite rivers.
05. Write a book. As you reread your work, make sure to second guess each and every word.
06. Run into an old acquaintance on the road. Don't flinch from the mind-numbing small talk or the awkward way you never make eye contact.
07. Listen to an old, unmarked homemade audio tape. Wince at the horrible music you so enjoyed once upon a time.
08. Pretend to admire a painting by a modern artist beloved for his or her use of color and line. Chastise yourself, internally, for the nonsense you're willing to put up with.
09. Defang a potential predator. Revel in society's burgeoning safety.
10. Lift up your heart one last time before the bell rings. Do it quickly, as you may never have this opportunity again.
6/26/07
White 04 (He Grins Bloody)
The folding and the unfolding keeps it all going, between circles of fear and misgiving and wide-eyed mystery, all of it just spilled into the thankless abandon of wretched solitude. I have waited and I have prayed, and nothing seems to stem the tide or spin the chord in the right direction. This may be the greatest day of your life, it would whisper, but the sarcasm in its voice was drippingly obvious. What appears in its place is a Shadow, a soot lined specter drilling upwards from the nothing black cascade of an empty room, chosen at random from the ones in your head and the ones in your heart. A little diorama of bleak void filled with porcelain doll faces cracked from worry. It will lead fate into coincidence, faith into doubt and anything pleasant or comforting somewhere into the region where all terrible things go when bitten by the dust of sleep. My monster, I called it. My best friend.
Does it make you angry? Do you hate her for what she's done? How do you sleep now? Is it that difficult? Why can't you just move on? It shouldn't be this hard. You shouldn't have this much trouble. Life goes forward. Nothing changes. The world never stops spinning. Get a grip. Get yourself together. Stop worrying so much. Stop trying. Hold on. It will all get better. Time heals all wounds. Nothing lasts forever.
This too shall pass.
The minutes drag with an imperious sense of their own righteousness, and they collect in the hair trap drain of the shower. I've watched it with giddy and monstrous illusion, praying for it to come visit in the night, even as I've prayed for just the opposite. The stagnation of my own self preservation and all of the accompanying naive world views I'd pushed on with the militant voice of a firecracker commandant have left me without tools to fix the gaping holes, to make sense of what might not have anything sensible in it. I drive aimlessly, I watch wind pouring waves and I see time seal itself into musty vaults and old graves. I watch the Sun set behind the silhouettes of churches and I beg myself for strength to weaken enough. But I don't. I cling tight to the dock, to the posts slippery with Seaweed and I barely breathe. The summer has been over for a long time. The autumn has left and now all that's left is a white chill spike hammered into my temples, completing a long and dissonant symphony with one thunderous clang.
Too much. All of it seems too much. As if there aren't enough spiraling swathes of pretension and arrogant dribble sounding off through the airwaves, under the water's swift current or just in the notebooks of silly children trying so hard to be seen, now there is this. A commitment, and a romance of the awful spit-soaked, dry lipped, wet-eyed blur of days that seemed destined to go on forever, this is sickness, do you know that? It's the fever dream of my monster, my best friend, and it still licks at old scars, opens them with the vicious assault of a pack of wild wolves and fills them with the black Moonglow of backwards intention, of futility's pretty fragility, of the exact opposite of hope masquerading as its antonym. Too much of everything. It needs to stop.
And there is no story to it, no arc that can be traced, I suppose, because it's a lingering, bubbling cauldron sort of underlying drift. Wherever I go, whatever I do, that blood-soaked grin is always a step behind me, a mile ahead of me, glistening overhead with polished but still-stained fangs that consume the sky and all of its promises. I whisper little spells to keep it at bay, sure, but I have no authority over what my addled spinal column has birthed. I don't enjoy it, but in my own gross way, I love it. I value the discolored tissue of my scarred skin, not for anything aesthetic or proud, but because of the memory infused into the cut, the lovely-in-retrospect veil and fog that gauzes the infuriating misery that I've plugged into every light socket and outlet. There is a fissure between him and me: my longing for something pretty amidst the ugliness, and his need to rip asunder anything calm and replace it with the snatched lightning seeds stolen from fairytales and books with sour endings.
I call him He-Grins-Bloody. I remember the songs he would sing me when I was just a baby.
