Stream of Consciousness
Here’s what was screaming through my brain on my way back to Ten Eyck after having lunch with Voldemort [skip it or stop reading once you can’t stand it any longer. It’s neurotic as fuck]:
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That woman tripped over my foot and kicked the bottom of my heel and I can’t stop feeling it. I feel her kick at the bottom of my heel, and I still feel it, and I still feel it and I still feel it and will I always feel it? My tummy is wrecked. Whoa these lyrics, have I heard this song before? There are Atmosphere songs I haven’t heard? Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is my theme song. Whoa. “You know me, you know that I’m a control freak. Who told you could die before me?” I am such a control freak, that’s why I can’t stand it when people die before me. I’m a herder — I wrote that I’m a retriever, but I’m a shepherd breed — circling, circling, circling. That dog taking a dump on the sidewalk was doing it right where the sidewalk met the street — why do city dogs always poo in the weirdest spots? Seems uncomfortable, awkward. They look ashamed, I’m ashamed, too. God, is that man grabbing his penis? He’s squeezing his fucking penis. I can’t believe I knocked that bike over, or maybe that woman who was picking it up when I turned around was the one who knocked it over. Ugh, [Voldemort’s real name]. Why did he ask me to massage his neck in front of all those people? “Your hands have to want to be on my neck.” “But they don’t.” They didn’t. My stomach hurts. I can’t eat, I’m so tired, drained. Just write and write and think and there IS a plot to your life, but how to reduce it down to that and Sheila Heiti wrote the book I want to write and nobody wants to be a vampire with me. “You know how to receive right?” “Yes.” Take, I thought, but then he said, “Give.” Okay? But I do give and give and give, give. I suppose I only give to myself and myself thinks she needs that right now and that’s all she is capable of right now or maybe I’m giving to something that is just a longer game, a more abstract thing, and that’s okay right now and my therapist yelled at me and said I was no different than my friends who died, she said that I am numb and I don’t want to be numb and Amanda said someone’s notes ended up on her phone and we read them and half the people who liked my Facebook status post about being done with my MFA are in The Book and maybe my therapist is right, maybe I don’t like half of them, but more so, maybe, I don’t like people — like any people, like I just want to be alone for a second, like let me organize my thoughts for christsake, for one fucking second — and [Voldemort’s real name] looked so good today — that’s always shocking. His eyes remind me of looking at an animal who knows too much, like when I tell people their dog’s eyes are human, his are more human than most eyes, I guess. I guess that’s just being aware or very…awake. I can’t relax around him. I’m totally scared whenever I’m around him and I tell him so, to make it easier, but it makes it much worse, like way worse cause it makes no sense why I can’t relax and I end up feeling like a small child. An idiot and a small child. Why do I do that? Why can’t I just be? And the conductor is holding the G train for me as I run for it. He sees me and is holding the door for me. I am getting sick, this running shows that I’m getting sick for sure. The air-conditioning on this train feels so good. I am starving, then cold, then full, and now hot and just the fact that the train conductor knew how important it was for me to get on this train, because when I rounded the corner, the G was at the center of the platform so I was sure I would miss it and then he saw me and we both knew that he would wait. God, that was so nice. I had relaxed for one second into thinking it would be okay to miss it. I am so sick to my stomach for going to see [Voldemort’s real name] without him knowing that I call him Voldemort, because I think he is essentially good. I’m the one who is bad and I am just amazed at how I cannot effect him in any way, but he does see me somehow and he cares for me like a good boy, like a retriever — he thinks dogs are dumb — and he gets how scared I am of everything, he really understands that, and he slurped the taco juice and said, “You must think I’m an animal. I feel like an animal.” He didn’t introduce me to his friend, thank god, I had no need to talk to anyone, I didn’t even want to talk to [Voldemort]. I just wanted to be near him, I just want to be near people — let’s not interact. I’m afraid that I’m building a life where all I do is hole away and hole away and hole away and hole away and the walls will be too tall and there I will be, alone in a hole. [Beauty Bar Boy] can sense not to fuck with me. He seems so cool. Why didn’t I write my address on the poster board on his wall? He said I could. Why wouldn’t I? I don’t take anything and now I’m seeing that I don’t give anything either. I’m a terrible neutral. Why can’t I just allow myself to be a sloppy mess? Twice now in conversations with friends I’ve corrected myself and said, “No, let me say it different. I’m being dramatic,” and twice now, my friends responded with, “What? You? Dramatic?” in a sarcastic tone. And that hurt both times. I thought, Wow, I am being so tame, the image I let people see is so much more tame than the tornado swirling inside of me and now the self loathing comes, the guilt, for being such a child but if you were me, you would be a child too, you would have to be a child too, in order to be okay with everything that happened and now that I’ve been delivered again, I’m waking up and now I see that I’m just a child. It’s too bad people don’t have time to teach me. Why should they? The Photographer tried to teach me how to love but I couldn’t sit with the discomfort long enough. I couldn’t listen just like I couldn’t listen to [Voldemort’s real name] today, teaching me how to give a massage (he is tit for tat and I can’t with that, I think I can’t with that). They were trying to teach me for such different reasons: [The Photographer’s real name] was trying to teach me for my benefit, Voldemort was teaching me for his own benefit. [Voldemort’s real name] said my heart was sucking everything inside of it, he said most people have a two-way energy stream, but my heart was just sucking and sucking. It’s because I’m only a small child, raw and agile and easily influenced, god I’m so easily influenced. I didn’t want to hurt the Photographer’s feelings, that was the problem, and I didn’t like how much he hurt my feelings, and I know that in real love, feelings are not the main concern. The main concern is how the truth seals you together, even when it hurts because you both know there’s no way out of love and I couldn’t wait for the sensation to show up with the Photographer. I couldn’t because I was already so freaked out. Eva is happier, I can see it because she’s thinner, like she’s beginning to take up the correct amount of space and I just know she is happier and happier and I’m just getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and taking up more space than I deserve. Man, if only I could truly believe I took up too much space, like it was an affront to others, I would shrink in an instant and [the names of two people in a couple I know] love each other and maybe there is nothing below what I see between them and maybe I’m just complicating something that is so, so simple. Stop wondering how on earth it is that you add — because you do add, you can’t help but add unless you think about how it is that you manage to do it or how anyone could possibly believe it to be true. Just do it, just add, just add, just add, but I’m scared people don’t really want me to.
Two guys with beards and wooden boards. I don’t like those boards. They aren’t two-by-fours.
I have amazing travel time today, like incredible, and that’s the tattoo shop where I got my bows and arrows and people just grab you and touch you and I need to touch more people. I’m always pulling away because what if I give and then they dissolve, like they did before, into the earth? What then? But this is a new life. The past doesn’t necessarily apply anymore. But if it doesn’t apply, why did I have to go through those other lives? Probably to become an artist. Probably, but I am just a small child, so I don’t know. I really can’t know.
And I’m telling you, it just continued like that for like 48 hours. Insane, right?
