Chaos / Accidental Physical

I never thought I'd ever know -- you know --

life --

I never thought I'd have it all figured out.

I never thought happiness was a thing that would come to me.

I never thought I'd ever know -- you know --

just knowing, like, absolutely,

any one thing.

I never thought I'd ever be quite sure.

I mean, this is just to say, I still think this way.


It rained the day I went to Alcatraz. Not real rain, more like mist. Everything was wet and foggy. Well, that's San Francisco for you. Sometimes. I took pictures in black and white.


There was a time when my feelings were directly connected to my fingers and it would all come pouring out. There was a time when I wrote without my own critical eye. And it was good. Remember. Now it's a journey through a checklist of metaphors, narration, imagery, concrete imagery, quantity, point of view, conceit, no abstractions, and sense, does it make sense. And the words don't quite make their way out.


Summer is a time for getting drunk. But I want to get drunk in October. And I want it to be cheap and easy. I want to shiver. I want to be looking for a good time do you know when I last looked for a good time. I don't know when. I want to get drunk in October and I want the sky to be black and I want the beer to be disgusting because it's two for $6 Boreale and I want to dance in a dirty hipster bar with young dirty hipsters wearing neon tights and neon sunglasses to dirty hipster DJ playing LMFAO before LMFAO was cool I want to dance like I don't give a fuck that I'm dancing with my backpack on like I don't give a fuck that I'm dancing like I don't give a fuck like I don't give a fuck like I don't give a fuck 'cause I don't give a fuck.


And the words and the words and the words. They're never ending. And they don't quite make sense. There's no need to try and piece them together.


Always sitting there trying to name the feelings. Separate them, label them, explain them. And always the questions when I'm not ready. I don't know yet. And I might not ever know. Maybe leave me alone forever. Maybe leave me alone indefinitely. I can't articulate. I'm not ready.

And I am so spent. And I am so exhausted. And I can't see anymore. Beyond myself. I can't say just what I mean. I don't mean anything. I can't articulate.

And now I shrug my shoulders. And now I am alone. Why articulate?



All we want, baby, is everything.


This body grew like a tree from the earth. This body wants food. This body wants water. This body wants touch. This body wants space to stretch its legs. This body is sorry about some things but not about others. This body is sorry for pushing Tino in first grade gym class but not sorry about being angry. This body is physical. This body and other bodies. This body and the accidental physical. This body is full of insides and outsides. This body is full of spaces for the metaphorical abstract. This body is science. This body is art. This body bleeds every 27 days. This body has a literal heart. This body remembers some things but not others. This body remembers the taste of another body that had just consumed beer and marijuana. This body does not know what it has forgotten. This body and the accidental physical. This body cannot make sense of what is not part of it. This body can count. This body is not sure if it's put its feelings in the right place. This body cannot actually see inside itself. This body does not know what's going on inside itself. This body can see outside. This body can't see in the dark. This body is protein. This body is carbohydrates. This body is vitamins. This body created itself. What is this body but a tree grown from the earth, and every spring there is rebirth.







What happened to the days.

What happened to the things I had to say and then forgot.

Today is the day I listened to "Good Woman" by Cat Power for the 121st time.

dear natasha,

i read your poem 'monarch butterflies use the earth's magnetic field' and i just want you to know

it's a great poem and all but what do you mean the magnetic field is preparing to flip

what exactly does that mean

is this like a real thing or a thing you made up

because i don't have a back-up system

how will i get home

it is 4am and i am really worried about this

i could look it up on the internet but i'd rather have you explain it to me

please write back soon

your friend

emily


ps natasha

it's 4am and i'm reading your poetry on the internet

sometimes the world is wonderful

a cold sky, drunk and crawling

all my stories started outside in the middle of the night. it was always cold. i was always drunk. they were always about other people and how i would crawl home at night, drunk and cold, needing people but needing loneliness too.

i'm not anywhere tonight. there is no moon. there are only christmas lights and a dim lamp in this cold room.

i imagined a perfect stranger and let it be perfect. i buried my face in her shirt. i let the sun stream through white curtains onto her back in the morning. i let myself kiss her shoulder blade and i let myself out the door. 

perfection is painful. happiness is the worst. i could make it all up, i could put it all in there. secret desire. that's what the writer does. the writer causes two people to bump their lips and stumble through the streets at night when it's cold and they're drunk. the writer writes the answers for two people. the writer creates warmth and places it in between two bodies. the writer makes the bodies sweat, the sweat slightly sticky and odourless. the writer makes sure the bodies stay warm.

am i a writer? the writer inserts themselves under the covers. the writer chooses the person next to them.

