Lying
On the beach
In the sun
Wearing clothes
Because it’s windy
And a little cold
I squint
At the sun
Through the eyelashes
Of my one
Open eye
At a point
Where the light
Intermingles
With the threads
Of the jacket sleeve
On my forearm
Lain across
My forehead
Protecting
My face
From sunburn
Originally written: April 20, 2021 @ 2:08pm
I bring the full weight of my consciousness to bear on my own existence in moments of what would otherwise be boredom when I should really be meditating but my Western engine mind just can’t stop revving, solving problems until they are all solved and then creating new problems to solve, like sudoku and crossword puzzles.
Originally written: April 30, 2021 @ 11:11 a.m.
I look at myself too long in the mirror and start to have an identity crisis. But it’s really just like anything else. I read the same word over and over and forget its meaning. I eat the same food over and over and forget its taste. I hear the same noise over and over and it starts to sound like silence.
But with my own face, it’s just slightly different, because when my own face starts to look like nothing, then I start to wonder, who am I? Maybe I identify too much with my physical form. Anyway, all of this is just to remind me that I really shouldn’t be looking at myself in a mirror for longer than ten or fifteen seconds at a time.
Originally written: April 30, 2021 @ 10:59 a.m.
The hard words are too hard. They are too specific. How can you really mean what you say when you are using them? Maybe I say this just because I’ve never read a dictionary cover to cover. Maybe the exactness is necessary in some cases. But do we really experience life so specific, exact, and precise? I am happy and that is it. I don’t unpack it any further than that. Especially not in the moment. In the moment, I usually have no words at all. It just is what it is and I am in it and that is it. This relates to what I have said before about there being one word to describe everything. What do we gain by being more exact with our words? One of the experiences that I have tried to describe over and over as a writer is the experience of euphoria. And there I go, using the word “euphoria.” Breaking my own rule already. What is it then? What am I trying to describe? Maybe the exactness is necessary. But I just can’t help feeling that more is the wrong direction. If I could just sit with you and hold your hand and not say a word that might mean more to you than a thousand written pages.
Why do I write at all? Why do I not just go out and live if there is more communication in the wordless moment? Maybe because I am polyamorous and I want to commune with many instead of just one in one moment. Maybe because I want to live on in some form after I die. Maybe because words are what I was taught in school and I am still breaking out of this way of interpreting the world. Maybe I don’t know enough of the specific words to say that they are not good. Maybe I need to go further in the direction of more before I can say that less is the way.
Originally written: April 15, 2021 @ 10:02 a.m.
My grandpa is taping the baseboards in the hallway, preparing to paint the walls. I am making breakfast in the kitchen. He makes a noise, like a grunt. Something like ugh or grr.
I hear him make the noise and ask, loud enough for him to hear me in the hallway, “Are you alright?”
He says, “Oh yeah, I just have to make noises every once in a while.”
I laugh and ask, “Just a reminder to yourself that you’re still there?”
He says, “Oh no, I know I’m still here. I can feel it.”
I laugh again.
He is referring to the pain he feels in his joints, I think.
Originally written: April 7, 2021 @ 9:40 a.m.
I wonder about the limits of being yourself. They say you have to play by the rules before you can break them. But they also say that just being yourself is the key to success. How much of myself is really me? Not much, I think. Unless, of course, all that we mean by “being yourself” is that you just stood there and let it all happen to you. Well, then everyone would be themselves by default. There’s no way to escape it. From whence does one’s self surge up? I am vaguely remembering Sartre’s essay on existentialism. How can the seed of yourself fall on anything but fertile soil? But then who put the soil down and who pulled you out of their seed bag and dropped you there? And these questions go on ad infinitum. So there is really only one true individual, and they are either the chicken or the egg. But we’re not talking about just any old chicken here. We’re talking about the Chicken with a capital ‘C.’ Or the egg with all the Alpha and Omega-3s you could ever ask for.
But I’m losing my head. Back to being yourself. Let’s depart from the true philosophy of the matter just for a moment and talk in practical terms. I think we can agree there are some actions that can be taken or decisions that can be made by an individual which seem to be willed or otherwise brought about by their own individual selves. In other words, we would not say of said actions or decisions that they were a result of the individual just following the rules or doing what everyone else is doing. In some way or another, an individual is capable of really doing something on their own. Now, I don’t think this claim really holds weight philosophically, especially for determinists, but let’s just hold it as an assumption for now.
