Stretched

My heart and brain are stretched and sagging from releasing the weight of our relationship. Dali's paintings make more sense than ever.

The heart and brain cannot simply snap back into place. It will take time to heal from the damage. For now, I just have to roll up the soft, useless pieces to keep functioning.

I love her but we can't be together right now. Maybe never again. But no way to know at this point. I am committed to avoid making major decisions in my current state. The therapist agrees.

This is why ART exists.

There is a profound, sensual reaction that occurs inside of me when it comes to the littlest things, ideas, moments. Muscle fibers vibrate so finely, I imagine it being visually imperceptible even under the penetrating eye of an electron microscope. Rubbing against each other, these fibers generate a friction translated into a fiery energy pulsing through hands, arms, chest, throat, face and, sometimes all the way down to my toes. Goosebumps rise all over and I almost feel like I extend further than my body or that I'm going to explode. My body's response is why I think, secretly, the little things ARE the "big" things that truly matter.

Us humans are so ridiculously small when it comes to infinities and the cosmos. Maybe my body is just naturally mirroring my insignificance, a sort of validation to petition my sanity, my importance, my worth, my existence. Yes, as small and insignificant as you are, Chance, you do exist. Which leads to do any of us matter? Does anyone care? Why does it matter if they care? How can I/we define worth? Why the hell is that in important? More questions than answers. The body translates it into a sensation that is understood beyond the intellectual but rather difficult to bring back up to the mental realm for assessment, analysis. This is why art exists.

"You're in my way, sir."

I finally fell asleep after chatting bullshit with a friend. Woke up from a dream in which I was joking around with two guys I knew from high school. There was a lot of dream but the only part I remember is right before I woke up where I heard one of them guffaw behind me and we started doing the "You're in my way, sir!" bit.

Thanks Noah Antwiler, for somehow making it into one of my dreams. Also hilarious.

Elusive

Sleep is a bastard. An elusive bastard.

It hurts inside and I try to fill it up with everything I can to seal this wound. Why does it not just heal? The ache pulses and its energy pours out of my palms like a freaking hemorrhage. I press them to my chest instinctively, maybe to hold some of it in, squeeze my eyes closed and re-adjust my positioning but I just lay there like an idiot instead. So now I'm up typing in this stupid box and listening to music in attempt to refocus the energy I seem to be bleeding out all over the place.

Mother effer.

Today Jessie returns to work for at least half the day after being out of commission and driving to and from doctor's appointments for check ups. I have spent the past few weeks with her almost every day. I got to liking it again. It's been a long while since I felt that way. I still got weary and had to excuse myself home fairly often. But her guilting me as reduced dramatically. 

I am so scared it's all for naught. But. Baby steps. 

I am a dream bellydancer

"We must remove the skin and burn it all for fuel," he sings. Later, "I don't feel like ever getting well, tell me the lie you're taking your time, over and over."

I dreamt last night I was a belly dancer. I felt free, beautiful, sensual, goddess incarnate. It was divine. I don't think anyone was watching. I was dancing near the ocean, then suddenly transported to a forest opening that led to a waterfall feeding into a beautiful expanse of trickling water. I was surrounded by rocky formations and the sun warmed me before setting heavy behind....then the sky was moon and stars only and still I danced, undulated beneath silvery lights. Movements were graceful, sinuous and almost snakey, a fluid mirror of the waterfall. I pulsed and released it all up into the sky and into the ground with arched back until I was empty of it and then I welcomed the good to fill the emptiness I had made. Wishing with all my might that I do right by it.

When I was a teenager, I went through a very short phase of breaking through my skin when I was in emotional pain, which back then, seared through me. I think teens react so strongly to the pain because they are new to life, and it's a fresh experience. Like an animal, we lash out from the gut so sometimes the resulting behavior following the alien emotions don't make any sense or have any root in a logical mind.

I stopped breaking my skin on my own after a month. I am weird that way. Habits die hard sometime but with me, sometimes they die abruptly with no warning, like smoking did. I remember it pretty well, not completely understanding why I was doing what I was doing and once I did, I stopped and began to paint (which unfortunately I allowed to die when mom died). Something like emotion is so abstract. We cannot see it, touch it, taste it, hear it directly. Something about not being able to express it, see it, examine it, handle it literally... made me feel like I had no control over it, that it had control over me. To regain control, I tried to make the abstract something visible to my naked eye, something I felt on a simple, physical level that I could cope with somehow more easily than on the complex level I had brought it down from. I still have one faint scar, like a whisper from the past. No one would notice it except me. I don't even think I have ever told Jessie where it is.