am i a writer? but the writer is alone. i'm not anywhere tonight.

the writer is just sad. the writer is unhappy with the world so she creates another one. the world is a room, rectangular in shape, with painted white walls. the window faces south. the world has a large closet and a double bed and a TV and a night stand with an alarm clock. inside the world is a woman with staticky brown hair which sticks to her wool shirt and her cheek.

but the writer hates what is not real. she apologizes to the woman with brown hair and lets her sleep peacefully and then she closes the door on that dream.

a writer is a dreamer.

all my stories are my dreams.

all my stories are my desires.

i imagined a perfect stranger and i kissed her on the mouth and i told her i never wanted to know her. i told her no matter how much i beg, to never love me, never ever let me bury my face in that favourite place, never lift my shirt and kiss my spine, never let me touch the skin which is as smooth as i make it which tingles when i make it, never let me feel what will consume me from the inside; the desire to touch again, to taste again, to kiss again and again and again, to be kissed again again again.

there was a real girl, once, who i wanted to kiss in the middle of the street in the middle of the night in front of the mountain under the cross under the moon and the moon shining off the just rained on street with my hands in my pockets and my heart kind of warm and i wanted her hands on my face and i wanted it to feel like how i imagined it feels to be in love but it didn't feel like that it felt like going home alone at night underneath a cold sky drunk and crawling and needing someone but needing loneliness too and needing to keep the illusion that love is out there somewhere, and it is real.

i'm not sorry for what i did. i'll rewrite it someday.

how to write a country song

how to write a country song

how to eat raw beef

how to get pregnant without a man

how to be a doormat

how to tie your shoe

how to get new bone structure

how to listen to frank sinatra

how to shop at zellers

how to shop at american eagle

how to ride the bus one-handed

how to win friends and make enemies

how to get what you don't want

how to make me a sandwich

how to the botanical garden

how to be chinese

how to be ironic

how to look like a hobo

how to fall asleep standing up

how to run in heels

how to be better at life

how to function in a paradox

how to function in a paradise

how to write an autobiography

how to make an enchilada

how to build a shelf

how to how to

A Poem I Wrote On The Bus

"Realise tes rèves" the sign says

with a picture of the sky

because dreams are in the sky and the sky's

the limit

but we've been on mars so

that proves that mars exists

or something

or that we exist

are there dreams on mars

dreams people had but then forgot

when they woke up

is there anything else up there

my old schoolbooks

the other half of this pair of socks

my childhood perhaps

which i misplaced once

and never found again

much like

i assume

the people who left

footprints on the moon

and what about the moon-

what about the moon?

i had a terrible notion of romance

remember the airborne toxic event. sunday night. remember standing right in front of him. remember i don't remember some things. remember 'sometime around midnight'. "this is the song everyone came for". remember the lines "she leaves with someone you don't know" and it made me think of you and everyone who ever left. i didn't see that one coming. it punched me in the stomach. felt like i should've known. felt stupid. tried to forget you. didn't. what a jerk. but then remember 'innocent'. did not know what that one was about. sounded pretty good. made me think of empty apartments. i just said that because it's what i'm thinking about right now.

it was nice to forget other things for a while. could not forget you. could not forget montreal at night. remember papineau. remember mount-royal. remember metro stations in the dark. tim horton's closed. remember singing together. remember being together. remember being separate. remember being different entities. i don't know what that means. i type words and they don't mean anything sometimes.

remember blue dog. no. i wasn't there. remember that other place. i hate that place. remember the little rain. remember prince arthur. that was a different night. remember that guy with the stupid hair. another night. remember when i tried to fold st-laurent in half. remember the stars in the back of my eyelids. no one saw those but me. i didn't see the real sky that night.

remember my hand on your chest. remember pushing off. remember the stairs. remember the sink. remember the contents of the garbage bag. no. it was empty. it was empty. my stomach was empty. it was red. why did i call at all. because of the airborne toxic event. because of romance. i hate romance. their song ate me up. i played it in my head. where is blue dog.

i hate the chemicals in my brain. i hate the imbalance. i hate the lightheaded heaviness of my marble mind my heavy mmmmmmmmmiiiiiiiinnnnnnndddddd

she leeeeeeaves

no one came. people thought i made it up. they thought it was a story. i do that sometimes. i never do that. it's all real. link to blog post about realness. remember when i had cigarettes in my bag. remember when i gave her one. i offered it. want a cigarette. want one. take one. then up the stairs. one table in a tiny room. remember the people dancing on the table. back down the stairs. back on st-laurent; we never leave. puddles in the concrete cracks. back to that other time. remember the long brown hair. remember the wailing. the horrible sounds in the back of my throat. remember the empty air. the buildings and the ground. the ground on my knees. the building resting on my hand. everything was upside down.