Does it make you angry? Do you hate her for what she's done? How do you sleep now? Is it that difficult? Why can't you just move on? It shouldn't be this hard. You shouldn't have this much trouble. Life goes forward. Nothing changes. The world never stops spinning. Get a grip. Get yourself together. Stop worrying so much. Stop trying. Hold on. It will all get better. Time heals all wounds. Nothing lasts forever.
This too shall pass.
The minutes drag with an imperious sense of their own righteousness, and they collect in the hair trap drain of the shower. I've watched it with giddy and monstrous illusion, praying for it to come visit in the night, even as I've prayed for just the opposite. The stagnation of my own self preservation and all of the accompanying naive world views I'd pushed on with the militant voice of a firecracker commandant have left me without tools to fix the gaping holes, to make sense of what might not have anything sensible in it. I drive aimlessly, I watch wind pouring waves and I see time seal itself into musty vaults and old graves. I watch the Sun set behind the silhouettes of churches and I beg myself for strength to weaken enough. But I don't. I cling tight to the dock, to the posts slippery with Seaweed and I barely breathe. The summer has been over for a long time. The autumn has left and now all that's left is a white chill spike hammered into my temples, completing a long and dissonant symphony with one thunderous clang.
Too much. All of it seems too much. As if there aren't enough spiraling swathes of pretension and arrogant dribble sounding off through the airwaves, under the water's swift current or just in the notebooks of silly children trying so hard to be seen, now there is this. A commitment, and a romance of the awful spit-soaked, dry lipped, wet-eyed blur of days that seemed destined to go on forever, this is sickness, do you know that? It's the fever dream of my monster, my best friend, and it still licks at old scars, opens them with the vicious assault of a pack of wild wolves and fills them with the black Moonglow of backwards intention, of futility's pretty fragility, of the exact opposite of hope masquerading as its antonym. Too much of everything. It needs to stop.
And there is no story to it, no arc that can be traced, I suppose, because it's a lingering, bubbling cauldron sort of underlying drift. Wherever I go, whatever I do, that blood-soaked grin is always a step behind me, a mile ahead of me, glistening overhead with polished but still-stained fangs that consume the sky and all of its promises. I whisper little spells to keep it at bay, sure, but I have no authority over what my addled spinal column has birthed. I don't enjoy it, but in my own gross way, I love it. I value the discolored tissue of my scarred skin, not for anything aesthetic or proud, but because of the memory infused into the cut, the lovely-in-retrospect veil and fog that gauzes the infuriating misery that I've plugged into every light socket and outlet. There is a fissure between him and me: my longing for something pretty amidst the ugliness, and his need to rip asunder anything calm and replace it with the snatched lightning seeds stolen from fairytales and books with sour endings.
I call him He-Grins-Bloody. I remember the songs he would sing me when I was just a baby.
White 03 (Nivea's Thoughts)
Nivea read the preceding with a hint of revulsion shivering down the snow blue skin on her neck and arms. Her crystalline wings beat a nervous little swathe into the icy air as she hovered over the shoulder of the slumbering polar bear.
"It's sad... I think," Nivea said, her fragile voice issuing a cloud of steam that froze and fluttered to the ground with the sound of a symphony of shattering glass warbled notes. Each ice droplet sang as it fell, perfectly beautiful in its brief moment of musical life before it exploded on the snow covered ground below. "I can't really tell..."
The polar bear, whose name was Elijah, grumbled, half-asleep and annoyed. He lifted a massive paw up toward Nivea, making the effort, at least, to acknowledge her.
"It certainly seems sad... Do you think it's sad?" she asked, crinkling her tiny faerie features. "It seems sad."
"Mmmm... sad," Elijah mumbled.
"It's confusing, isn't it? It seems awfully confusing..."
Stiria, then, the wiser of the two snow faeries, flew by, and noticed the look of consternation on poor Nivea's face. "What's wrong, Nivea?" she asked.
"We found this little book," Nivea responded. "I don't really understand what's inside, though. I think it's sad. It seems sad."
"Mmmm... sad," Elijah reiterated, still asleep.
"Let me see," Stiria said, grabbing the little book. "What is this?"
"Elijah found it in the snow," Nivea explained.
"Mmmm... sad," Elijah added.
As Stiria read the little booklet, her eyes narrowed. "It's not saying anything," she whispered. "It seems like nonsense."
"It seems sad," Nivea said.
"You've mentioned," Stiria snapped. "I don't know... I don't think it makes any sense at all."