I think I yearn still to draw the emotions and thoughts that are building up inside of me to the surface, translate it into simple language, something more visible. There is comfort in witnessing a representation of the abstract. Somehow it assures that I exist. That I am real. I very much want to be real. Obviously I have this body with which I can express and experience myself sensually. I yearn to bring the beauty, the important stuff that MAKES me feel alive to the outside somehow. I think being unemployed I have turned to stupid outlets like Facebook which is entertaining and fine. But it's not what I really want or crave. I am reacting but not necessarily in the best way - it's not cutting or harming my physical body like breaking my skin from teenage years but....I see the parallel.

Maybe the dream was my mind/soul's way of expressing another way to release what's inside into more visible form that would satisfy my desire without harming. I am not sure if the end result should be bellydance but I think that is an good starting outlet for me.

And now I get ready to pick Jessie up for an early morning doctor's appointment.

Goosebumps

Ayla by DJ Tiesto draws out goosebumps of nostalgia. I feel like the ghost of who I was is watching me, wondering, maybe admiring although she could be disappointed. I don't know. 

I had tidal wave dreams the other night. Ocean poured in through the bottom of an open window in my room. At first I was scared and doing everything I could to avoid being touched. But then I went outside, climbed onto the roof and up into a nearby tree. I watched the tidal waves roll up on the land, tickling my dangling legs. A male passerby asked if I needed assistance and I told him I was just fine. The fear had subsided and I eventually jumped down to play in the water. 

I had other dreams of being involved with people I don't know in real life. It was like an odd history book of me that was inaccurate as far as reality goes. I can't remember much but I wish I did.

Tears won't fucking stop

All I can do is cry and I don't know or want to look at why. There's something that got lost along the way and now that I've thought to search for it I can't find it. Images of that American Indian woman I once "remembered" being centuries ago spring to mind. I see her clawing at herself, wringing arms and pulling hair and neck. I still see the blood trickling down her brown skin, and why? Because she has just realized that the thing she was looking for can never be retrieved, forever lost. 

I can't stop crying. I have not been this stubbornly depressed in a long time. Often I can yank myself out of it in short time but the quicksand effect pulling back this time has greater force than times past. It worries me. I either want to hide away from everything and everyone or drive far, far away. Neither seems progress toward any end at all and I need to get a hold of myself.

Past

Leaving the past behind is difficult, especially when it is so inextricably woven to the present, and in fact shaped the "now" we know. There is no real escape from the past. Therefore, it is important to know to draw from the past without letting it draw from you.

Commit, goddammit

I crave solitude for the healing. I crave social action for the distraction for a different form of healing. A strengthening exercise to pump me up for the Things That Matter.

I am my own person. No one else's. I am responsible for me. I am the creator and artist of Chance. I want to set aside the weights and pursue a self-created destiny, eke out the life and future I know is for the highest good. But everyone can want like everyone can take a shit - it's biologically encoded for survival. Surviving is not reviving or living. Transcend "want" and transform it into "do". Commit. Goddammit, Chance, commit to yourself or you won't be able to commit to anything or anyone in full ever. 

Internal locus of control is a good thing

So you were upset

About me telling you that I wanted to jump into the technical communication course

And telling you the cost

And you said you felt kept out of the loop

But because I've been talking about it this whole time I didn't feel that way

Also I made the decision to "just do it"

As I was driving home

But realized that it was an IMPULSE

That I didn't research my options well enough beforehand

And that I tend to get impulses/urges to take action when I feel like other things are out of my control (i.e. money, some aspects of us, my future)

The impulse to take action is my way of regaining control over what I believe is controllable

It re-establishes identity I think is getting lost

or threatened

or security

safety whatever "good" thing is threatened

The end.

Last night

Every fiber in my being glowed fire-red and I felt like a hair-trigger bomb. I was going to drown in it. Once it faded, everything was depleted. Damaged goods, like I said. I am so rarely that angry and it almost made me throw up.

I kept feeling a strong presence in my room when I tried to sleep afterward last night. It has been a long time since I felt anything like that so I told it if it existed, I was not in the mood and to leave immediately. It did not work so I read erotica and worked on myself to give the remnant, shaky energy leftover from the inner fire a place to dissipate.

Today I look forward to being a stereotypical girl with Tomasita. We are going to do MAKE-UP fun for the wedding and our ex co-worker Alexis will be the artist. I hope I can still find that package of my contacts.

Damaged goods

I am almost positive I am too damaged to make it worth her while - or anybody's while. Damaged beyond repair.

She disagrees.