remember how i thought of you. remember the tree outside biftek. remember the bookstore beside it. remember the cold steps. some nights they're empty. some nights they're full. why did you say you were something you're not. why did you look through my insides. i've never felt so invisible. why did you let me on. why did were you so cold. remember when you had blonde hair. remember when i passed you on the street so many years ago. it feels like years. remember when that mattered.

two dollar chow mein, sweat, sweaters, broken tables, eyes closed, no-good-dirty-rotten-shoes brains-split-open missed-connections space misunderstandings space and names space too-good-to-be-true-timing space $4 beer space vodka tonics space the airborne toxic event and you.

i made a mistake. they've hated me ever since. everything is safe now.

++

no updates till monday.

I'm Not Really Sad, I'm Just Trying to Become a Better Person

but then i thought, "what if i never grow up?" i mean legitimately grow up. what if i'm stuck in this awkward year where my parents still do my laundry but i buy my own toothpaste and i take the bus to school and i can't drive and i don't know how to do banking or

there's a fear of growing up, but what if i just don't? what if i'm that person who can't do things for themselves? what if i can't have real relationships with people or if i live with my parents forever and they wash the dishes every night, what if i never learn to be a person, what if all my friends grow up and blow away...

and what happens if i can't get a job? what happens when i forget how to learn? will i have my own set of cutlery will my bed always feel so big and empty who will pay for my retainer to be fixed? who will say "i'm sorry", who will apologize, who will take the blame who will feel bad feel pity who will look down at me and say i'm sorry i failed and will i say i'm sorry i failed i never ever ever grew up i just never never learned i just stuttered and stuttered all my life.

what happens if i never figure out how to cook a chicken? what happens if i forget how to use the toaster? what happens if my hands fall off!? what happens if i forget how to write, do people suddenly become illiterate what happens if that's me, that's me, that's me. what happens if no one reads my book what happens if i don't write a book because my hands fell off and my eyes fell out and i have no goddamn legs. i'm just a box, i'm just a box, i'm a square and is someone sorry now, will someone take the blame, will someone claim responsibility for the empty cardboard box out there on recycling day?

what if i never learn how to tell a good plum from a bad plum or where the potato section is, what if i can't pay my library fines what if i can't find the library? what if i disappoint my grandmother? who is going to write about me? does anyone listen in class? what if i'm the person who forgets how to ride a bike? and i have to learn twice? my legs are gone! i just wanna wear suave shoes again. cardboard legs and cardboard shoes recycle me. i don't wanna cycle, recycle revenge. if i ever go away, who will buy me tea?

what if i have feelings and no one else has so many feelings and i drown other people, what if i drown people with me. like what if who i am is too big. what if i am a giant ocean wave, enveloping bodies and beaches and sand -- what if when i write i actually sound like obasan, the worst novel ever.

and what if i screw it up, what if my feelings consume me. what if i screw it up by being afraid of screwing up.

one day the lights will go out in my room and they will not turn on again. one day the boxes will be filled, they will be moved and loaded onto a van, the house will empty, the walls will be bare. one day we just will not be there.

[all pictures from before i die i want to]

++

I have thought about it and I have decided that my greatest fear is not dying, not not living, not "moving forward", but ignorance. More than being ignorant or naive, I don't want to be stupid. I don't want to think I know things but get them wrong. Socrates wouldn't like that. I never want to drown in my own confusion. I hope that I always strive to be better, be smarter. I hope I never settle for anything less than I deserve. I hope I stop thinking that I don't deserve happiness. I hope I never forget what learning actually is. I hope I never forget the person that I am right now, and the things I believe in. I hope that people never listen to me and think to themselves that I am stupid or that I don't know what I'm talking about. I hope I always present myself as an intelligent, well-read, creative woman. I hope that my intelligence never goes away -- I don't care what I look like, how tall or short I am, where I live -- I hope that I never stop reading and thinking and solving because that is the core of who I am.

