if we smile, can we go?

brought to you by the same mix of intellectual fervor and narcissism that would compel someone to record themselves reading aloud (yes, i've been there, thank you)

your voice when you affect childishness, your voice when you affect cool, your filler sounds from half a world away and a language you still can't quite speak, your absolute detachment! from your own courteous words whenever they creep in--

would you be more or less polite, if you knew? me? 

if i could have said, listen, i am probably the most well-educated person you know, and i knew my way around a text well before that. i mostly deal with material reality, probabilities, averages. i don't speak your language, but i'm translating as we go, and i have that perpetually undone look you like when you see it in the movies

i know it's not a me problem, but still it stings; having girded my loins, as it were, for a completely different type of weapon, to be confronted by what? words?

alfred skilton: ruiner of appetites, ladies and gentlemen!

dreams by the sea

dilde gam var şimdilik lutfeyle gelme ey sürûr
olamaz bir hânede mihmân mihmân üstüne
-râsih

you lead a horse to
water, but
oh, why the long face?
-muhibbîye-san

well i sure know how to pick’em, right down to the way the cheekbone curves down to the jaw; i swear you could be brothers — once more, then, to the trenches, in the half-light with the small town: population 93.998.

i just fucked two bitches 'fore i saw you
and you gon' have to do it at my tempo

-weekndî

there was a clean shirt. it was right there.

i didn’t dare bring up the clean shirt, which is why i have to bring it up now. and the other thing.

did you think i would poison you? a spell of sorts? that i would miraculously baby-trap you? 

what the actual fuck was *that* about?

you are in my blood like holy wine

you taste so bitter, and so sweet
oh i could drink a case of you, darling
and i would still be on my feet, i would still be on my feet

-jonî

whoever it was you saw when you looked at me; that wasn't me, by the way. if i could tell you one thing, but i can't. you'll eventually have to consider human beings' infinite capacity for projection, like i had to do when my first love took an undergraduate intro to psychology course.

were you standing in the hallway / with a big cake / happy birthday

did i paint your bluest skies the darkest gray? / a universe away
-swiftî

you go thinking you're all friendly just to get slapped with a "oh, i'm just a simple guy" or "get thee to a nunnery" or "why do you care about me that much?" honestly, i don't know. clearly there has been a mistake.

is it a mean streak, a desolation sound

a copy of desire, oh, nothing's that far down
-gordî

and right about now i find myself in perfect sympathy with middle-aged men with tears in their eyes discussing hamlet. 

zamâne bizde cevher sezdügiçün dil-hırâş eyler

anunçun bağrumuz hûndur maârif kânıyuz cânâ
-bâkî 

i keep saying information, but that's exactly what i mean. the information i was getting was sauteed onions, yes, damp and a faint whiff of smoke, all overlaid with cortisol, and lo! i was saved. the answer came from the very depths of my consciousness where the oldest knowledge resides: this animal doesn’t smell good, alleluia!

 

now i'm free,

free fallin'

-pettî

is this how you feel all the time?

there's never really any safety in it
please do it again

-karîn









-epilogue-


hey joe, i said, where you goin' with that gun in your hand?
-jimî

what i feel now about you then

i'm just glad i can explain
you're beautiful and close and young
in those ways we were the same
-mattî

i just smelled you again yesterday, i'm not sure how that happened, but you smelled of good clean sweat. no idea where that leaves me.

am i better off?

am i better than this?

am i better?

i recall it all forever

how we sheltered in our place
and we called each other lovers
in the latter days

i recall it all forever

--how there was no hiding place

so we called each other brothers

(in the latter days, in the latter days)

-anaïs

i'm glad of what keeps me afloat.

trigger warning! seriously, this is your warning. this is not real life. i mean it is, but it's exaggerated for effect.

.

back then (back then), one of my most treasured fantasies went like this: when they inevitably sent me somewhere i don't want to be, i would rent a place and do all the song and dance of setting up my new life, and when i was finally left alone i would hang myself. no letter. the letter was: you can't have me.

i did keep up, for a while, with a regimented programme of escaping. but then i had to escape from that too, and here we are. the time of leaving did come, but by then, alas, i was no longer suicidal. years of evolution down the drain --this is bad, fear this-- just like that, replaced by a productive member of society.

all this is to say: i am being killed as we speak, by people i don't like. the bad people are killing me.

i could escape without repercussions, of course. if there was, say, a grave and proximal threat to my well-being. how grave? graver then that. how proximal? p r o x i m a l .

..

i kept meaning to make a note of a few formative experiences i had in the second decade of the twenty first century. a light blinking in the distance (darkness, darkness): this is how seriously you should take your heart.

...

who was i if not the cynic, the clown, the misanthrope, the flirt? your good friend.

and didn't i put my head on your shoulder in front of God and about a dozen people in various levels of consciousness? all the while waiting for the bill to arrive; and when could i resist an irresistible phrase? exactly never.