Ex Factor by Lauryn Hill

It could all be so simple
But you'd rather make it hard
Loving you is like a battle
And we both end up with scars
Tell me, who I have to be
To get some reciprocity
No one loves you more than me
And no one ever will

Is this just a silly game
That forces you to act this way
Forces you to scream my name
Then pretend that you can't stay
Tell me, who I have to be
To get some reciprocity
No one loves you more than me
And no one ever will

Hook:
No matter how I think we grow
You always seem to let me know
It ain't workin'
It ain't workin'
And when I try to walk away
You'd hurt yourself to make me stay
This is crazy
This is crazy

I keep letting you back in
How can I explain myself
As painful as this thing has been
I just can't be with no one else
See I know what we got to do
You let go and I'll let go too
'Cause no one's hurt me more than you
And no one ever will

Repeat Hook

Care for me, care for me
I know you care for me

There for me, there for me
Said you'd be there for me

Cry for me, cry for me
You said you'd die for me

Give to me, give to me
Why won't you live for me
(Repeat) 

Stranger's touch

She admits that it's been so long since she allowed me to touch her, it feels like a stranger's touch when I do. That description is the most perfect way to put it. I feel like I am touching a hesitant stranger whenever I attempt to be affectionate with her.

So, so sad. It is something we will need to work long and hard at. I have to pop the little voice in the back of my mind asking "is it even worth the effort anymore?" right in the mouth.

Zig-zag for brains is better than shit for brains

It has been so long since thoughts of creating art occur to me as seriously as they do tonight. I imagine painting a woman onto a wooden cabinet. In my mind's eye, she is trying to open herself, hand poised mid-air, reaching for the wooden doorknob sticking out of her chest. She may even be pausing to glance out at the viewer.

I imagine painting a woman on canvas. I glue a key to the canvas where I will paint her throat. She is made of sand like my hemorrhage entry below and the wind sprays aways loose pieces through her fingertips, behind broken mirror shards. 

I read up more on the technical communication certificate program at UCSD.

Sleep beckons but my brains zig zag around. Meanwhile, my body is fatigued from scrubbing the floor/walls, organizing books from an unhealthy position held while low to the floor to do so. Muscles are contracted into themselves and betray the desire to crawl in a hole and scrunch up tight in the dark. I want strong hands to soothe them back into supple cords, to gather the surrounding flesh and detangle all visceral knots. 

I broke a nail for the first time in ages while wearing neoprene coated cleaning gloves. It's irritating.  Emotions are depleted from intense highs earlier in the day and night before but at least my books are in order now.

Jessie and I had our first session today. I found it much easier to talk than I expected but only on the condition I let my eyes wander upward. It was as though staying visually fixed on Jessie or the therapist would freeze the words in my throat. I did not cry. Jessie was so scared of being that vulnerable. I felt bad about that and almost wanted to protect her but I tried to help coax it out of her instead.

We headed to the bookstore afterward to get the book the therapist recommended. I also bought an erotica book, Women on Top edited/compiled by Violet Blue. Upon Jessie's suggestion, we also got Kathy Griffin's auto-biography. I then sipped iced green tea and munched on my blueberry streusel muffin. Jessie got latte and some pumpkin muffin with cream cheese filling.

On a happier note, after Jessie took me to Olive Garden dinner and retired early for my birthday last night, Toma and Jen came with me to Sonic so I could get a lemonberry slush. Our carhop, Justin, was such a riot. He had our brand of twisted humor down pat so we got comfortable with his antics quickly. He gave me 17 of the 33 after-meal Sonic mints jammed in his pocket, wrote me birthday wishes and painted out infant footprints in the dust film coating my car. He also gave me two birthday balloons which Toma secured to the passenger side so they floated up and out of my moonroof. Unfortunately, the balloons snapped loose right before I reached the freeway on-ramp to get back home.

I think that this does it for this entry. Zig zag for brains is better than shit for brains. Hopefully it makes room for clearer thinking and a better connection to my heart.

Hemorrhage

I feel like pieces of me are on the loose. No matter how I try to hold together, parts expand further and further apart. I am this emotional sand being and the particles are sloughing off, chest first. Hands are frantic to salvage the grains and chunks, breaking off like rock chips from a wind-stressed cliff side, but steady little streams easily pour through the spaces between my fingers. I realize I am hemorrhaging and time is running out without an hourglass to neaten the end result.

Army of Me

My days blur, sort of cave together without a job to shape them from beneath. My silver lining is particularly shiny though, because I like that I am now the main shaper of my days. I fill them with events I want, not with the empty minutia of a deskjob. I am still job hunting but the interstitial freedom is beautiful in the meantime. Even my crazy, curly hair seems to swing and bounce freer that before.

I keep dreaming of road trips after visiting Trish and Shawn in Merced last week. It takes me around six hours to drive there and another six to return to San Diego. Three hundred ninety miles each way. Last week's visit was the first time I made the trip - or drove anywhere for longer than 1 hour for that matter - alone. I found such a deep peace in the solitude of that drive. I love driving so much and I crave that same peace again. I can see a glimmer of the appeal a big commercial truck driver's life might have.

Also, I miss them already. I wish there was a way to wipe the distance between us away.

