Tuesday, March 9, 2010

F@#k You!

Bitterness is all the rage. It is an element of human emotion that destroys someone inside and out. I think anger fortifies a human being and cannont be realized until a woman stares herself in the eye and feels comfortable with that reflection. My rage is something that I work diligently to contain. I keep it locked up and hidden from those who surround me. This is not to say that I am some woman who ought to seek anger management, but to say that when I do infact become angry, it effects me severily. My body shakes with discontent. I do not eat properly nor sleep regularly and focus soley on a vexation which is never human.

So a man comes to me and says that I have upset him. This man is angry with me and confronts me soon after realizing his unhappiness. He says I have caused him great stress while I cannot seem to fathom how it is that I am capable of changing someone else's feelings. We have never been lovers: never been enemies.

I keep as much of my time locked up as possible. Perhaps this is why I do much of my writing and communicating with others via the internet. I don't need to go away to see them or talk, not that I am totally against those types of social interactions. Likewise, I don't need to open my door to them, allowing them to look at my books, the foods I eat, the bed in which I rest, et cetera. There is a tremendous comfort in keeping people at bay. I figure I can save time by refusal to share mine with anyone else. This way, I'm at least in theory prolonging my own time.

At any rate, I stand confused by this man's accusation. I have vexed him? I have irritated him? And how so? My very lack of presence? I feel as though people get angry at their connivance, as it is something to do. I feel sometimes that people don't know what real hurt is. I wonder how it is that a man can overlook the fact that the pain or aggravation in itself is a presence. People's arguments are often aimless and without grounds. In this case, I never said I would be somewhere and later was not. I never changed my mind in a last minute rush, I simply did nothing. Imagine that!

So this would-be-friend wants to ridicule me for an aspect of social longevity which I have never possessed. I wish often that I'd be more prone to get togethers and cute little encounters; unfortunately, I am probably in that classification of loners and hermits. I'm more independent on a serious note. I can have my brief encounters with people but they are no more intimate than brushing against a stranger in a crowded avenue. I simply like to stay in and theorize, imagining that one day, I may have thought something through enough to make a difference.

So go ahead, be bitter. Get upset. Lash out. I really am made of steel. It doesn't matter in this moment, hasn't been thought-provoking in moments passed and will not sustain into tomorrow. Keep your memory of me and all the stress I've created. I am a monster and even monsters are tangible.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

You

I sit here with my old dog, getting closer to eternity all the time, and it gets very depressing. What can I do? I had high hopes in myself and in the idea of an "us" over the past couple of years. It seemed we all did. But what does an evil old recluse do now that he's finally made it to his destination? Now that he's finally there in a crowd of strangers and he's hurt the one person who swore she'd never hurt him? Just sit and be evil? This is something quite difficult for any human, I imagine, unless he is an adept at evil and a 'made-man'.

The lack of overhead light lends a special dreary look to my bedroom. I'm surrounded by bitter reminders every day; the muddy snow outside, the gray-blue landscapes, that moment before the telephone rings and the sigh I'm forced to emit when there's no one on the receiving end. These streaks of dull russet ink make me sick but it's really no match to the disgust I feel knowing that I'm going to try again.

All I want to do is make an offer; start fighting and you will know who you are fighting. There is always a fight here. This is a war universe. I'm not afraid of being alone. This is the inherent way of life. I have realized the emptiness of anger and conflict that exists in our lives. I know the illusory nature of victory and vengeance in our world. There is no holy grail. There is nothing gratifying enough about being human which urges me to surround myself with another. Likewise, there is nothing intriguing nor passionate left in the person I once craved.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Some Religion

I am twenty-three years old, curled in the fetal position on my bed. I am a grown woman so lonely, I have twisted my body into a knot so small that I feel it may be tight enough to make me disappear and I hope that it does. I turn the air conditioning on and have striped myself bare; I'm shivering just to feel alive and wondering if I ought to feel this way at all.

How a person gets here, I wonder while the tears fall from my face. I'm writing at my computer so I don't have to blur pen ink across pages that I'll give back to the eath in days that pass. Nothing can stop the dark, dingy purple shades from creeping into my eyes from lack of sleep.

In Taoism, an affinity between life and death is part of the answer to either one specifically. In this particular moment, I don't even know if life is something to desire yet alone ponder the depth of. I started studying the Tao from afar as an activist dimension, believing that life could be prolonged by drawing on it's power. This by all practical definitions alludes to present-day fitness regimes having been prefigured in Taoist philosophy and practice: meaning that some things in modern society which exist make sense. These are aspects of life such as diet, exercise and using natural substances to strengthen health. Chinese alchemy focuses greatly on life prolongation and it was mirrored later in western development.

So while in bed, shivering in the cool air, thinking, crying and not wanting to move which included the contraction and expansion of my lungs within my chest. I am torn between two vicious choices. Do I continue to live and wonder in a cruel body which grants me a sound mind capable of thinknig and feeling-hard-to-swallow emotions, or do I die and perhaps reach the end where nothing is certain? Thinking of life, people are at least implicitly thinking of death. Human beings, being free-thinkers, are attracted to the idea of a life that somehow flourishes and renews, continuing despite a universe that seems so finite.