"Mmmm... nonsense," Elijah said, sleepily.
"I think it does. I do. I think it does make sense. I think it's about dreams," Nivea said. "About dreams and memory. About fantasy."
Stiria lifted her head up quickly. "Fantasy?"
"I think so. But not the sweet kind of fantasy," Nivea said, shaking her head and letting her white hair flit about, soft and slow. "Not our kind of fantasy."
"Ah. No. Not our kind," Stiria agreed. "Is that why he added us? Is that why the author added us into the book?"
"I think so, maybe," Nivea said. "I don't know. It seems confusing. Like there's a story, there..."
"But there's not," Stiria said. "There doesn't seem to be a story..."
"Mmmm... nonsense," Elijah said again.
"No, I suppose not. But we do seem added intentionally, don't we? A way to lighten the mood? A way to bring a slightly magical narrative to a collection of dreariness and..." Stiria started to say.
"Sadness," Nivea concluded.
"Yes, I see," Stiria said, unhappily. "It seems like a strange thing to do, doesn't it? To prattle on incessantly about all of the awful things that run through a mind? Especially when there's so much beauty in the world. So much prettiness."
"That's why he has us, right?" Nivea asked. "To remind him?"
"To change the direction of the story..." Stiria said.
"Even when there's no real story to speak of..." Nivea said.
"Right. So, then, see? It's not so sad," Stiria said, closing the little book and returning it to Nivea. "It's not so sad at all."
"It's sad... I think," Nivea said, her fragile voice issuing a cloud of steam that froze and fluttered to the ground with the sound of a symphony of shattering glass warbled notes. Each ice droplet sang as it fell, perfectly beautiful in its brief moment of musical life before it exploded on the snow covered ground below. "I can't really tell..."
The polar bear, whose name was Elijah, grumbled, half-asleep and annoyed. He lifted a massive paw up toward Nivea, making the effort, at least, to acknowledge her.
"It certainly seems sad... Do you think it's sad?" she asked, crinkling her tiny faerie features. "It seems sad."
"Mmmm... sad," Elijah mumbled.
"It's confusing, isn't it? It seems awfully confusing..."
Stiria, then, the wiser of the two snow faeries, flew by, and noticed the look of consternation on poor Nivea's face. "What's wrong, Nivea?" she asked.
"We found this little book," Nivea responded. "I don't really understand what's inside, though. I think it's sad. It seems sad."
"Mmmm... sad," Elijah reiterated, still asleep.
"Let me see," Stiria said, grabbing the little book. "What is this?"
"Elijah found it in the snow," Nivea explained.
"Mmmm... sad," Elijah added.
As Stiria read the little booklet, her eyes narrowed. "It's not saying anything," she whispered. "It seems like nonsense."
"It seems sad," Nivea said.
"You've mentioned," Stiria snapped. "I don't know... I don't think it makes any sense at all."
"Mmmm... nonsense," Elijah said, sleepily.
"I think it does. I do. I think it does make sense. I think it's about dreams," Nivea said. "About dreams and memory. About fantasy."
Stiria lifted her head up quickly. "Fantasy?"
"I think so. But not the sweet kind of fantasy," Nivea said, shaking her head and letting her white hair flit about, soft and slow. "Not our kind of fantasy."
"Ah. No. Not our kind," Stiria agreed. "Is that why he added us? Is that why the author added us into the book?"
"I think so, maybe," Nivea said. "I don't know. It seems confusing. Like there's a story, there..."
"But there's not," Stiria said. "There doesn't seem to be a story..."
"Mmmm... nonsense," Elijah said again.
"No, I suppose not. But we do seem added intentionally, don't we? A way to lighten the mood? A way to bring a slightly magical narrative to a collection of dreariness and..." Stiria started to say.
"Sadness," Nivea concluded.
"Yes, I see," Stiria said, unhappily. "It seems like a strange thing to do, doesn't it? To prattle on incessantly about all of the awful things that run through a mind? Especially when there's so much beauty in the world. So much prettiness."
"That's why he has us, right?" Nivea asked. "To remind him?"
"To change the direction of the story..." Stiria said.
"Even when there's no real story to speak of..." Nivea said.
"Right. So, then, see? It's not so sad," Stiria said, closing the little book and returning it to Nivea. "It's not so sad at all."