I feel a bit calmer now that Jessie and I talked a bit more about us last night. This period in my life seems ruled by these long talks that are long overdue. We did both pretty comfortably weigh the final breaking up stone in our hands less like a hot potato and more like a curious consideration. That metaphorical stone was much smoother in texture than I expected although the weight was about as heavy as I anticipated.

Now, I am as prepared as I can be for either outcome. Without delving too deep, we agreed to give "us" until January 2010, seeing the therapist in the meantime. A lot of our conflict stems from the incompatibility of our perspectives. She is much more black/white thinking than I am and her expectations match. I am more prone to seeing a small request as a demand or ownership claim and I do NOT react well to that "owned" part.  So much more than this though. It's almost overwhelming.

I am cleaning out my room, my personal space. It seems time. I will be throwing away a lot of things and giving others to Goodwill or mayhaps Craigslisters. Sometimes, taking action on the physical level is enough to help clear the way mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I sure hope so because these are the things I can taste, touch, see, feel, hear and therefore control and manipulate with hands.

Strange ghost girl

I seemed bent on not sleeping last night. Too many thoughts racing inside so I channeled the jarring pace to other things.

I just left a message for the therapist one of my best friends used for her and her fiance when they hit a rough patch. The therapist specializes in same sex couples counseling too so that should satisfy Jessie's criteria as well.

A fear bubble is growing inside of me, right in my throat and heart, creeping to encapsulate my head and stomach.  In our 5 year 8 month relationship we have broken up a few times with a complete separation being around 1.5 - 2 years ago. Every break up attempt - both partial and complete - had been initiated by her until a few days ago.  I recanted my words only because she told me she would try counseling. I mean, what else have I got to lose, right?  Now she is treating me like a fragile package, afraid to shatter this teetering tower of us and I now feel like I am living someone else's life, watching from the inside. Shadow parts of me bob to the surface and the old version of Chance once presented to the outside is in hibernate mode. I am not sure she'll ever wake up or if I identify with her because it's hard to let go of the old me. Maybe all that's left of her is a ghost. Ghost girl who was an equal actor in this relationship and now this strange girl taking ghost girl's place has got to determine if she will be able to even pick up where the ghost left off.

I don't know what will become.

Watermelon Chapstick - written in high school

Watermelon tastes nice on

chapped lips, especially when

they’re yours. I’ll soften those sweet

petals with mine, tainted pink,

like fruit-candy on my tongue.

I’ll massage soft, braless flesh

with chipped polish tipped fingers

and warm palms cupped to send waves

pulsing tropic through us both.

Full of your candied kisses,

my feet cannot touch the floor.

Lashes dust your cheeks, and mine.

Watermelon lips on me,

like moths, damp with morning dew

pressed in to whisper words that

don’t actually exist.

I’m in your sea electric.

I will lick salt water from

the valley of nose and cheek,

stroke withering hair weary

of bleach, wisps kissing your face

beneath sun and trees that bare

your diagonal grace.

Heated, watermelon breath

fans over me from below;

a flushed cheek to silken thighs,

tangled in white sheets, writhing.

Please: don’t ever disappear

Distract

Distractions work well but when I'm alone to think on my own like this, the bad things overwhelm me and my heart hurts.

Ready for Goodbye

I am ready for night to fall, for the uncertainty of dreamtime, for the sparkling newness of the unknown. I am ready for the ride to begin, ready for my heart to beat, to make a mistake deep down in it. Ready for the unsteady, ready to rock my own world for a change. Goodbyes are just hellos waiting to be acknowledged.

I told her.

"I told her, don't touch me that way. Don't come at me with that sour-cream smile. Come at me as if I were worth your life.... Take me like a turtle whose shell must be cracked, whose heart is ice, who needs your heat. Love me like a warrior, sweat up to your earlobes and all your hope between your teeth. Love me so I know I am at least as important as anything you have ever wanted."

-Dorothy Allison

Stripped eyes and pantomime

Saltwater layer wraps my eyes, stinging, persistent. Blink and here comes the rain again. Bed sinks beneath a heaviness. Moving seems pantomime and all I can do is listen to sweet voices that are not mine. She is singing through my speakers telling me to run and come and run and come.

It will all be okay.

Interference

After a long day at work, I come over to Jessie's house in an attempt to strengthen our bond, our closeness. I want peace and love, like any good pseudo-hippie girl wants.

Of course, I come "home" to Jessie's. It is no surprise that her mother has oldies music blaring loud enough to cause serious aural bleeding. I cannot escape it. Jessie cannot escape it. I can only tune it out or leave. How fucking symbolic is this for the interference we are so weary of enduring? I want out. Preferably, both of us out together with a life to call ours.

I woke up feeling that I no longer want to smoke. I have not smoked all day. The only other time this urge occurred was after getting sick with a chest cold, never while "healthy". I have a theory as to why that is though.