Maybe it is an aesthetic argument. Because what I really want to convey is the sense of beauty that I get when I see someone who appears to be beating their own path. And I don’t think we get very many of these. Because the default is to walk the trail already traveled. Before you can even think for yourself, you’re already on that trail. And, if we’re subscribing to determinism, then the inclination to step off the trail might also be determined, which is why this is not an ethical argument. It is not good or bad to be on the trodden trail. But, oh, the aesthetics of the young girl in the dress running off into the tall grass and away from everyone else—oh, I want to chase that girl! I want to finally catch her in a glade and ask her all the questions that the travelers on the trodden trail could not answer for me. Why did you run? Where are you going? What have you found so far? Will you go back? Why? Or why not?
But how beautiful will her answers be? And herein lies the heart of the matter. Because it is beautiful to watch her run away—this much, I can understand. But how alien will she become? And how quickly? See, this is what I mean by the limits of being yourself. Because on the trodden trail, we can all understand each other. We have had relatively similar experiences, we speak the same language, we know the same people—we hold things in common; most importantly, in this context, our methods of communication. This is important for the aesthetic argument because how can something be beautiful if I cannot understand it? Now, don’t rebut too fast. I am not talking about complete understanding. A little bit of the unknown can be tantalizing. But this is different. I am talking here about not even a beginning of understanding. Something so alien that you can do nothing but stand there and gawk. Maybe there is some awe in the gawking. But if there is awe, then there must be some starting foothold into which your understanding has stepped. Otherwise, it is only hollow-minded gawking as your mind tries but fails to fit the experience into an existing neural pathway that isn’t there. This is the limit of being yourself that I speak of. It is the ultimate outer limit, so we now have a scale. The minimum of being yourself is the cookie-cutter human on the trodden trail. The maximum of being yourself is the girl that runs off into the forest who turns out to be a totally non-human alien.
Now, what does this mean for an artist? I think it comes down to appetite for the risk of being an alien. How far out are you willing to venture in order to find something new?
Now I have a better sense of why my mom got so upset when one of my siblings or I said that we didn’t like the dinner that she made for us.
As I cooked chili today, I found myself making decisions on my own and not really following the recipe. I didn’t measure anything. I added one cup of diced tomatoes instead of two. I added corn even though the recipe didn’t call for it. I was enjoying the creativity and I found myself thinking, “I hope this tastes good.”
Since I changed the recipe, it became my chili. If it doesn’t turn out well, it’s not the recipe’s fault; it’s my own fault. The chili is still simmering in the dutch oven on the stovetop in the kitchen. I don’t have any children to tell me how it tastes, but I hope my girlfriend likes it.
I do not feel dreadfully the need to conform. I write “dreadful.” You read this and think to yourself, ah, it’s not so bad! “Look here,” you might say to me, “here I am conforming, and it’s really not that bad. It certainly isn’t dreadful.” I would respond, “But you are past the worst of it.”
Of course, to already be conforming is not so bad. But when was the last time you walked into the woods alone? When was the last time you didn’t agree? When was the last time you were hungry? In how many small ways did you, at first, think differently? And then, not all at once, but over time, your individual opinions slowly acquiesced and joined the general consensus.
See, it is a subtle dread. You will not have felt it if you have gone slowly over time. Like the criminal in his cell, awaiting the gallows. But the hangman is patient and cunning. Each night he comes to the criminal’s cell and asks, “Will you be ready in the morning?” And each night, the criminal says, “No, please, one more day.” Until one night, the hangman takes a different approach with the criminal. He says, “You know, I think you have learned your lesson. How about if we make a deal? Instead of hanging for your crimes, how would you like to serve as the hangman in my place?” How might the criminal’s view of the hangman’s position have changed, while he faced the prospect of his own hanging?
Which is the worst? To hang, to spend all your days in a cell, or to become the hangman? It is a trick question. You were never going to hang. The death penalty has been abolished. Exile is the worst that can happen to you. So the question becomes: how much do you fear exile?
What’s it like
In that moment
I wonder
When you die
Without any time
To think
About your life
And losing it
All at once
Except
For a split second
I try
To imagine
But can’t possibly
Fathom
What seems to be
Such a loss
To me
Still
Having not yet
Completely
Disidentified
With my ego
April 27, 2021 at 06:28PM
I look at someone
Walking by
On the sidewalk
As we pass
One another
And I wonder
Why
They are looking
Back at me
So funny
Until I remember
I have not showered
Or combed my hair
Do I contradict
Myself too often?
Does the name
That you used to call me
No longer apply?
Did I not stay
In the same place
For long enough
To be someone?
Did the waves
Wash away
What I wrote
In the sand?
Where can I possibly be
If not right where
You say that I am?
How can I possibly
Gain identity
All by myself?
Who will call me
By my true name?
I am searching for You.