White 02 (Snowflake Cruelty)
Iamtooeasilyannoyed.Iamarrogant.Iamcruel.
Imockwonderfulthings.
Ilackcompassion.Ilackwarmth.Ilackkindness.
Iamscreamingagainsttheprisonofmyskull.
Iammean.Iamintolerant.Iamstubbornandunwillingtomove.
Iamhamfistedandheavyhanded.
Iamunimportant.Iaminsecure.Iamuninteresting.Iamineloquent.
Iamnervous.
IamawreckatthebottomoftheSea.
Iamworried.Iamfitfull.Iamugly.Iamstupid.Iamwastingyourtime.
Iamahypocrite,abastard,aliarandacheat.Iamathief.Iamaterribleperson,awretch.
Iamweak.
Iamacoward.
Iamsick.Iamlazy.Iamslow.
Iamploddinganddimwittedandworthless.
Iamaconiving,backstabbingpileoffilth.
Iamalwaystired.Iamalwaysfallingapart.Iamalwayspooledinapuddleofsoppynervesonthefloor.
Iamaloser.Iamascatterbrain.
Iamobsessedwithdeath.Iamterrifiedofdeath.Iamalways,nightandday,thinkingaboutdeath.
Iamdreadfullyboring.Iamfrighteninglydull.Iamincapableofasingleoriginalthought.
Isuck.
Iliveinasickeninglystupidinternalworldofcloisteredneurosisandidioticfear.
Iamtoobullheadedtovisitthedoctor.Iamtoobigacowardtovisitthedentist.
Iamgoingtowitheraway.Iamgoingtocontractanawfuldisease.
Iamgoingtobeinvolvedinsomesortofdebilitatingaccident.
Iamgoingtobecomeanamputee.
Iamgoingtodie.
Iamparanoid.Iamirrational.
Iamtooemotional.Iamtoofragile.Iamtooselfaware.Iamtooselfobsessed.Iamtooselfcentered.
Iwillneverwinafight.
Iamaloser.
Iamshatteredlikeaplateglasswindow.Iamwrithinginmyskin.
Iamdrowninginmyfear.IamdrowninginaSeaofdoubt,ofsickly,queasy,ruinousdoubt.
Inursetoomanygrudges.
Iamnauseousaftereverymeal.
Iamaninsomniac.
Iamtwistedinmystomach.Iamtwistedinmybrain.
Iamtwistedinmyprunish,wrinkledsoul.
Iamgrotesque.
Iamnearlyalwaysburningwithavagueandveryilldefinedsenseofanger.
Iamtwirlingthroughavoidofabsolutelyinfiniteterrors
(thekindthatseepintothedarkrecessesofthemindandgrabholdwithtalonlikeclawsintotheflesh-
(andthenperchthere,gnawing,slowlychewingthesanityawayuntilallthatremainsisabloodied-
(soiledstumpofwhathadoncebeencontentment,andnowisjustauselesstumor,ahammeredthumb.)
Iamthrough.
Imockwonderfulthings.
Ilackcompassion.Ilackwarmth.Ilackkindness.
Iamscreamingagainsttheprisonofmyskull.
Iammean.Iamintolerant.Iamstubbornandunwillingtomove.
Iamhamfistedandheavyhanded.
Iamunimportant.Iaminsecure.Iamuninteresting.Iamineloquent.
Iamnervous.
IamawreckatthebottomoftheSea.
Iamworried.Iamfitfull.Iamugly.Iamstupid.Iamwastingyourtime.
Iamahypocrite,abastard,aliarandacheat.Iamathief.Iamaterribleperson,awretch.
Iamweak.
Iamacoward.
Iamsick.Iamlazy.Iamslow.
Iamploddinganddimwittedandworthless.
Iamaconiving,backstabbingpileoffilth.
Iamalwaystired.Iamalwaysfallingapart.Iamalwayspooledinapuddleofsoppynervesonthefloor.
Iamaloser.Iamascatterbrain.
Iamobsessedwithdeath.Iamterrifiedofdeath.Iamalways,nightandday,thinkingaboutdeath.
Iamdreadfullyboring.Iamfrighteninglydull.Iamincapableofasingleoriginalthought.
Isuck.
Iliveinasickeninglystupidinternalworldofcloisteredneurosisandidioticfear.
Iamtoobullheadedtovisitthedoctor.Iamtoobigacowardtovisitthedentist.