I can be remarkably persistent in the way a stubborn 5 year old can hold his breath in a tantrum until he passes out. But this streak can lead me to perceive a situation as being one over which I have little control in that I am not willing to part with one thing for another. So I wait in limbo, growing increasingly frustrated. This everyday wear and tear is coupled with other things, namely the impending layoff I face at a stressful job, separation from people I have grown to care about try as I might to keep work separate from personal life.

I think I have simply projected the control I do have on the situation (but refuse to use, at least on the root issue) to another desire instead. Smoking. Smoking behavior is predominantly intended to soothe, calm, pleasure. It seems counterproductive to curtail a behavior meant to illicit the pleasure I find little of in life right now. But not really. I imagine it's like a cutter that might self-mutilate in order to express the pain within, try to translate some raw, dark emotions into something understandable, perceivable.

I may have just twisted that tendency of mine into a choice that might turn out to be healthy for me.

Right now, I am sitting here with Jessie and Debbie smoking and being frazzled around with the fucking soul-piercing music, people bitching, shit dropping, dogs barking - enough to send me into an anxiety attack. I think the vacuum is about to be added to the mix soon. Normally I would bust out a cigarette but I don't think I will. I'll see where this goes.

It's been several minutes since the last paragraph. It is now quieter - the CD has ended, laundry is just in the dryer - and I sit here alone in my thoughts.

Sore

I am aching.

Music and 12/5/47 - 7/9/02

My brother is amazing.

At the moment, I am specifically referring to his penchant for incredible music. He has introduced me to Future Loop Foundation and Quantic, truly phenomenal space out music. As it plays, Dragonblood incense sticks burn in a candle on top of our living room television. Such a peaceful feel right now, just me and Anthony.

I have an image in my head; a puddle breaking over the edge of outdoor stairs as the sun sets. People quiet down, at home, readying for dinner or bed. The water traces the concrete, each 90 degree angle before the final rush down the last stair, pouring itself into the gutter. Dead leaves and city trash tumble along in the currents. It's an accidental urban river testifying that as far as we have separated ourselves from nature, we are still a part of it. Comforting.

Today is July 9th 2009, the 7 year anniversary of mom's death. I am grateful to have this day off as I've worked every other anniversary since 2002. My thoughts about her are more enduring, more still than usual. I sense her in my heart chakra. Her eyes are normally closed when I think of her - and I do every single day since 7/9/02 - but today her eyes are open. She seems patient for my acknowledgement, as much a part of me as my spine or lungs.

I miss you, Mom. I hope you are proud of me even though I have not yet figured out what to be when I grow up. I want to be proud of me, too but don't worry, I am to an extent. You were loved and are still loved. I will love you when I am 30, 50, 80, 103 if I make it that far. And if my consciousness survives beyond this form, I expect you to be waiting for me.

Breaking surface

It's been almost a month and a half since our department received news that the company had finalized the contract. Three waves of layoffs will make way for third party customer service representatives to take over. Soon, another agent - more often than not based in another country - will be answering the phone. Not me. Not Marie. Not Tomasita. Not Chris. Not any of my co-workers.

I have let it sit inside like a stone. Unfeeling. I have not even looked at my resume since being hired on, despite the early warning.

Tonight is perhaps the third time we have all been gathered together to discuss it, although, frankly, there has been little discussion. The majority is quiet. What do you say to that? My mind goes blank usually. Or rather, my heart goes blank while my mind races into walls, probably in attempt to knock itself out. It really sounds more dramatic than it is.

While the Important People spoke to us from the front of the room, the cynic in me could not help thinking how much more this display of support was a means of easing their conscience as opposed to being "there" for us.

It is logical to me that these meetings truly serve both sides. But I don't pretend this demonstration is not vastly to save the company's collective face. To save the faces of those who made the decision for the good of the company. In other words I can still fully appreciate the benefits of this gentle ass fuck as opposed to a brutally lubeless intrusion - and the fact that some people truly do care for us AND the success of the company. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive - the consequences for us simply suck. In truth, the company is a much better company than the majority and I have a genuine sense of loyalty working there. Success on company's part via assimilation? Or mine?

Though I hardly dream of being a customer service representive for my entire life, the job has fulfilled me and I hope I it. For the first time since news broke, I struggled to swallow back tears. Maybe it's because Michele and Erin cried.

But I suddenly realized, despite my logical understanding of the decision being completely impersonal to any of us, I have been taking it personally on an emotional level the entire time, a distinction I thought I was much better at than this. I have always thrived on validation from others. I do not require it to function, to be fantastic but gee golly Miss Molly, it sure does help!

