Underneath; Precious Illusions; Everything; Simple Together; That I Would Be Good; 8 Easy Steps; So Unsexy; Still; Crazy

I can't sleep.  I keep reaching for my phone; it's a lifeline, it's a connection to the outside (it's a distraction).  I have my headphones in, my iPod on (product placement?) and Alanis Morissette is playing over and over and over.  This is the first time I have ***** to try to fall asleep; is the fact that it's not working a good thing, a bad thing, or just a simple matter of fact?

Should I call into work tomorrow?  I don't want to go, but that's nothing new.  If I call in, though, they might suspect that something's wrong.  And though something probably is wrong, I don't like to mix work life and my personal life.

Should I go out running?  Not unless I call in to work.  But why not?  It might tire me out, it might help me sleep.  Sleep, however, may be a lost cause at this point.

*** will not talk to me ("I should have loved a thunderbird instead").  I try to tell myself that my preoccupation with him is unnecessary, and that he is not real, that he is not really there-- because we have never met.  I feel like I have been here before, and I most likely have-- and if I have, then maybe I am living that classic "definition of insanity."  It all feels new, though maybe it's the phenomenal aspect and not the noumenal aspect that seems new; it all certainly feels familiar, though the details and the specifics of this circumstance are different (or are they?  is it a trick?  is it all some kind of illusion?).

I keep hoping *** has contacted me, but what would that do for me?  I keep telling myself that I need to learn to let go of things (certain things, things I obsess over, things which are immaterial or illusory or impermanent; things which cause suffering due to my own personal desire or my ego's expectations of the material world [what the fuck am I even talking about?]), but I think I also have a problem with burning bridges and "letting go" of things in an insincere, self-serving way; as a defense mechanism; as a means of avoidance.  I was hoping not to have to let go of ***, I was hoping to not
have
to let go
of anything;
but here I am again, without an old friend
to comfort me;
I am my own old friend, and I'm getting sick of entertaining myself;
I have overstayed my own goddamn welcome.

I wish someone else would invade my goddamn head.

I still can't sleep, and the **** I've ***** has already escaped my prefrontal cortex and my kidneys, and it looks like I'll go on thinking until my death; sleep is not going to come tonight.  Sleep is not going to be anything but an illusory, momentary, impermanent and false relief.  I don't even dream anymore-- or if I do, I'm not remembering my dreams, unless I am in some way altered when I happen to fall asleep.

This will probably all be erased soon.

Everything Feels Fake (there is blood in nothing)

Not a mean drunk, but
a sad schmuck, and I'm
stuck inside my own head.

I'm not a madman,
but quite a sad man--
longing for timely death.

What lights could hope to
find our rites, and bring
them rightly to the fore

Of your consciousness;
some wandering bliss;
why search when there's no more?

Take me down into
these oceans of blue,
and rend me asunder.

If our lives are true--
if me, then you--let's
echo as the thunder.

In time, we will find
ourselves and our souls--
gone sour, gone crazy, gone

Towards some great end:
we're lonely (maybe
crazy) we're lovely,

We're friends.  Though we can't
claim divinity;
though we can't claim amends--

Let's fall down, now;
let's confound, now;
let's let this be the end.

One of the best birthday presents I've ever received (August 30, 2006)

Lovebirds

For Jiva, on his birthday.

At 10,000 feet you can't breathe.

Daedalus could,

but you are Icarus, trying and failing to fly.

Above your head you saw him

beckoning you to fly and find your home amongst the clouds

and so you built yourself wings, foolishly made of idyll dreams,

climbing to the height of the eagles

Over the sea he kisses your forehead

you can see he wants to keep flying with you

but, too close to the sunlight of his eyes,

your wings begin to melt

and he's taking you into a dive

do you trust him to hold your hand all the way down?

a feather tickles your wrist

your heart stumbles with the sensation of gasping for breath while he holds your life

hostage and precious

absolute lack of oxygen making you desperate--

this is what it's like to drown while soaring

He can't spare you; the world was made to be seen.

but you can't blink, wind stinging your eyes

altitudes and attitudes interfering with your voice cracking as you try to cry out for his

reassurance

it's still a long way down to the treacherous waters

it must be that birds have always lived with love

Fuzzy Hymnals and Myopic Prophecy

my shoes-- and the way i wear them--

will not convince you i'm the one to love.
my shorts-- and the way they frame my lack of an ass--
do nothing to sway you, nor will they ever.

my eyes may belie my intentions, my façade of haberdashery--
though they look away, turn from yours
and the unblemished sight they strive to see--
but when closed, they
always roll inwards, to gaze upon your snowglobe visage:

mirage of gemstone irises and candied lips--
whose partings send forth a turpitudinous beckoning;

how my amaurotic dreams long to
languidly sire
these ideas, these ideas into actuality
as they spring forth

unduly

from your piquant, heightened sensuality.