Iamgoingtowitheraway.Iamgoingtocontractanawfuldisease.
Iamgoingtobeinvolvedinsomesortofdebilitatingaccident.
Iamgoingtobecomeanamputee.
Iamgoingtodie.
Iamparanoid.Iamirrational.
Iamtooemotional.Iamtoofragile.Iamtooselfaware.Iamtooselfobsessed.Iamtooselfcentered.
Iwillneverwinafight.
Iamaloser.
Iamshatteredlikeaplateglasswindow.Iamwrithinginmyskin.
Iamdrowninginmyfear.IamdrowninginaSeaofdoubt,ofsickly,queasy,ruinousdoubt.
Inursetoomanygrudges.
Iamnauseousaftereverymeal.
Iamaninsomniac.
Iamtwistedinmystomach.Iamtwistedinmybrain.
Iamtwistedinmyprunish,wrinkledsoul.
Iamgrotesque.
Iamnearlyalwaysburningwithavagueandveryilldefinedsenseofanger.
Iamtwirlingthroughavoidofabsolutelyinfiniteterrors
(thekindthatseepintothedarkrecessesofthemindandgrabholdwithtalonlikeclawsintotheflesh-
(andthenperchthere,gnawing,slowlychewingthesanityawayuntilallthatremainsisabloodied-
(soiledstumpofwhathadoncebeencontentment,andnowisjustauselesstumor,ahammeredthumb.)
Iamthrough.
White 01 (Waking)
I wandered in the face of it, heavy with the anesthesia of morning, the stillborn sense of reason that accompanies almost waking up. I practically fell into it, the light ahead of me, blinding and melting the face from my skull, spilling brightly burning liquid yellow onto the paper fragile landscape of dreaming, disintegrating it and leaving just the mild yelps of sketchily drawn fragmentary people in the daisy syrup wake behind it. Eyes opened to painful sensation, then quickly closed to retreat behind fleshy thin walls that failed to keep out the intruder completely. It sizzled through, searing half caught blurred neon nonsense into the black, then letting it heal and drift away into a sea of cloudy gray-white fog. There is the tug, the pull of sleep, the revenant remains of night bliss wrapping cold, comforting skeletal hands around your brain, burying it in the cozy warmth of a beckoning pillow. The revulsion of early revolution. The snapped rejection of the coup of consciousness. I fought back, like I always do, trying to casually embrace another minute of slumber, but the constant shrill beak crack of the goddamned alarm pushed me further and further from it with every repeated shriek.
What had preceded was certainly amazing. I could feel that, the rush of excitement still burrowing tunnels in my stomach, still sending trolley car cable sparks of adrenaline up my spinal column. There had been an acquaintance long forgotten, a composite of childhood friends and favorite characters from television shows, the kind of dream companion that's mutable and shifting, but not in a distracting or disorienting sort of way. There had been a remote location that mixed the most mundane bits of real life with the most fantastic issues of pulp, so that battlement towers rose like boney fingers from the aisles of the grocery store, and a steep, thorny valley populated by albino crocodiles dropped swiftly from the parking lot, filled with stray shopping carts and some sort of psychedelically sparkled thought-toads. There was no unrest or confusion caused by the radically altered landscape accessible through the freezer doors, and though the point of view might vary frighteningly and include views from eyes of people stuffed dead in their coffins, the narrative remained, in its conjoined twin logic, understandable. More so, for those first terrible moments of shift change, than the harsh light story sucker punching me in the face.
And soon, the whole of it, at least the crisply ill-defined details that struggled against any sort of pin and label, burned off entirely, leaving a void resulting in hysterical and thankfully short-lived, but still absolute confusion. As the fake world of dreams was booted out, left to wither in the spotlight of analysis or drown in a sea of sensibility, the real world reasserted itself with a hastily sketched outline skeleton shot through swiftly with the incalculable tiny bits of data that align themselves quicker than lightning to encompass the whole of the known world, the stable one that lives outside of dreams and seems to remain the same from day to day, provided our memories are to be trusted.