Read my book, 'cause it's gonna be written.

what the fuck are you talking about, emily choo

when i get scared i go to sleep. i'm scared of everything, a lot, all the time.

the major questions i had on the way home were: why does only one of my earphones work, why do my socks fall off when i walk, and when did life become such a habit.

i keep saying i'm going to live, but when i say that i mean i'm going to live tomorrow. like everything i'm doing now is so that i can live later. but then it's friday night and i'm still at home and it's saturday and i'm at home and it's sunday and i've slept all day. the thing is that i'm so stuck inside my head that i can't do anything ever.

then i think that i don't want to do anything anyways and that's so sad. i got so existential on the bus. i got so city girl on you, i went so crazy i didn't know what to do. i thought that there was nothing in life that i wanted to do, so maybe i should hide or something and what does that even mean.

people assume that you want to do something when they ask what do you want to do. nobody ever seems to know what they want to do, just that they want to do something. i'm scared because i don't want to do anything. i don't want to do anything because i'm scared.

my dad told me that i could live at home for the rest of my life and he would cook me dinner every night. i said that maybe i would do that, maybe i would just hide. but we both know i'd never do that. except it's so tempting, like eating that second french fry.

but sometimes it just seems so silly, like, sarah palin wrote a book and she's gonna make more money off her book than i'm ever going to make in my whole life and at least i write my own words. even if sometimes my words don't make sense i think that's okay because the world often doesn't make sense so it's just a reflection of my/the world. i realize i hate writing academically because it feels so fake and well sometimes i just want to shout at my paper. sometimes i just want to write "jdghjhgifsiugiu AND THEN THIS HAPPENED..."

it just feels very weird that sarah palin wrote a book and it's weird that i'm thinking about this. after i read 'shoplifting from american apparel' i really wanted to write a book because tao lin made it look so easy, but then i thought that he went to college and his professors were like "tao lin is so great" and my professors don't say that about me. they write "AWK" all over my pages, like awkward, so awkward, so stylistically awkward what a weirdo. so how could i write about shoplifting from american apparel if someone already did it. i'd be so embarrassed if i was sarah palin's ghostwriter but then maybe she actually likes sarah palin, or maybe she just got paid a lot. how the hell did sarah palin write a book, like how did that actually happen.

also tao lin googles himself a lot, hi tao lin.

sometimes i feel like i'm not living right. is this what life is, is it preparing yourself for life in the future. why don't we just throw up our arms and throw our papers out the window and run naked through the streets.

i don't know why we have to be naked.

no really, should i be doing drugs or something, should i be sleeping less and drinking more redbull. redbull is so expensive. should i be like stephen king and do so much cocaine that my nose bleeds all over my keyboard while i write stories that i won't remember i wrote and somehow they'll just become bestsellers.

if sarah palin can become a politician maybe i should. i feel like it's this scene where there is a mob of people jostling in suits and shouting words and i could just jump in there and shout things. ha ha ha ha ha ha that is so dumb. i could shout that. i spelled my name wrong on my mcgill application and now it's finalized and i can't change it.

i really ought to recognize when i'm talking crazy. two days after i press 'publish post' i'll read this over and be like oh what crazy craziness, what a terrible adjective.

how long before i'm famous

how long until i write a book

how long until i'm alone, i mean really, how long until i let myself go

how long until i write a better poem

can i do better than this shit right here. do smarter words come out of my fingertips. is that where words come from. how long until i learn proper punctuation.

how long until i learn to spell my name.

anyways, what if there's nothing that i want to do. how did this happen that everywhere i look inside my life all i can think is "i don't want to do that". no, that's not really what i think. i think blah blah. whatever.

i might be running out of stories because i never go outside. that's stupid. emily dickinson never went outside. i thought emily dickinson died when she was 27 like everybody else except that's not true. it's kind of like that time i thought helen keller died when she was 13. helen keller died when she was 87. i made that up. but she was old. helen keller is katrina's hero.

"long story, no point," as dan sullivan would say, "at any rate..."

there actually was no point to this.

Top 6 Favorite Posts From the Last 6 Months

Did I forget to mention that last Monday was my 6 month blogiversary? Ok, well it was, and I forgot all about it. Six months ago I started out with 0.5 regular readers and now I have 5-7 regular readers which makes me feel really happy. Especially when they comment. Or when they get their sister to tell me over the phone, that's cool too. JK, sorry I said I wouldn't say anything about that. Anyways, I thought I'd be cliché 'cause I feel like it, so here's a top 6 of my favorite posts over the last six months!

6. Thursday, March 5 2009 Life is so Quick and Sometimes it Goes Away too Quickly

I think I'm the only person who liked this post, but I don't care, I really really like it. It was a bunch of thoughts added to each other written over 5 days or something.

sometimes i dont like punctuation
i like to learn
i never used to care if my friends loved me
but now i do.

I admit it's weird and I finish with a conversation with myself but that's okay because this whole blog pretty much started as a conversation with myself. Now that more people are participating maybe you will see the quirky, beautiful things I see in this post.

5. Thursday, February 19 2009 A Lesson in Geography

This is apparently a very popular post despite the surprisingly few comments (only one a month later??). I guess people think my condescending, pretentious manner is funny. Anyways I hope you all learned something. I've actually found it quite useful as I continue to refer to it when I hear people tell me they read my blog but "didn't know they could comment".