....

i read about this once: somebody you want in a dirty motel room, the nylon bedspread and the city outside. and other times: will you permit it? and again: laughter in the garden. children in the morning. a bed of straw, voici le jour!

very much in my body, very much in my head, and i knew there needed to be some instruction, but i didn't have any words and i couldn't see, all my words are in the wrong language, and i had no strength, anyway, if i ever needed it. little packets of staticky information, but it's wild, the shit you can't guess about a person who's naked and also touching you.

i remember thinking; i will never get out of here. maybe the only truly perverse thing in all of this, and there: you get an image, a thought, a distraction. my body, and yours: believe it if you can.

.....

the urge to do lasts for about three seconds, and then you have the doing. what if you have an overwhelming urge to fuck but something's telling you to avoid touching the sheets? what if you have an overwhelming urge to get fucked but something's telling you to protect your airway? these are the kind of age-old questions we're talking about, here. my baby and i, let us sing you the song of our people. until somebody gets too bored or too exsanguinated by a freak jeans zipper accident, in which case we will have to stop.

....

for a minute there i dreamed of a life with menstrual huts and noisy sendoffs (the drums especially were conspicuous by their absence), and i liked the thought of it. like walking out into the light with the itch still under my skin, losing whole weekends thinking, thinking, not asking. if i handed over my body, he'd do something interesting. we all thought that.

...

sometimes you pull me out into your head, and sometimes i like that too. 

sometimes i go through the motions of rebellion: my t-shirt that says "currently unavailable" for a first date, my white dress with crimson roses, my party skirt that has seen me through any and all parties in three continents for the past decade. what must be, must be; one day, slightly tipsy, i will tell a bunch of people the story of the time i stared at your bathroom floor and how clumps of hair stared back at me the way only clumps of hair can. this is now a funny story.

..

some of us artsy types are familiar with the concept of nostalgia. the same wall, the same horizon, the same bus stop, no way through. no way out, no way through, some day i will stop cursing at the fucking bus stop, today is not that day. 

.

and i know, i know that i improve (and it hurts) when i move towards contact. a long road that way, too (and no inn in sight, and night coming, and the body cold). the question is the ole am i worthy of being loved? you pays your money, you gets your answer; darling, i have to go hunt some bison, or we'll all go hungry, surely you understand. leave your message at the tone

loong loong looooong time running

i haven't been ovulating and i should take some progesterone but i'm afraid it's going to cause some sort of downward spiral so i keep putting it off.

i did it because i was afraid/because i was noble/because i was bored/because i had just walked through literal hell/because i couldn't stand your endless panicking for one more minute/(last, not least)because i can't even begin to (drumroll) conceptualize the promise of being less alone. now that i've obsessed about it for a month i sort of can? maybe? but that doesn't count, because nothing ever counts until they are turkish sentences. better yet: actions. as in, behavior. (haha, i can't even say it with a straight face.)

i came home and i couldn't straighten my legs. somewhere in there i spent two days with the absolute certainty that i was going to throw up any minute. there are still days where i can't listen to music, can't put milk in my coffee, can't wear my clothes. all in my quest to avoid pain, lol.

i keep misjudging how much discipline this takes. i've been conditioned to analyse! i've been trained to extrapolate! my whole life! i've learned to fear! i'm told i'm not supposed to do any of those things! i fail to do as i am told! now i hate myself! but i'm not supposed to do that either!

i made you fear, and now i have to forgive myself for it. forgive you, for being fucking useless. forgive myself again. i can't help being angry at this time. call back later.

you never play along when i'm angry, which, mad respect, bro.

if i can keep one thing, i'd like to keep that sky, please. apparently it brings out my eyes.

somewhere patient, somehow kind

imagine i quieted down
imagine i got over myself
got on with it
imagine
that

thinking of the key the key the key

i am an american aquarium drinker

in the library with the wrong tim winton novel circa 2010.

notes for the good of the service:

high concentrations of intellectual curiosity may inhibit networking.

stop talking and check comprehension. stop early, stop often, stop and listen.

don't let people bore you into being rude: it looks like the polite thing to do at first but the outcome is the same.

like a war/like a warning

long ago in kentucky

things i wanted to know the most when i was a child:

1. what is it like to be someone else?
2. how long is ten years?

turns out:
1. ERR
2. it's a long time.

let us therefore fear ourselves and fight on the beaches where it tosses its whatsis

if i had successfully committed alien genocide in another galaxy, maybe then i would know what to do?

the good progress!

and that is how i came to be a recovering four quartets fan. i mean, it changed my life: it is noncommittal, it has allusions, it sounds really good, whatever. but i simply can't afford to be this zen about shit i need to get done, dammit. even if me not being zen = panic attacks. 

april this year

i feel like i am finally (please god) learning how to love: it's all a bit bitty at the moment but i keep getting coffee by myself and thinking, i can go longer like this. i have never feared losing a friend, even when it might've done me some good; i'd rather be right. i'd rather love whatever's around. maybe get earplugs?

up next: how not to be afraid of women.