stone against skin
August 10th: reality itself is too twisted
you'd better take care of me, Lord...because if you don't, you're going to have me on your hands...
—Hunter S. Thompson
Dream:
It's always startling to actually feel the knowledge that these things that have been a part of your life forever are out of the norm.
Many confused drug-dazed dreams, all overlapping, all at once--I went to see Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas last night and it left me with the confusion that surrounds me realizing all over again that other people take drugs to see the sorts of things that I see every day (and dismiss, knowing that it's just my mind, playing tricks).
Reality:
The presence of so much genius in my life is at once inspiring and depressing--inspiring because, well, these are drug-addled crazy minds and they managed to create things that were so much more than the sum of their experiences would have predicted, and it's good to know that somewhere, out there, there are people who can create like this.Depressing because, damnit, I will never be Hunter S. Thompson or Bukowski or Margaret Atwood or Kerouac or any number of writers who have the gift of tongues.
But I have my own gifts, and sometimes I think that'll be enough.
****
I think i've gotten it figured out.
See, once upon a time I was pretty damn sure of myself. I knew what I wanted to be, i knew how I was going to get there, and I knew that no matter how much time I spent alone I would always be happy at the end of the day just to have some tea and pet a cat.
Then I got sidetracked. Actually, more like derailed. A series of lovers and boyfriends who had no particular ambition, no drive towards any one thing, plenty of scattered brilliance but no strong lights in any particular direction. A career-path change, a major change, and the chemistry of my brain going massively strange in response to the change in environment occasioned by my move from California to Iowa.
I melted down.
I became progressively more ghost-haunted, more apt to act out the crazy plays that are constantly evolving inside of me, more apt to let people know about the roles I cast them in, the rules I had for my existence.
you may not speak till spoken to. if you start a conversation, you must finish it.
But eventually, I could see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Removing myself from Iowa was the start. Removing Iowa from me was where it ended. And this, above all, frightened me.
they say they never saw the cracks until the very end. The facade remained pure. the picture of health.
and now i look back on it all, and I wonder: would it have been so bad, to have spent some time on the psych ward? Certainly enough of my friends did it, there was no particular stigma attached to it. But then I remember the fear, the crippling, all-encompassing fear, and I know that I was not strong enough for the hospital. Would not have survived the hospital. Would have lied my little head off to get myself out of the hospital.
Luckily, the rules held. With help from friends who had no idea what they were giving me, I made it. I survived.
But as afraid as I was of not surviving the experience, I was at least that afraid of living through it. I can't really explain it except that I've always felt that madness and genius were terribly close to each other, and each word I ripped out of my bleeding soul was that much closer to the divine. But now, looking back from this terribly precarious foundation of what appears to be something like sanity, I can tell that I'll always have those memories. I'll always know what it is like to know with horrifying certainty that your own mind is the enemy.
At least, in the moments of lucidity, that's what I knew.
*****
But now?
Now is precarious. At least for the moment, i can honestly say I'm all right. I do still have my moments of rage, periods of blankness, strange rituals and needs, but it's much calmer than it was before. My system, without the stress of what was tearing us apart, is working together again. When we separate it is not because we have to but because there is comfort in feeling the presence of the others in this matrix of minds.
It's difficult to deal with it, sometimes. As far as i can ever remember, happiness has always been followed by sweeping black despair. I think it may be part of the whole bipolar thing; after a while, you get so used to the other shoe dropping, that you go out of your way to make it fall. You provoke it into falling. You look at it with one eye closed, stick out your tongue, and convince yourself that it is falling.
So what's different about this time?
I think it's the fact that this time, I seem to have worked myself into a position where it's all my choice whether to stay or to go. I'm not trapped, and i'm starting to realize that, yes indeed, i'm where i am because I want to be here. I'm in love because i want to be, not because she fell first and I feel obligated. I live where I do because I want to, I work where i do not because I don't think i could get a good job anywhere else but because I actually like where I'm working and the work i'm doing.
The first time in 23 years that i'm not trapped and I'm really, truly, honestly enjoying it.
This is what being a grownup should be all about, I think.
*****
It's time again to think about cosmos, and decide what I need to do with it. Something, obviously, needs to be done. *sighs* some day.
*****
The Fray has a new story. I have decided that I refuse to live in these blue jeans and tshirts any longer and as soon as i have some money again I am going to buy me some new clothes. My nails are going to be blue tonight or maybe green if I go home instead of geeking. Paula is in Seattle, oddly enough. I had a "the internet is a small world after all" experince the other night when i found out that Emory is some sort of weird relation to Ivana and therefore Mike. Here's how it went:
I was over at their house, and mike was helping me set up DNS on crab.madstop.org (because god knows I'm a complete dork when it comes to these things, but at least I admit my lack of knowledge) and he noticed he had email, and I glanced at the address, and said, You know Emory?
And he did.
Weirdshit, man.
This weekend might well be fun, and this makes me happy, as does the prospect of having a shiny new paycheck and a Renfaire coincide. Rahyeah.
Adulation. Okay, it would get old after a while, but right now it's nice.
*****
I'm reading notes from someone's road trip and thinking, not so oddly, about traveling with Melanie....about just being with her, with the outdoors in our teeth and her car smelling of smoke and us just...being with each other.
Amazing that it's still possible.
Dear god, i'm a sap. I keep on telling myself defiantly that i'm allowed to be. She is, after all, one of the good things in my life and one of the best things about having lived through the rest of my life is that it's okay for me to have good things now. (doesn't make any sense? doesn't make much sense to me, either.)
We have the same style of discussing things that worry or bother or concern us...we bring it us, listen to the other person have their say, explain ourselves, and see if anything can be done about it. That's it. We don't worry about keeping score, who's winning or losing. Nobody tries to destroy the other person's arguments.
It seems weird to me that this should be something strange and new.
*****
A lot of things are starting to come together for me...and there are some things that are going to have to get shunted away for a while. i'm making a new page to put up on Geocities since i think soon I'm going to have people i may not want to know the names of the 40 people who haunt my insides read what I've written up there.
But I don't know if I can. content that's not this effortless daily spew is such work.
And, really, what the hell more do I have to say? I suppose I could move Anatomy back up but that would be making a commitment to work on it again. More content. Speaking of, i really need to write a new column for Blueprint and send it off, only i'm really out of inspiration for the time being. But i won't be, soon, i hope.
the moment:
stone against skin
your assignment:
CD: Dar Williams, The End of the Summer
Book: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson; le ton bon de Marot, Douglas Hoefstader; Last Night of the Earth Poems, Bukowski
(expect this list to last at least a week. I am attempting to cause certain intellectual synapses in my brain to overload and melt down, and the best way I can think of to do this without chemicals is to read a bunch of books that are brilliant and fucked up in their own way all at once. Also, I expect to be completely fucked up at the end of the week because of these books. i'll keep you posted.)
Outside: Adobe has invaded. Send help.
Doing: Have documentation hammer. Process documentation looking startlingly like nails. *poundpound*
Link: new Fray story...
Bonus quote of the day: "What kinda mom would name her child Demon Boy?" --Scythe
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breathe beauty once in a while.