Making Some Old Stuff New

Bits and pieces. Examples of what I have to pick through to display coherence.

Who cares what you think. Read this, and bite me. I don’t live for you, breath for you, exude passion for you. You just happen to inhabit the same planet that I do, we might chance upon sharing the same space every now and then...for a heartbeat or longer...whatever. The point is I don’t need the approval that you think I should strive for. Don’t want it, if it means that I have to act like you. You live in your perception of the time that you are here, and I’ll live in mine. The less that we try to change each other, the better.

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Exploding would be too dramatic for my nature, even though that is what I long for. If anything major ever happened to me, it would be me, imploding. My insides would cave in on themselves and disintegrate, leaving my body an empty box. Looking from the outside in, nobody would even notice that what was essentially me was gone. I would function the same, look the same, smile the same, but there would be nothing of me there, and no one observing me would be any wiser. Exploding would display what is inside of me, and we all know that I am not comfortable with that. Never say what I truly feel ‘cause then I might not be the sweet one. Never say what I really want because then I might not get it. Have fun, but never to the point of ridiculousness – God forbid I look like a fool. Distance is the attitude that I adopt, fear and diffidence are what rule me. While I long, I don’t know quite what it is that I long for. Sometimes I covet the characteristics of red – bold and deep, striking, hard to miss, strong. Most of the time the attributes that I possess are those of sage green. Silent, soft, becoming a part of the milieu. If even-keeled is what I am, then why can’t I be happy with that?

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December 16, 2003

To have a conversation like that with someone is like poetry. Magic, movement, art, life. As I want to live it. To explain myself so thoroughly, to be understood and to actually understand, myself, what I am saying, I cry quietly because it is so touching to me. It is hard for me to communicate. It is hard for me to discern how I feel, almost until the minute that the feeling or thought is upon me. To do this unplanned, is startling to me. To reveal myself so well, and not have record of doing so to reflect on later makes me choke with panic. I did not know that was what I wanted until I talked to you. Explaining myself to you was jointly explaining myself to me.

My thoughts are so jumbled, because of this huge release. I don’t want to lose how this makes me feel – I’ve felt the flame flicker and is so in danger of flaming out. A part of me screams that it is done, now just do it. Another part of me wants to get this down so that I can understand, and not keep perpetuating the cycle.

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When I understand
My eyes are only one way
Romeo is mine.

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As my body shakes
I wonder about reserve
Still I turn over

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The Beast

Slouching with booth posture at Denny’s
watching Teddy grin cheerfully at the drunken idiots
while you marvel at what he’s not saying
and what you would be,
with much gusto and gesturing.
I think it makes him better,
(if there was such a travesty
as rank of quality
by temper or ones take on life,
never mind what money’s supposed to get you)
his Adaptability and detachment.
Makes him the tree that stretches
instead of breaking
from the strain of all that social wind.
He may be the next Plato
for all we know.
You think he’s simple, oblivious.
Seems to me that he has the beast
by the same horns
that impale us.

They Think I'm Crazy

It is amazing how hot a face can get when it flushes. All that blood rushing up so quickly that it makes your head appear like a luminous red light bulb. Apparently this causes a chain reaction, too: after my face turned all of its shades of crimson, my hands start to shake and my mouth gets as dry as sand. After a drought. In Arizona. The reaction is so violent that a person who knows me intimately but not at all was able to notice. Curses! This would be hideously galling had communicating my feelings, however platonic, not been the goal. But so it was, and there I was squirming with the foreignness of it all.

Then I get the wedding invitation...dun dun DUN. Not even the real one, but a WARNING one. I swear to God, these things are engineered to torture those of us who cling to the single lifestyle. Yes, I am perfectly happy with my life as is - body image, plans for the future, marital status, or lack there of. No, I do not care the slightest bit about what these people (who sometime remind my of 13th graders, choosing to take the high school social dramas with them into adulthood) think of me. Curious, though. I mean, really thought provoking. The minute that my nosy little hands seperated the flap from the glue on the envelope, I started thinking " 'K. I've got x amount of time to make my body look droolably amazing, create a plan for my life so that I don't have to claim waiting tables anymore, and find me one hell of a good looking man, even if I have to trip his ass in a bar." Curious indeed.

2:17am

The older i get, the less I care. I sit in my car and bob my head, writing furiously, maniacly as the minutes flow past the baby hours of the morning. Florida School for the Deaf and Blind campus security stopping to check that I'm o.k. because I'm looking half-cracked with the motor running and the dome light on. I look weird but I feel just fine. Normal would be the problem for me.