Because of the nature of our department - fast paced, clock hands riding us like a depraved psychotic - validation of the individual's abilities and successes is lowest priority and the importance of resolving any mistakes much higher. The silver lining of that structure is this: I have learned to rely much more on myself than before, a habit I need to continually foster. Trust and self-reliance is not a habit that comes easily to me but I can do it, and do it pretty well anyway. My experience working in this department has strengthened me and I am utterly grateful for it.

But I am sad. Sad to see others go. To know that things are changing pretty drastically for those I have grown to care about almost like a family. Mentally, differentiating work from friends/family is easy but emotionally, suffice it to say I easily fall in love with awesome people.

I also feel that the change is overall a beautiful one, one that has some of us dusting off our dreams and re-evaluating our hopes and goals. And we get to do it together.

Petrified emotion

Minimizing the sadness in my life has become second nature. It's easy when I simplify my focus to the present moment. Perhaps my biological nearsightedness mirrors this tendency. I like to think I release what does not serve me any good, that I am not wont to hold a grudge.

But I can't sleep tonight despite the cool relief I would welcome to alleviate this firetorched sensation I feel around my eyes right now. I should be exhausted since I only had 5 hours of sleep, woke up at 8 AM and then worked from 1 PM to 10 PM. At first, I try not to dwell on the reason behind this pseudo insomnia. I even convince myself there isn't a reason and, truthfully, there does not need to be a reason as some things just are. However, I don't think the "no reason" rule applies now.

I'd like to say my mind is racing. That there are so many problems in my present life, pinpricks, definite issues. That would be a good excuse. It would make sense to me, enough to trick myself into easing into the sleep I should be sleeping now. But there are no definite answers.

Or maybe there are.

I try to ignore the little voice. You know, the one that pretty much speaks the truth you don't want to hear and sometimes shove ruthlessly into a corner pretending that the words don't carry far enough to resonate clearly throughout your whole being. That voice. Well that voice is telling me that I have let my emotions petrify for far too long and the result is a large, rocky mass pressing against my heart or my mind or soul or whatever you call it. I have the nagging impression that some of those Big Life Problems I thought I managed or am managing through pretty well actually left remnants I didn't know how to or couldn't just discard. Now the mass is so big, it threatens to break the calm surface.

I feel unfulfilled, like I am forgetting something. I feel like something important is dying, something that I shouldn't allow to die. Sometimes it dies, and it's a good thing because the decaying pieces fertilize something better to come. But this feels different.

I am so conditioned to deaden myself against rejection that it's become my go-to option. I worry that I have nothing left inside, that when the situation changes I'll be just a shell.

I tell myself I am strong. Maybe I am. Or maybe I am just stubborn and/or in denial. Is there really a difference? I know I can't change what I can't change and there is comfort knowing that because I've done the best with what I've got at my disposal without compromising what I believe is important. I find pleasure in little things, I can still genuinely smile and laugh, enjoy the people in my life.

But it is 3:10 AM and I still can't sleep.

Head to toe, spirit to soul

Is there a breaking point? It happens in slow motion. Breaking points work outside of the normal flow of time, weaving past, present, future quick quick quick all at once. That makes sense to me - a dramatic fork in the road can shatter a reality.

For a split second, all of my life's traumas and depressions rolled up microscopic as a pre-Big Bang egg a quark could swallow exploded soundlessly. It washed over me in waves so tidal they drenched every wall inside me head to toe, spirit to soul. I thought I would die for a moment stretched on in ironic limitlessness. I felt sad, helpless, angry, shamed, fearful - my mother's face at the center of it all. Then, it was over as soon as it started. It was like a RAR file spontaneously unzipped then recoiled.

Lapse in sanity is just a tiny lapse in our linear world, a glimpse of a far more enduring version of reality, truer than the kinds in which we typically participate. I still have no idea why it happened or what it means - just that it happened and could be the introduction to something more significant to come.

Kill it with fire.

Twitter = Twatter and I'm not sleepy at all. Kill it with fire.

Also I want to see NIN/JA on 5/16 at the Cricket Amphitheater.

Thank you, Flintstones

The moon looked like a giant stone brushing the treetops as I drove home tonight. Craters across its surface seemed magnified, prominent against the dijon yellow hue the moon gets when viewed at that angle through our ozone layer, so low in the horizon. If I had pulled over, I may have been able to count the depressions, mapped this natural mandala. I could not help but think of the Flintstones because it seemed too large to be real and the craters were so clear, they looked artificial, drawn as backdrop to animation.

Ancient, cosmic beauty? Ridiculous cartoon? Why would my uncensored thoughts juxtapose the two? Is it profound? Does it mean something? My left hemisphere has just barged to the forefront and informed me it's my way of staying awake at high speed while travelling down the freeway. Sweet.

Dismemberment dreams

There was a girl in a locked room of the large house. I tugged and pulled with all my might but the door wouldn't budge. I could see her face through a window panel in the door itself. Her face distorted from a combination of being forced against the glass and agony. She was being attacked by an invisible force.