There is that little bit of me that always worries about the veracity of what my mind, the devious stranger in my own attic, compiles as real in that first moment of waking, since during my sleep it can easily convince me of a million unreal stories that I dismiss because of their oddness. I assume I live the same life from day to day, with the same characters, the same chunk of rock spinning through space under my feet, the same specter of death looming over me. But I wonder sometimes how I can be sure of what I haven't made up, positive in its truth only because it happens during the time I'm awake. But what difference is there in the perceptions? And if I have a memory, whether it really happened or not, in the waking world, isn't the faked experience of dreaming just as valid as the honest experience of being awake? It confuses me, sometimes, to the point of crippling, but eventually, some unseen, unknowable governor inside my piloted brain sorts the two halves of my life out into their respective boxes and allows me to interact with the world I see as relatively stagnant and real while still holding onto the memories of a handful of faded dreams.
And while that disorientation is frustrating in itself, what's worse is the window it opens into the creeping mystery of my own brain... the various parts of my consciousness that operate without any input from me. There's the odd film maker that creates the nocturnal fictions that confound me and confuse me and rip contentment with the questions they lead into. And there's the traffic cop directing logic and nonsense and keeping the division between them as strong as it can be. There's the foreman keeping the machinery of the body operating without any real effort on my part. And there is the generator of stray thoughts... all of the unfocused bits that wander through my mind without my asking or my permission. And the crowd of passengers and drivers stuffed into the gray matter folds of brain sometimes throw anything of my autonomy into question. I'm not sure where all of that music, all of that noise, all of those commands are really coming from. I never get to be fully confident in who I am at all...
What had preceded was certainly amazing. I could feel that, the rush of excitement still burrowing tunnels in my stomach, still sending trolley car cable sparks of adrenaline up my spinal column. There had been an acquaintance long forgotten, a composite of childhood friends and favorite characters from television shows, the kind of dream companion that's mutable and shifting, but not in a distracting or disorienting sort of way. There had been a remote location that mixed the most mundane bits of real life with the most fantastic issues of pulp, so that battlement towers rose like boney fingers from the aisles of the grocery store, and a steep, thorny valley populated by albino crocodiles dropped swiftly from the parking lot, filled with stray shopping carts and some sort of psychedelically sparkled thought-toads. There was no unrest or confusion caused by the radically altered landscape accessible through the freezer doors, and though the point of view might vary frighteningly and include views from eyes of people stuffed dead in their coffins, the narrative remained, in its conjoined twin logic, understandable. More so, for those first terrible moments of shift change, than the harsh light story sucker punching me in the face.
And soon, the whole of it, at least the crisply ill-defined details that struggled against any sort of pin and label, burned off entirely, leaving a void resulting in hysterical and thankfully short-lived, but still absolute confusion. As the fake world of dreams was booted out, left to wither in the spotlight of analysis or drown in a sea of sensibility, the real world reasserted itself with a hastily sketched outline skeleton shot through swiftly with the incalculable tiny bits of data that align themselves quicker than lightning to encompass the whole of the known world, the stable one that lives outside of dreams and seems to remain the same from day to day, provided our memories are to be trusted.
There is that little bit of me that always worries about the veracity of what my mind, the devious stranger in my own attic, compiles as real in that first moment of waking, since during my sleep it can easily convince me of a million unreal stories that I dismiss because of their oddness. I assume I live the same life from day to day, with the same characters, the same chunk of rock spinning through space under my feet, the same specter of death looming over me. But I wonder sometimes how I can be sure of what I haven't made up, positive in its truth only because it happens during the time I'm awake. But what difference is there in the perceptions? And if I have a memory, whether it really happened or not, in the waking world, isn't the faked experience of dreaming just as valid as the honest experience of being awake? It confuses me, sometimes, to the point of crippling, but eventually, some unseen, unknowable governor inside my piloted brain sorts the two halves of my life out into their respective boxes and allows me to interact with the world I see as relatively stagnant and real while still holding onto the memories of a handful of faded dreams.
And while that disorientation is frustrating in itself, what's worse is the window it opens into the creeping mystery of my own brain... the various parts of my consciousness that operate without any input from me. There's the odd film maker that creates the nocturnal fictions that confound me and confuse me and rip contentment with the questions they lead into. And there's the traffic cop directing logic and nonsense and keeping the division between them as strong as it can be. There's the foreman keeping the machinery of the body operating without any real effort on my part. And there is the generator of stray thoughts... all of the unfocused bits that wander through my mind without my asking or my permission. And the crowd of passengers and drivers stuffed into the gray matter folds of brain sometimes throw anything of my autonomy into question. I'm not sure where all of that music, all of that noise, all of those commands are really coming from. I never get to be fully confident in who I am at all...