4. Monday, April 6 2009 Rummaging for Answers

This is a post consisting of 2-3 entries from my "diary". It ends with the bus story which remains, for some reason, a special point in that semester at Dawson. I actually saw the girl a couple of times at school which means I was clearly wrong about her being an art student at Concordia (??) but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that's where she's applying at some point in her life. For now I like to pretend I was right about everyone else.

It's a source of comfort that if the bus had tipped over and I had died that day, I would have at least died with nice people. I think, somehow, that bus ride restored my faith in humanity a little. The thing about having connections with strangers is that your opinion of them hardly ever changes.

3. Thursday, May 7 2009 I Get by With a Little Help From my Friends

Well, what can I say? This is one of my favorite posts not because of the way its written, but because who it's written about -- my favorite people.

Also I love that cartoon.

2. Monday, February 9 2009 Ballad of Big Nothing

While writing this (which was not written with a blog post in mind) I was able to put something I discovered about myself into words which is sometimes hard for me. I guess this is the best example of how this blog is just a conversation with myself. If you agree, if you read something here that you agree with or you say "me too" then maybe we're having a conversation together seperately or maybe we're partly the same person. And maybe that is terrifying or maybe it's comforting. Maybe both.

I’m hoping that there’s a bed for me at home, someone warm to curl up next to, stairs to walk down in the morning and a lot of sunlight outside, a bus that comes on time, and then places, I hope there are places I can go. I hope I have some place to go, some place to return to, a space in time in the crowded world that is just for me.

1. Thursday, March 26 2009 Life is Full of Wonder




Here's to an awesome summer and another 6 months of conversation with myself!

June Midnight, Light

It was cold though it was June. I watched the sun set over a soccer field and a man playing fetch with his German Shepherd. I was reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac for the first time -- well, that wasn't true, I had only read the introduction. I kept adjusting myself; the rock I was sitting on did not provide the comfort I sought. Less than a year ago I had sat by this very rock and drank shots of sourpuss late into the night and then stumbled down the hill, spinning in circles and rolling in sand.

It was the introduction of On the Road that made me feel like writing. I hadn't even read Kerouac yet and I wanted to smoke something or get drunk and wander the streets downtown. I hadn't even read Kerouac and I wanted to be Elliott Smith. Or Conor Oberst, who seemed to be a mixture of them both, an eternal wanderer and a singer songwriter. All of them inebriated somehow, or at least in my mind.

But I couldn't shake the urge of wanting to write, wanting to create. Poems weren't doing it anymore, they felt too easy as if anything written with weird spacing could become poetry. I thought of distant characters I had created before now, 'great' novels started and never finished. Maybe it was the lack of plan or structure or just idea in general. Or inspiration. I wanted to draw on my own experiences, but searching inside myself I found none I deemed worthy of writing about. I'd been in this place many times before but also before jumping into the 'experience' I narrated it first and then the moment passed. My inhibitions got in the way. I imagined it was my glasses, because how could you do anything with glasses on? They were cumbersome, a physical manifestation of my excuse, my fear of participating.

I was attracted by sounds from the baseball field. I wandered in the direction of the noise; little boys yelling, parents yelling, the sound of metal hitting a ball, the stomping of ground beneath my and their feet. I wandered to the baseball field in a straight line.

can this still turn out to be a love poem?

[this is a night post, meant to be read late at night, or, really really early in the morning]

her voice sung around me, and everything felt very loud. i was thinking about amanda, about summer, taking pictures in the city. it doesn't take much for my heart to settle quietly in someone else's chest. and when the song was over, it began again. i didn't want to say goodbye because i knew it would all begin again.
i wish that you were not so afraid of disappointing people, because you never disappoint me. i wish you were happier i wish that happiness came from me somehow. i wish you knew how smart you were, how you outstrip us all. oh hey did you know this is you: "i remember every instance when you stung me you're so lovely oh you're so smart. so go turn their heads, go knock them dead, go break their hearts." i should just say that to you cause that's you, that's really really you so here you go this is for you. everything is for you. and i read you in stephen dunn sometimes too. yes on page 90 and 91 there you are. i think stephen dunn meant to write someone else in the pages, he's also trying to avoid someone in his mind but it never works i know i've written poems like that too. trying to keep you off the page never works. also know that most of what i've written is borrowed somehow from someone more brilliant than i could ever be (this is me trying to write footnotes).
and i wish you were here right now or i wish that i was there with you.