From the yawning depths of
your chasm'ous innerspaces

(dark to balance the trill of my luminous cacophony
as we ride upon the breath of the night)

comes a watery feeling;

I hope to whatever Gods may be
that Thales was right in his Greek assumptions;

Your tears are all I have left to hold onto.
Mine flow away:

molten silver into molten fissures.

10.06.012 Nameless Still

What syllables could ever hope to form
themselves
with any modicum of true meaning?

And as that liquid ditty floats,
prancing onward down the faces
linéd-- tears like rivers streaming--

the golden moon sets itself
in a hymnal of fuzz.

Fly upward, outward, Ghost--
penny for your thoughts,
treatise to bar the wailings--

ephemeral conjuncts
(a joining of hands, praises rising)

drop to stillness, malquiescence, night's promise:

we will go on forever.

I should have stayed a fantasy.

Thoughts

"You shouldn't be feeling this way at your age" is something I hear repeatedly from people, and it usually comes from people who are older than I am.  This can mean one of two things: either my feelings are the issue, or my age is the issue (or the issue is somehow related to or stems from either of these).  As I see it, this is either a subtle and seemingly innocuous incarnation of ageism (if my age is the issue), or an highly-preferable invalidation of my feelings (albeit unintentional, or largely so).

Ageism-- like racism and sexism and homophobia-- promotes discriminatory feelings based on an uncontrollable and oftentimes unrelated or non-causal factor.  While it is permissible to say that a person of a certain age, race, sex, or sexual preference might be more likely to display certain attributes-- those attributes which have a direct causal relationship with age/race/sex/orientation-- we oftentimes confuse causality with other forms of correlation (i.e. coincidence).  An elderly person, for example, is much more likely than a child to have rheumatoid arthritis; a person of full-blooded African descent is more likely to have a dark complexion (protection against the sun) and dark irises (absorption of intense sunlight, aiding sight), while a person of full-blooded Irish descent is more likely to have light skin (increased absorption of vitamin D in low-level light) and a lighter coloration of the irises (refraction/reflection of sunlight into the pupils, aiding sight); men and women have entirely different reproductive organs as well as correspondingly-different levels of various sexual hormones; and, of course, a homosexual person is more likely to want to engage in sexual acts with a person of his or her own sex.  There are only so many things we can correctly assume based on a person's age (or race, or sex, or sexual orientation).  Feelings are not among these things.

Feelings are what they are and cannot be helped.  Emotions are a part of the human experience and will always arise-- and some may persist.  Problems arise in regards to how we treat our feelings and whether or not we hold onto them desperately or let them run their course as we both experience and observe ourselves experiencing them.  Some of us allow our emotions to dictate the whole of our lives; we sit in the passenger seat (or the back seat-- some of us are tied up in the trunk) and allow our unchecked feelings to take us wherever they will.  I have gone through spells where this has been the case, though I feel like I'm making strides to live harmoniously with my feelings.

Now, after all this splitting of hairs: I understand that most people who tell me "you shouldn't be feeling this way at your age" really mean that the indisputable fact of my feeling a certain way at my ([relatively] young) age is, at best, unfortunate.  Ideally, yes, it would be nice to be more carefree and less jaded (and skeptical, and disenfranchised) at "my [young] age," but the issue is this: I see many problems with how the world works; more specifically: I see many problems with the way the society-into-which-I-was-born works.  I want to fix these problems as they pertain to my own personal life.

Despite my age, I am not naive enough to think that I can freely and immediately change the world; my issues with control are steadily dwindling, and my primary concern is living a life Immanuel Kant might be proud of-- though my imperative is perhaps more hypothetical than categorical (atheistic existentialism with a Kantian twist?).  I will live my life as I see fit; I will live as I would expect anyone else in my situation to live, and I will exercise self-discipline.  It is possible to at once live a model life while living for oneself; it is possible to live for oneself while exercising selflessness, compassion, and empathy.  This is my goal.  It's a high standard to live up to, but only because I let my ego and its desires get in the way.

I do complain a lot.  I complain instead of taking action.  I complain instead of meditating.  I complain instead of creating.

And here we have arrived at something that's much closer to the root of the problem.  The problem is not my age, nor is it my feelings.  The problem is, perhaps, my unchecked ego and its self-preserving habits of avoidance and indulgence.