Prelude: White
The rushing clouds above her head
That speak to youth's fragility,
All blanket in the frosty calm
That comes from cold soliloquy.
And breezes laced with fall's last gasp,
Iced wind to cut the failing heat,
Stab the heart and choke the lungs
And lay dead petals at her feet.
That speak to youth's fragility,
All blanket in the frosty calm
That comes from cold soliloquy.
And breezes laced with fall's last gasp,
Iced wind to cut the failing heat,
Stab the heart and choke the lungs
And lay dead petals at her feet.
6/25/07
A Beginning
So this is where I struggle.
How to begin?
It's a daunting task isn't it? I mean, a beginning sets the tone for everything to follow, everything that comes in its wake. And here it is. Just a slight ramble about the nature of beginnings... hardly worth reading, much less repeating. And once it's set down, like it is now, there's no going back. It's just there. Worthlessness on the page. Or the screen, as it happens.
And it isn't like I don't have anything to say. I mean, I'm constantly babbling. Honestly. Words just spill out of my head like drool from a baby. And there's nothing I don't have an opinion on. Name it. Politics? Sure. Music? Definitely. Comedy, literature, current events, ancient history, etymology, art, the inferiority of plays when compared to film, Spider-Man, giant squid, "Simpsons" trivia, the Mayans, Spike Jonze, conspiracy theories, modern bastardizations of folk and fairy tales, the name of the metal faced weapons expert from "G.I. Joe" (Destro, by the way), occult sciences and stop motion animation? Yep. I could write at length about any of those topics. But did I? No. I wrote about how I could write about them, thus sidestepping writing about anything at all, and proving my inability to focus on anything interesting whatsoever.
How are you enjoying it so far?
But, I suppose there's an upside to this. After all, once the beginning has begun, there's nothing you can really do to stop it. I mean, it's already started, and even if it ends here, it's still a beginning, and then, no matter what, I've got it out of the way. And that's a nice feeling. So I dread how to start it... but now it's started. And sure, I may cringe when I look back and see that this, this load of drivel is what kicks off what I'm certain will be an illustrious and wholly popular foray into the insanely cluttered world of internet babblery, but it's there, set down in black and white, saved on some stranger's server for the entire world to see.
Huh.
So, yes, this is my blog. The Manta Ray Taste X-Plosion. And it's just begun, so please cut it some slack. I swear it'll get better from here on.
I mean, really, could it get much worse?
How to begin?
It's a daunting task isn't it? I mean, a beginning sets the tone for everything to follow, everything that comes in its wake. And here it is. Just a slight ramble about the nature of beginnings... hardly worth reading, much less repeating. And once it's set down, like it is now, there's no going back. It's just there. Worthlessness on the page. Or the screen, as it happens.
And it isn't like I don't have anything to say. I mean, I'm constantly babbling. Honestly. Words just spill out of my head like drool from a baby. And there's nothing I don't have an opinion on. Name it. Politics? Sure. Music? Definitely. Comedy, literature, current events, ancient history, etymology, art, the inferiority of plays when compared to film, Spider-Man, giant squid, "Simpsons" trivia, the Mayans, Spike Jonze, conspiracy theories, modern bastardizations of folk and fairy tales, the name of the metal faced weapons expert from "G.I. Joe" (Destro, by the way), occult sciences and stop motion animation? Yep. I could write at length about any of those topics. But did I? No. I wrote about how I could write about them, thus sidestepping writing about anything at all, and proving my inability to focus on anything interesting whatsoever.
How are you enjoying it so far?
But, I suppose there's an upside to this. After all, once the beginning has begun, there's nothing you can really do to stop it. I mean, it's already started, and even if it ends here, it's still a beginning, and then, no matter what, I've got it out of the way. And that's a nice feeling. So I dread how to start it... but now it's started. And sure, I may cringe when I look back and see that this, this load of drivel is what kicks off what I'm certain will be an illustrious and wholly popular foray into the insanely cluttered world of internet babblery, but it's there, set down in black and white, saved on some stranger's server for the entire world to see.
Huh.
So, yes, this is my blog. The Manta Ray Taste X-Plosion. And it's just begun, so please cut it some slack. I swear it'll get better from here on.
I mean, really, could it get much worse?
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