"once we get to the end of this song then another will begin. so you said, in our bed. i was watching light ship through blinds to find your skin..." - okkervil river "get big"

Like That Time I Thought I Knew What I Wanted

IIIIIIIIIIIIT'S the last day of February. I'm going to post another stream of consciousness thing.

Sometimes my mind just takes off, it just takes off and goes and goes like it’s on speed. Like the time I said it was nice seeing you on the escalator the other day, only I didn’t say that I thought it quietly to myself but I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. I don’t know why I asked you what kind of music you like instead. I’m terribly exhausted right now but I’m still awake right now, waiting for you to answer me or for me to get fed up and just leave. Actually, I’m hoping that I’ll produce something brilliant tonight, my mind works best when I’m tired. Like that time I wrote a stream of consciousness essay for English class in grade 11 about death. It made absolutely no sense but my teacher loved it. I don’t know why. It was clearly bullshit. Sometimes I get away with things like that. Sometimes I don’t listen to music and I don’t realize the silence. I guess I don’t really have anything else to say about you. Actually, I know I don’t. That poem is true in many ways but it is also a big lie. Kind of like my life. I can’t write beautiful things like Riese does. In some odd way, I wish she would read my stuff and approve. I think that would mean a lot to me. Maybe it’s because I think we’re kindred spirits of some sort, though I don’t really know if I’m using that in the right context. We’re very similar is what I mean, I get her. When I read her stuff I know what she’s talking about. I’m good at analysing situations, and people. Afterwards, though. When I’m alone. I can see people very clearly. Maybe it’s for that reason I hate small talk. Maybe I just want to get to the point and prove myself right – that you’re this kind of person or that kind of person. I don’t know what kind of person you are because you keep surprising me. Like that time you came up behind me on the escalator, like that time you listened to what I was saying. Maybe you’re going to read this and maybe you’re going to know I’m talking about you. Maybe then you’re going to know the poem was about you. Don’t worry, I am not in love with you at all, simply the idea of you. That makes it worse. Does that make me shallow? Does it make me empty that I can’t see you for who you are.

Sorry I’m just revisiting this now. I mean I totes read it when you wrote it like 4 days ago but I’m revisiting it now because I don't think I realized you wrote something nice. I’m also in a stream of consciousness writing mood right now which I guess is why I’m coming back to this. Do you ever get in those moods? I hope I help to increase your will to live and restore your faith in humanity. Wait I’m going to copy and paste this into my original document, you're going to see it on Saturday. Goodnight. Really, I do, I hope I increase your will to live and restore your faith in humanity, ‘cause it’s there. I mean, everything that we need is here. I’m running away now, I guess. I don’t know where that came from, I was listening to music and I was on facebook and I was not writing this and all of a sudden that sentence popped into my head. And it’s my informal rule that when writing a stream of conscious I must just write, write, write, no matter how nonsensical it is. I like that word, nonsensical. There are, of course, pauses that you don’t see. But I try and fill those somehow, I try to make up for it and sometimes I can’t even see the end of the sentence but it’s important to keep typing, like my life depends on it or something. It’s so annoying that word still doesn’t capitalize my ‘I’s. I have to stop and backspace. It’s like I’m interrupting myself. I like streams of consciousness because I think it shows me for who I really am, despite how corny that sounds. I mean, I think it shows me in all my bare, I don’t want to say nakedness, but that’s what I mean. It shows me like primitive living. Like this is all I have, this is what’s in my head and sometimes it’s crazy but it sure as hell feels good to just dump everything onto a page. I’m literally recording my thoughts as they happen. It’s jumpy because sometimes I stop and talk to other people. Like right now when someone reminded me of that time in grade 7 or 8 when Tania shouted “I’m not a baby!” and smashed her yogurt on the table and it exploded everywhere. I said something about the escalator. I’m back in real time now, real moments. Sometimes I gotta reminisce. There’s silence on the other end. I can’t even bother to worry about what you’re thinking. I don’t really care. To me you’re an idea, a form, an outline. I don’t think this is the blogging way of writing. This is just how I write. And now, for real, goodnight.

On second thought, the letter to Alessia taken out of context sounds really nice. “Sorry I’m just revisiting this now.” I like that, I like the way it sounds. Sorry I’m just revisiting this now.

I'm not going to ask you to comment because no one does. But you can if you want to.

"But really nothing has changed, today.
You can't go on this way, you can't move on.
Erase it,
Start it again."
- Sparta "Erase It Again"

Ballad of Big Nothing (I Don't Go Where I'm Supposed To Go)

Day 22. I've been working on a "project". JK, it's basically an ongoing stream of consciousness that has been going on for 3 days now. I'll post it in segments because it's too long, and also neverending. Literally, until I stop thinking.