I carry with me
Force
When I write
Walking
To the bathroom
For a break
I bump
The door frame
With my hip bone
And almost
Knock
The house down
You’re not living just repeat, repeat, repeat. You have to shake it up to live again. Find newness to force yourself back into survival mode. Living the same groundhog’s day digs the trench too deep. Eventually it gets so deep that you look up along the canyon walls and you have no energy left to climb out, so you say to yourself, “Well, I guess this is just my canyon.” And then you keep on digging deeper. But there’s no light down there! No other creatures to keep you company. Back up on the surface you can skim along. Sure, you might wonder about the core. You might wonder, what’s down there? As you hop and skip over and across other canyons. You look down and see the others so deep down there and you think, maybe I should stay put and cut my own canyon. But don’t do it! Not until you’re good and ready to die.
I am dying all the time already. I am letting it happen now rather than later. I wait for something small to end and then I think about what it will be like when it all ends. Something gets taken away from me and I think about what it will be like when it all gets taken away.
I eat the last cookie in the cookie jar and think of what it will be like to draw my last breath. I lose feeling in the leg that I had crossed over my other leg for too long and think of what it will be like to no longer be in my body. I try to trick myself into believing before I go to bed at night that I won’t wake up in the morning.
I do not know the best way to die. Is it better to pretend that it will never happen and then take the shock all at once when it does? Maybe I’ll die in a sudden accident and I won’t even know. But just in case it happens slow, I feel like I should practice.
You have to be loosey-goosey
Let it go
If you’re going to throw it all
Against the wall
And see what sticks
You can’t keep it all
Because it’s not all good
Can’t all be good
Even if only in relation
To the rest
Some will be bad
So don’t grow too attached
To your babies
You’ll only get to keep
A few
You are so you
As I look at you
At the features of your face
Which seem to match
The words that you are saying
It all goes together
Like a character in a movie
Unless you are faking it
Then you are really
Quite a good actress
But I do not
Think that this is possible
For you to pretend
To be someone else
And thereby escape
From being yourself
For even if pretending
To be yourself
Then that would just mean
That you are a pretender
And that’s just what you are
But you are not
You are different
Like everyone else is pretending
They’re all pretenders
And you’re the only one
Who is really yourself
Everything is repeated
Everything is repeated
Everything is repeated
The newspaper headlines
The movie plot lines
The causes of death
The reasons for war
The days and the nights
The sun rising
The sun setting
Falling in love
Falling out of love
Getting hungry
Being satisfied
Succeeding
Failing
Except for dying
That’s the only
New thing left
I was sitting on the back porch having lunch with my grandparents. My grandma and grandpa were sitting in chairs next to each other, across the table from me.
It was the day after Easter. The buds of the first leaves were starting to show on the trees in the backyard.
“Those are farm trees, the ones that grow the hedge apples,” my grandma said.
“I have a list that’s 17 pages long, and you know what …” and I already knew by the tone of his voice that there was a characteristic grandpa-joke coming, “It’s single-spaced!”
“Hah!” He laughed like he always did.
“I’ve got to change the oil in the car,” said grandpa.
“That should be at the top of the list,” said grandma.
“I know it. And I’ve got to put another coat of paint on the door,” said grandpa.
“Well that should be toward the bottom of the list,” said grandma.
“Well, no, it’s at the top of my list,” said grandpa.
“The sun is starting to come over the house now,” said grandma.
“I’m gonna go get the umbrella,” said grandpa. And off he went.
When they find me, when I make it, when I get lucky—they’ll box me in right then and there. So maybe it won’t be so lucky. Maybe I never want to be found. They’ll take me as I am, and then thereafter, I’ll have to work very hard to break out and become anything else. I might even have to work harder than I did to become something in the first place. Because to become something in the first place is just that—become it, and that’s it. But to become something else when you are something already requires an extra step—you must first break free of what you are already, and only then can you start to become something else. At first, I thought only of the social problem: what “they” will call you, what “they” will say you are. But the other, more subtle, and probably more dangerous part is what I call myself and what I say that I am. Because then I will build up an internal identity for myself and start to behave that way, just the same as society would build up an identity for me externally. And I think this matters for my writing. Because I don’t want to be boxed in. I don’t want to write just one way, from just one perspective. I want to write it all. And, of course, I know that I can’t. But I still want to try to get as much of it down as I can. And in order to do that, it seems that I need to stay loose and alone, being nothing more than a vessel through which experiences can pass and in their passing be quickly recorded before they shoot out the other end. I needn’t retain any of their details as parts of my own identity. I need only to study them like a scientist, let my senses record their findings, and then avoid them like snakes in the grass.