I remember how urgent I acted but inside feeling quite calm from time to time - like I had run out of emotion or perhaps there was a part of me that realized this had to be dream. Somehow I ended up on the other side of the door with her. I, too, was dismembered. The lighting would disappear and flicker back on to reveal us in stages of varous dismemberment. We were both still alive and I kept wondering why it wasn't as painful as I would imagine. Legless, just a body from the waist up and I dragged myself to the window through which I had seen the other girl with such horror on her face. Outside, instead of the other room I saw a beach, warm ocean water.

The mother who isn't really my mom at all stepped into the field of vision. The other girl and I had our bloody hands spread against the window toward her. She couldn't see us or sense us but we could hear her speak. She was leaving the house, moving. At first we didn't realize but she said it had beenm 10 years since she'd heard from us, 10 years since I somehow made it into that room. I wanted to tell her to stay but she could not hear me.

Flash back to when the house was freshly moved into. A room opens up to the beachfront/ocean. Every time we walk by it though, the room changes on its own. First we walk through it to the ocean. We dash into the water, swimming, playing until the giant waves scoop us further out to be attacked by piranhas. More dismemberment dreams. After the piranhas have had their fill, we are swept back to shore. Rush through the door and it shuts behind us.

We run to tell others in the household about the ocean and that room, yanking arms practically out of their sockets. By the time we reach the room, it had frustratingly transformed into an innocent, regular room without the door outside to the beach. Just a few windows, plain square room. It's laughing at us.

There's more dream but I can't hold on to it all right now. I think right about now I have woken up too much to remember.

Irony is a big, old, honking bitch

Lately, certainties seem to slip through my fingers. I can grasp all I want, set all the clever little traps to get that "extra edge" but all for naught. I swear that the truth is lurking right before me, so close I can physically feel it. Vague but as tactile as breath scraping across my skin. The big April Fool's joke is that Certainty does not exist - and that's the only certainty! Irony is a big, old, honking bitch.

Today, I vented about work and hopefully didn't get anyone in trouble in the process - I want to retract it all and fling it down the garbage disposal where it belongs. Desperation is sticky and I can feel its slime trickle down all over me. I think when my office nameplate launched into a suicide dive to my feet while Kelcey talked about her earring flying out of its place was an omen.

I am flawed, imperfect, terrible. I think that's what I'm supposed to learn from this. Not that it's "OK" but that I should know better by now. Now, that I am lifting this thin veil of ignorance to what I have allowed to happen inside of me. My heart endures but I've been treating it like an enemy and wrenched it from its natural partnership with mind. Speaking of which, this self/soul mutilation has fostered a bloated mess that clogs clear vision. I picture some grotesque alien with a flabby head so large its prone to drag limply behind me as I trudge along.

It needs to stop now.

Butchering the tree of me

I woke the other morning with the dream tree echoing in my mind. Off center. Unnatural. Butchered. Altered. Sad. These are the words that describe the tree. Its image stays with me.

In my dreams, there is a "school age" white girl with long, slightly wavy hair - the ends feathery and brushing mid-back. I believe she is my mind's symbol for myself when I am watching from third person perspective. I have seen her in other dreams.

She was leaning against a white painted fence without the vertical pickets. A black book bag sits at her feet and she is reading in front of a one story suburban house while standing beneath the tree's canopy. A boy shows up and I shift perspective between the boy and the girl as they have a conversation. I don't know if the conversation is important. The autumn sun is setting, streaking gold and plum strokes across the sky.

Suddenly, while I am the girl, I fixate on the tree and realize that the trunk is far to my right and the canopy is simply the rounded leaves growing from a single, long branch with its tip resting on the roof of the house to my left about 25 feet away. The leaves to the right of the trunk don't overhang the trunk more than a few short feet. I look up. Someone has woven a wire lattice for a creeper plant to twine itself, giving the illusion of a fuller canopy than it really is. All other branches have been cleanly sawed off, close to their source.

This realization saddens me, saddens her. The tree's natural growth, it's organic symmetry has been brutally altered to meet the aesthetic preferences of those dwelling in the house and the city. The result is a this dramatic lopsidedness. Unbalance.

The tree is me. The sadness that wells in me stems from the part that does not like what she sees. I play my role well at work, at home. But for all the effort I have butchered parts of myself that I held sacred to cater to "their" symmetry, "their" ideals. I think it's interesting that the RIGHT side of the tree (right brain) is the side that suffers all the cuts while the LEFT side of the tree (left brain) weighs heavily on this house for support. It hangs high because of it, and serves it's purpose well, but it's still fake.


How to turn what I built on the left side into genuine achievement and how to re-teach the right side to grow again without detracting from the left?