Can the world get any brighter, shinier, clearer? I’d like to shed some light into the dark cracks and crevasses where shadows lie. I tried to make a playlist of the saddest songs I know, none seemed sad enough. I guess that’s okay. Ashlee, I miss you. Not physically though. No, I miss the comfort of you in my head, the solid book that you were, whatever you were to me, I miss the certainty. I see someone who looks like you from the back at school sometimes. It scares me. I don’t want to see what her face looks like. I’m thirsty. I just woke up from my cocoon, I’m not a butterfly yet though. Not yet. But I’m always thirsty when I wake up, maybe the air in my room is too dry. I’ve got that feeling coming back to me again. I felt its presence so strongly last night, I wanted to tell it to go away; instead I cried. I cried ‘cause the monsters were back. By morning they’ve disappeared again, but they left an aftertaste. I’d like to listen to a life changing song. I haven’t heard one in a while. I’d like to listen to a song that makes me fly, or one that explains some unknown, hidden part of my life to me. Sometimes I want to write that song. I wonder why word doesn’t automatically capitalize my ‘I’s. I wonder how I can change this. I wonder how I can change a lot of things, like

It’s funny that I paused right there. There are so many things I want to change that the thought of listing them is overwhelming, I have to leave it blank. I did think of my room though, what can I change in my room. Nothing, I don’t think. I’d like to live on my own, maybe, but as soon as that thought enters my mind I know it’s the wrong thought. I doubt my ability to make it on my own. I’ve had confidence before; I’ve felt ready to move away, to start over, to build my own life not the life I was born into. But I’ve been doubted by all the adults in my life, my grandmother, my aunt, my dad. What are you going to eat, they ask. You’ll get sick of Kraft Dinner and ramen noodles. I guess they’re saying that because they’re not actually thinking that I’ll move out soon. I’m scared that if I move nothing will change. A while ago, and by that I mean years ago, the truth hit me that it’s not my geographic location that makes me miserable. It’s me. It’s my own self doubt, my own insecurities. I’m trying really hard to fight them all. I’m trying really hard not to be depressed, trying really hard to make something of myself, to live, to become a person, a real person, alive, alive. I’m trying to connect with other real live people. It’s interesting I guess. Everything is an experience. I’ve met lots of people, I don’t think I know them very well. I don’t think they know me, I don’t know how to let people get to know me. I’m trying to not be layered. I’m trying, I guess, to just be simple, be simply me, whoever that is. I’m trying to do things on impulse, whatever the first thought that comes to mind is, I’ll do it ‘cause I want to be natural. I don’t want to lie about myself anymore. I want a lot of things, so many things. I don’t want to pretend. Whatever I am, I am! I’ll just be. I’ll chase whatever runs in front of me. It’s hard to connect with people when you try to be yourself because so many people are not themselves. I guess I’ll have to finish this later. It’s funny that the life in my brain gets interrupted by the life of someone else. The home I’ve built in my brain is strange but so comfortable, hostile and poisonous but safe, oh so very safe.

“I love the logic of oxymorons and how paradox helps us not to feel insane.” - Stephen Dunn.

Hasn’t this proved to be so true. Who could ever live here but me. Those who come knocking will eventually leave. I’ll build extra rooms for them, clean rooms with new sheets and a fridge. They can come and go as they please, they can trample through my room to get to their room, my poisonous room. They can set up there, and I realize that even on the inside of my brain, I’m on the outside. I would give up my brain for someone else to live inside.

I love these moods, these in between moods, where everything flows in a straight line, or wades, or floats like dandelion fluff through the air, through my brain, slowly so I can catch it the first time around. It’s moods like this that allow me to do anything, to fully realize the potential of all moments, like in movies when they slow everything down so you can understand. The moments don’t last forever, but moods like this remind me that I can make them. I can make my own moments. I just want to sit with someone and smile. Sit and smile. I want peace within myself, I mean, I want to stop waging war with whatever I have. It’s only me right now. The place I occupy in my brain, the rooms I rent out, they’re empty now. Only the cobwebs of my thoughts, white and meaningless, remain. There is me and my mirror, a truth teller, hard to look at. I’ve left a room open for you, for you, person who has a place on the inside of my brain but not yet on the outside of my life. There is a place for you.

