6 april
5 march
20 february
3 february
29 january
19 january
first dream
ephemera
notes
walking through a cluttered cemetery.
balloons deflated, time-worn crosses, wilting flowers, toys, pink and blue little altars the size of dollhouses.
a man, the guide, handed my grandmother a massive bundle of herbs.
he had one too.
so leafy, so strong-smelling.
romero, albahaca, perejil, ruda, manzanilla.
i closed my eyes and the leaves kept brushing against me, hitting me, along with the low branches of the trees.
he said to keep hitting our bodies with it.
said it would keep them away - the shadow that had been walking behind me this whole time.
at the end of the path was a grey mausoleum.
the shadow walked into me.
i don't know why i'm thinking of you now, mother. i haven't dreamed of you in years. your voice, i don't remember. your face, nothing but a blur of absence. one day you stopped speaking, even in my memories. and still, sometimes, in the mirror or in silence, a voice runs through me. not mine, not unfamiliar. i don't know if it's you. i don't know who the shadow was, i think of this often - almost seven years later. i don't know if it was you, or if it lived in you too. so many of our women are gone. sometimes i wonder if we were born to be mourned.
what happens when even divine patience frays?
sixteen-year-old girls think they have the answers for the woes of the World, just like they
have always done. it is with such innocence that i used to carry myself when i was a
sixteen-year-old girl. confined to soft pink walls surrounded by a pantheon of stuffed animals, i'd
hope words would carve me into someone new. in many ways, i still do - i still am searching for absolution,
for the relief of starting again.
have i not already mentioned how much i love starting anew? the promise of a new beginning?
in the first day of the month, in the turning of the year, in the earliest bruises of dawn.
very recently, i wrote:
“in life i feel like a wretched worm. i feel dirty and guilty all
the time and i have no idea how to clean myself. i’m starting to think that maybe a worm
is all i’ll ever be, and that it’s time for me to accept that. i want to peel my skin off
and start all over again from zero - but i think that even if i were to burn my body, a worm
would lay in the ashes.” a worm! a signifier of life. through the decay, through the rot. i
see now that this is a reminder that even rot makes way for life.
you are holding your own brokenness like an offering, mourning what you were and longing for
what you could be. peeling yourself apart and hoping the light still wants to touch what’s left;
being flayed and cradled all at once. i wish i could write to God to ask Him if He really loves me.
o God am i really worthy of your love? behind me, i drag my failures, collapsing at your merciful threshold.
may the Almighty God have mercy on me.
over and over again, i find myself on my knees imploring to be saved. over and over again,
i have to admit to myself that i am unwell, though my heart resists it, unwilling to accept
that this is the shape my life has taken. my whole body itches, actively fighting the urge to
isolate myself from everything and everyone. i know this because i feel it - my soul is
accumulating all the bad things i've done and it absolutely is what weighs me down on the daily.
i'd do anything for a full-being bath right now. everything feels so horrible, as if i were
swiftly undergoing putrefaction. itching from the urge to escape from my current life and to
start over again. i have love, so what else do i want? it keeps finding its way into my dreams,
and those dreams go on to command how i feel. i wish i didn't allow myself to be ruled by them.
i am no oracle, after all. i keep waking up at three or four in the morning.
i am so paranoid, why? remember Job.
i have some weird martyr-type complex where i think of myself as a sort of sacrificial lamb?
or a sin-eater? heretical, probably.
whenever people do something wrong it doesn’t actually matter, because i’ve done it,
or i can do it - and, of course, i’m uniquely wrong and evil and worse than everyone else.
like i am such a deeply disgusting and disturbed person that nothing anyone does will be as bad as me
(me - the being, the whole of my being, my core; me as a person). i struggle using the word
'soul' because i am not sure if i even have one. i don't even know if i've ever loved.
yesterday's dream: was at a dinner party. friends kept telling me how weird i am. i was trying
to explain that this is just me, this is just the way i am, but they kept pushing it and
threatened to get me institutionalized. i started crying. woke up to sirens.