Where the Buffalo Are

So my brother decided to resurrect our old hard drive from 5 or 6 years ago for...whatever his purposes are. He salvaged my old documents and to say the least, it's been like finding a time capsule of HORROR and DISMAY at what a silly teenager I was.

He found a creative piece I wrote less than 2 months after I turned 17 for one of my two history classes during senior year of high school. I was enrolled in 2 history classes - 1 IB World History class and 1 "remedial" US History for the easy A to make up for my dismal grade in IB US History the year prior.

The teacher asked us to write from the perspective of the Native Americans during the European colonization of the United States. I think I was a bit liberal with the prompt and wrote in a style loosely inspired by Toni Morrison's Beloved since we had read it for IB English. Since the hard drive crash, I have been looking for a copy of this piece ever since.

I not only turned it in and got an A, I printed it out in red italics - AND read it out loud to the class for extra credit. It's a fucking wonder they didn't send me straight to the school psychologist:

Chance Hilott
US History – 6

Where the Buffalo Are

Her side rises with my head against it. I lay my head on the soft down of my mother, ensanguined with blood. Mine and hers, our blood, it bleeds into the milk she leaks. Precious, life-giving elixir, tainted with blood, human and animal. I hear the Earth our bodies rest upon, the Earth which we cannot separate ourselves from, I hear her cry out, drink in our blood. She observes her own children go mad with greed, with fury. She weeps. The breath snorting through my mother’s nostrils fades. We see red and are blinded by it.

We cannot do a thing.

My mother and I. We cannot close our eyes. The men without skin scalp my sister. I see her fall to her knees before me, her eyes meet my lifeless ones before she falls silently to kiss the Earth. Her blood feeds the Earth too. My mother’s body shudders. I shudder.

There…I see my father wrapped in the red mist. He wrestles with the skinless one. Something happens, and the skinless one falls. My father wipes his brow as he watches the Earth drink the blood of her skinless son. My father explodes! His body collapses on top of the skinless one’s. They embrace, their blood merges as one stream. The Earth drinks and cries.

The skinless ones. They crush my baby’s skull with stone. Yesterday he said, “Mama.” They rape my aunt. They spit on her, scratch her face and slice off her breasts with their wolves’ claws. They drag her ravaged body behind their horses. They slice her neck but her eyes are open. They laugh, their mouths move. They chew us up and spit us out. Their smiles are stained with blood, coating their teeth like oil. They carry our scalps on the point of their sword, mocking our way. I cannot see anymore.

Nothing but red.

It consumes me. I cannot cry but my soul weeps. I cannot moan but my soul wails.

Where is my mother? I forget. Where have all the buffalo gone? My heart hurts. I am so tired. My eyes hurt. I do not like the red. But I cannot close my eyes. Blood, the Earth’s breath stinks of burnt blood, like copper. The skinless ones taste the red too. Some of them hesitate because of it. Most are propelled by it. I cannot see the blue sky. There’s too much red. I cannot see the buffalo. Too much red. I cannot see the Earth. Too much red. I cannot see my mother.

Too much red.

I cannot taste her milk. I gag on metallic blood. My mother’s blood. The skinless one’s blood. The buffalo’s blood. My blood. The Earth swallows it all. I want water. But the red is too dense, thick like cotton. I cannot breathe. Singing. Who is singing? I need to taste the singing. I want to taste that song. I need to hear the milk. I can hardly feel it when they take my scalp. My eyes are open! But I don’t care.

Who is singing? I have to touch it…I reach out for it with my mind. I have to have it. Her song carries me away. It is mine. She whispers to me that she will take me to the buffalo, where the milk and the water are. Where the red won’t hurt my eyes. Where the red can’t clog my throat.

She says that my mother is there.

She says that my sister and father are there.

She says my aunt is there. And my sweet, sweet baby too. But she cannot carry me there until the red is gone. Until we are set free.

So still I wait.

Without relativity

I imagine everyone caving inside out, pliable as sea anemones, folding under the Moon's gravity. It wound around Earth in its perigee path last night. We were restless people, oblivious to the swelling lunacy possessing us en masse. Change and movement are measured by motion relative to a stable object. But there were no stable objects to observe the shift by relativity - everyone and everything transformed at once.

The weather too, seems indecisive or bipolar. Indecision and bipolarism are cousins after all. The nights are still too frigid to be called San Diegan. During the day, Santa Ana winds exhale with vigor, sending winter's debris from rest across the roads. Dead leaves charge, tripping across the streets like adrenaline-pumped soldiers, leaping, tumbling over, and charging again - and I, I just sit in my car waiting for the light to turn green. Two hours pass, sunwise a blink, and the winds have passed, leaving the air still, disturbed only by birdsong needling through the denseness.

I am not sure what's to come. Or if we'll be too disoriented to notice since relativity has momentarily been removed from the picture.