I want to empty the contents of my heart. I want to pour out the letters that alone mean nothing, and put together in certain ways can create words that make sense. Words that explain something, anything. I love being in love. I love shifting over in my brain, making room for someone else to settle down for a while. I don’t think they’ll ever stay, but I try to be good, not hazardous, not intruding, not overbearing, not the terrible things I can become when I’m so close to what I want. But it can be such a good feeling. I love to feel so passionately about something, anything, someone, somebody, just anybody, another real person who will invite me into their brain. I would like to understand somebody completely. That is a very hard thing to do. I find that people are often looking for the same thing as I am, but there is a lot of miscommunication, I’m always looking beyond, there must be something better because I don’t understand this person. This person is not comfortable. No, I have not met a lot of comfortable people. They are harsh, crisp, they taste like winter. I’d like to open my heart, empty the books I’ve written in there, perfect words will just lie there in someone’s hands, and their hands will open and the words will fall out. Or my books will make a new home in someone else’s heart. I would like to write something beautiful. I wonder if I have already, somewhere. I’d like to tell the truth. I’ve become but a ghost, a shadow, an outline of the person I thought I might be. I never knew what to expect of myself, I don’t know who I’ve become but it is someone. For some reason I always thought doorstoppers were foolproof. I didn’t realize they wouldn’t withstand a hard pushed door, multiple times. Sometimes that happens, the wood peels away. The things we meant to happen just don’t turn into anything, we fall flat on our face. The door knob goes through the wall. That was ages ago, wasn’t it Ashlee. Weren’t you the one I did it for. I can never hope for things so ridiculous although it has become almost impossible not to. I’ve held on to an unwavering bright light of hope that

I don’t know what. I don’t know what I’m hoping for, but it’s something good. I’m hoping that there’s a bed for me at home, someone warm to curl up next to, stairs to walk down in the morning and a lot of sunlight outside, a bus that comes on time, and then places, I hope there are places I can go. I hope I have some place to go, some place to return to, a space in time in the crowded world that is just for me. I can get lost in the space in my brain. The static electricity, the lights turning on and off by themselves, the laughter in other rooms right next door. Sometimes my neighbours are quiet and I don’t know which is worse, the lonely silence or the knowledge that happiness is right beside me, separated only by the walls I built myself. Painstakingly I have built those walls, carefully, stone by stone or brick with my metaphorical hands. It’s all a metaphor in my brain but it’s a clutch. What I have left when people leave is the wall, keeping out no one, a wall that has served no purpose except to block my view. I am left to admire what I have built, while people outside laugh. They laugh because they don’t know what is behind the wall, nothing too interesting. It’s been there for too long to create questions anymore.


Please comment.


"I'm so sick and tired of trying to change your mind
when it's so easy to disconnect mine
High times, yeah I feel fine
Don't pick me up, I'm fine right where I am
I don't go where I'm supposed to go."
Elliott Smith - "High Times"

Day 9: The Inner Workings of my Brain (I can do so much better)

I had three posts written for today. Two were prepared, both do not fit my current mood and therefore will not be posted. The third was written and erased in 8 minutes. I fucking hate people and their fucking expectations. The world is not anything, people are just people, I am tired I cannot be two people at once, why would anyone expect something from me. I don't expect anything from you.

I went to the library today and sat there, words crept into my head and all I had was my notebook for school. I wrote the shit in my brain down in my notebook next to the Principles of Math and Logic. It's ironic, I am not logical. I haven't felt this way in a long time, since the beginning of November. I knew it would come back, it always comes back. So what happens now. I'll never be able to sleep at night, I'll stumble my way through the day, shadowy faces in my peripheral vision, I'm not really looking for anything.. I've figured out what I want. I truly have. It is strange, how those things happen, the realization. Yeah, like, maybe I've got something figured out now. I see myself in the future, I see it, I see it, there it is, I can walk towards it, I can crawl towards it, I have a direction. I'm going somewhere. I can't tell you what I want. It's mine, all mine, I would never write it in my journal though I've been thinking about it since i was six. All the time. You know, that's why people say you always miss the things in front of you. It was sort of relevatory, all of a sudden I knew that this thing that I had dreamed about, imagined, dwelled upon for all my childhood, suddenly I knew that it was possible. That it is SO possible. It's easy. It's hard.

"I love the logic of oxymorons, and how paradox helps us not to feel insane."
- Stephen Dunn "Loves"

I'll be what I am. I'm sorry I hate political correctness, I hate formality with strangers, politeness when the person serving you is a bitch, faking gratitude, I hate presenting a side of me that I'm not. We all have to make our way in life, I know that. Don't get hung up waiting for other people. Don't expect anything from me I'm not who you expect me to be, I'm not that person, I'm not, I'm not I'm not.

I have put this off for far too long.

"I listened in, yes I'm guilty of this, you should know this.
I broke down and wrote you back before you had a chance to.
Forget forgotten I am moving past this, giving notice.
I have to go, yes I know the feeling, know you're leaving."
- Tegan and Sara "The Con"