i wish the internet didn't make me feel so paranoid. it's part of why i felt the need to take a step back and rethink my approach to it - i want to be more deliberate about where i go online, who i engage with, and what i choose to share. i think the way i present myself has leaned too much into irony, and i really don't want that to define my presence anymore. neither online nor offline. less irony, more intention. i want to come back with a clearer sense of how i want to exist here. to align more with my ideal, i'm doing two things: being thoughtful in the manner i approach online spaces (already mentioned), and having limited access to social media/big+fast-paced online communities. i think the self-imposed limitation would help quiet my paranoia, while the other thing would allow me to interact in a way that feels less reactive and less immersed in the hustle and bustle of the internet. i'd like to think that building this virtual sanctuary with my very own hands will help, too. forces a quiet sense of agency - thought i do wish you could easily turn off you site's view count. thank God for ublock!
i had a dream i was a teenage girl. she was on a train, sitting next to the boy she likes.
she's over-analyzing her face. i function as her eyes and as mirror: i see her pimples,
dry skin, her little facial hair, and her flakey makeup. she complains about all of this,
but the boy she’s with offers no response but a warm smile and a gentle gaze.
she holds eye contact with him in the same manner, and then we see the scenery outside the train.
the green pastures and rivers and mountains bending and warping with speed.
clearly i've been worrying too much. clearly these past few days have been horrible,
not because of the material reality of my life, but because my mind has shifted -
degenerated! - my perspective, my world.
during parent-teacher night at my daughter’s school, the teacher reads a story to the parents.
the story is short:
the dad arrives to the school and steps onto the playground. the kids, upon
seeing him arrive, duck behind a wall to hide their shame. one boy, after explaining he failed his
classes and is repeating the year, says to the dad, "i'll always be in elementary school."
the shame is felt by everyone.
when the dad leaves, he doesn't return the way he came - why not go back through the door, where walls
would separate them from his sight? because, as he walks across the playground, with tears in his eyes,
laughing softly behind quiet sobs, he can turn back one last time. because, this way, he can see them
struggling with a much-too-big backpack, clutching poster boards in unsteady arms, and talking to their
friends about the mysteries of basic arithmetic.
when the teacher finished reading the story, the room was filled with tears. parents were dismissed,
and as i lovingly teased my daughter by tugging her ear, the other parents chatted about how much they
enjoy discussing school subjects with their children. one father, in particular, turned to his daughter
and said, "i love how you talk about literature."
this dream made me wake up with such a desperate cry. the dad in the story, it was my dad. i've been missing him
so much lately, and i miss our long car conversations about everything under the sun. and how, when i was little,
he never simply handed me the answer.
outdoor backyard party. all the women in my family are young girls again, myself included. i see myself as an adult interacting with the girls, seeing them play with balloons and rubber balls. i look like my mother, and i might be my mother. everything was pink and red.
DEAR DREAMS,
you are the only thing that that matters. you are my hope and i live for and in you. you are rawness
and wildness, the colours, the scents, passion, events appearing. you are the things i live for. please take me over.
dreams cause the vision world to break loose our consciousness.
dreams by themselves aren't enough to destroy the blanket of dullness. the dreams we allow to destroy us cause us
to be visionaries/see the vision world.
every day a sharp tool, a powerful destroyer, is necessary to cut away dullness, lobotomy, buzzing, belief in human
beings, stagnancy, images, and accumulation.as soon as we stop believing
in human beings, rather know we are dogs and trees, we'll start to be happy.
once we've gotten a glimpse of the vision world (notice here how the conventional language obscures:
WE as if somebodies are the centre of activity SEE what is the
centre of activity: pure VISION. actually, the VISION creates US. is anything true?).
once we have gotten a glimpse of the vision world, we must be
careful not to think the vision world is us. we must go further and go crazier.
from
blood and guts in high school by kathy acker