i kept a livejournal for a number of years before i started this blog. the quality of the writing i put in there was sometimes often better than the quality of the papers i was turning in during the same period in my life. some of my best journal writing is done in a sleep-deprived state at 4 in the morning when i have a hundred and fifty things on my mind and a 15 page paper that i havent started yet due in 6 hours. unfortunately, i dont write papers anymore and i rarely see 4am, so its difficult for me to really recapture the creative momentum that that particular situation drives. i do still have all those old posts though, and so i thought it might be kinda cool to (revise and) re-post some of those entries. who knows, maybe it will even get some of my creativity neurons firing again…
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Red light. Green Light. Go.
Originally Posted Friday, 24 September, 2004
can you see me? in the darkness i am sitting on the cement stairs in front of the house talking on my cell phone. its late in the night and late in the summer. i keep my voice low in an effort to falsely present myself as calm and in control and, as far as i can tell, it’s working. it’s a power struggle. it always has been. am i winning?
five years earlier and im watching the late afternoon sunlight dancing through the trees as the car speeds down seminary avenue. my head rests against the window and every now and then the car will hit a bump and the side of my head will smack into the glass. my mother glances at me.
“youre going to give yourself a concussion if you keep that up.”
“no, i wont. i cant even feel it.”
im somewhere off in the distance, watching the world whiz by in a blur of greens and yellows and im wondering what speed we are traveling at and if i open the door right now and jump out what are the chances id survive. i wouldnt want to survive. is it worth the risk? just to feel the pain, just to feel something.
regressing even further i am sitting in a classroom surrounded by white cinderblock walls decorated with world maps and brightly colored construction paper cut-outs. the teacher is a plain looking woman with a plain sounding voice. shes talking about the world trade situation but im not listening. im thinking about how to get out of this place. i can feel my hands shaking–i am alone and i am scared and no one here knows me and no one here wants to and the room is closing in and i need to get out and why is she staring at me and….then i realize she has called on me. i was somewhere else. anywhere else. and i cant respond and i dont know what to say and now theyre all laughing at me.
back into the almost-present. for the last three years i have had the same college roommate. our room is good for a laugh. our wall decorations coordinate and our furniture is set up the same so that one side of the room almost mirrors the other. but theres a clear line down the middle of the room. her side is disorganized and crazy — she seems to live best with it like that, its her style. i keep mine organized and clean, i used to make the bed every morning when i had the time. i like to keep my living space orderly, its one thing in my life i have complete control over. when the world around me starts to look confusing, i remember that it really is.
you cant see me. youre three hours away and in a different world. your world is black and white and full of clean edges and discernible boundaries. mine is a blur a million shades of grey and miles and miles of oceans so deep and so dark that even if you spent a lifetime in them you could never discover all their secrets. we are having and argument, and its nothing more than an error in communication but, youre blaming me. it is my fault, it is my error. im getting frustrated with you; i want to make you understand what it is im trying to say but while im talking you are talking over me and telling me that im wrong and that im not listening and then youre raising your voice and im getting confused and even my thoughts are becoming muffled by my own inconsistencies and i can hear children laughing at me because i cant seem to figure out what it is im supposed to be saying and i can feel the potholes beneath us and my head bumping into the glass of a car window and suddenly im looking for a way out, an escape of some sort–a way to feel anything but what im feeling right now…
its a snapping noise. you can hear it if you listen hard enough. its the same sound that a glow-stick makes when you crack it to start the chemical reaction that causes it to glow late at night on a beach in your childhood with your brother running at your side and your dad watching from behind with a smile on his face. in one instant there is a distinct change and once the reaction is started you cant reverse it. i heard the snap. and then i heard the click of my cell phone as i flipped it closed, ending the conversation abruptly. you cant change your past and you cant heal the inevitable scars it has left you with. but you can control where you let it take you in the future.
this is not a power struggle. this is my life.