I used to listen to the story of Messrs Ssu, Yo, Lai and Li over and over again as a child. It was my favorite and perhaps is the reason I am so interested in the belief that those characters follow (the Tao) to this day. Anyway, the story goes that these four guys are good friends. They get together on a reagular basis in search for the truth from everything very complex to things quite simple. Ultimately, the friends realize that language will not help them. Well, one day, Lai gets very sick and it is obvious that he will die soon. His family is very upset by the news so they surround Lai to share stories of his life and sob in memory. That is, until Li shows up and tells them all to leave. Shh! Don't interrupt the process of change! He says. It is then that Messrs Ssu and Yo return to speculate with Li about what is to become of Lai. How extraordinary the great creator of life is, they imagine. Where will he go? What will be made from him next? They wonder until he dies and the three remaining friends return to their quest for truth.

The truth is that for now, I feel content. I can swallow my bad days in a few cool moments where I sob like a baby, but I surround myself with a solid, daily solace of generally good company. I realize that I am no Taoist nor do I seek to become one, but I find great comfort in knowing that in a place so far from here, there are people contemplating, with great discomfort, the same philosophical and religious questions I struggle with on a daily basis. It is time for some rejuvenating.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Mind Play

"The creation of something new is not accomplished by intellect, but the playing instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the object it loves" - Carl Jung

Does a woman find her life in drugs for the same reason? I guess now my time as a user is all distant memory. In the moment, I found drugs a colorful arrangement of temptations for which I could play and be played with. I was not initially uncontrolled or completely dependent on the substances which I surrounded myself with. I found them an inlet to another state of mind or sense of emotion. It was much like the way I view artwork, granting it a power of influence great enough to arise various feelings. Art fails when it creates no alteration of it's viewer's emotion.

For a moment when I was eleven years old the world felt right. I had taken my first hit of marijuana and actually felt like i'd let it drag enough to feel that high. There is nothing in this world quite like the first puff of sweet, sweet green and the way her scent lingures. I think my interest in marijuana was out of curiousity at first. I was big into poetry then, too lazy to read novels, and I can remember it vividdlythat I'd been reading a book of Whitman when a friend passed the joint toward me. I inhaled, exhaled and thought for a few momemnts that I'd reached that point in life where it truly is as good as it gets. The next line I read was, "to be surrounded by beautiful, luminous, laughing flesh is enough," and it was on that day.

Later the weed I smoked was never good enough. I had smoked so much so frequently in a craze that my tolerance had built up and in many ways peaked. I could smoke in a circle of friends watching as they'd get high. I could smile, laugh and feel decently but I wasn't getting high anymore. I didn't feel anxious or paranoid and my laughter was not that of a mind on drugs. I thought about leaving and never coming back because I needed to find something that would make sticking around worth the while. It got to be hard to fly.

I suppose my first addiction was to pills. Opiates could kill me and not in the same context that they'd kill most users by overdosing. I am fatally allergic to them. I think I took ecstasy because I longed for that company of mind and would settle for the company of body which rolling brought. I needed to be with a lover those days and I never actaully knew what a lover was. Ecstasy was an entirely more complicated sense of awareness than just that of strangers and the contact which I desired from them. The lights were better; the music became enhanced. It created a surrounding that urged my body to move; to dance. I would breathe faster than I could think and often felt overheated. I remember a few times when there were sober, clean kids around just wanting to move and shake. They would offer water to users including me but too much water could be dangerous. In fact, everything in life seems potentially quite dangerous especially love and that is primarily what I was after. People's emotional lives are not linear like their waking lives. I wanted to find a source for all of the emotions of abandonment and loneliness I was going through. I figured if I had sex it was the most secure and passionate thing I could do. Instead, sex provided a certain numbness. It was that feeling of nothingness that made me feel tremendously uncomfortable and so I sought new medication.

Methadone is a prescribed drugused to suppress heroin addiction, often in amounts so high that hardcore junkies can harvest addictive qualities for it. I had a friend that was messed up on the needle and she never took the meth to get better so I took it because it was there and it was inexpensive, comparatively. I suppose it took about a week to become addicted and then it wasn't a matter of getting high, but being happy. Meth was one drug, one aspect of my life, that never wanted anything from me. I liked that for once in my life, I was the user.

LSD was a way to get away; it was a place I could visit and leave my body all together. I did some crazy things in this state. I remember taking showers fully clothed on a number of occasions and thinking I was somewhere very diffrent. Then I would lie on my bed or upon the floor drenched and wonder why I was so cold. It never dawned on me that I had just been in the shower. In many ways there is a part of me that went missing when I became hooked on LSD. I got caught up in discovering just how many areas of the brain are used for vision and I needed more than life to expand my line of sight. I'd hallucinate before I would ever consider closing my eyes. In some respects, I still feel this way only it is much more readily available to paint or draw than it is to take an acid trip. Now I can think back and it makes fair sense. I feel like I'm back on the right track but the reality of it is that I was not living then in this reality so I will never truly have those years back. It's just a memory of them which is difficult to take in sometimes.

There is a part of me that thinks this was crazy and irrational behaviour. I find myself thinking back on my life in the past only to discover that I've left every aspect behind without any hesitation. Every past relationship and many friendships, I have just taken off and figured the other individuals involved could use a little neglect seeing as I had endured a great deal up to that point. I guess, despite the loss of memory, rages and pits of depression which I'd gone through back then, I turned out okay. I might have a skewed way of laying it all out and I find myself restless with people more than I'd like to admit, but I have survived it and many people that care so much for junk like I did, don't survive. Twenty escasty tablets could have killed me and there were nights when they ought to have. I certainly don't know the reason that I breathe tonight, but for once, I can safely say that I'm okay with it. I'm a pretty damn thankful lunatic.