12/19/2022
We sow seeds. Some of them grow, some don’t. Some bloom into flowers, beautiful but impermanent. And some sprout into sturdy, solid trees, meant to last for decades.
I want to have lazy Sunday plans, roll out of bed with someone and then decide what to do together. Only worried about about what time the movie is or how long the brunch line.
I want to cry in a movie with someone I love.
We think of ourselves, our goals, as climbing mountains. The fallacy of this is there are always taller mountains to climb, we must always keep moving. Our progress, then, is more like the ocean, or any body of water, in its constant movement slowly but surely eroding the rock benath it, creating new shapes and softening old.
(I am allowed to talk in a pretensious way, a ‘male’ way/breifly i wonder, what will I amount to?/the anxiety overtakes me for a second)
01/25/2023
what makes something cinematic…
and here i begin to doubt my own words
they falter because i stop believing in them as i create them
what make something cinematic is the artful manipulation of coincidence. the kind that rarely happens in real life and when it does, it feels magical. you feel as though you’ve seen something you should not have. a peak behind some universal curtain
“what follows is an act of female imagination” – Women Talking
we wrest the narrative from our attackers hands
always ready
what am i hoping to no longer be in pain for? what fear fuels me now?
two facets:
a contradiction, a paradox: to enjoy the moment, you must release the desire to create a perfect one
how do we deal with our changing opinions of others? am I still hedging against my fear of being hurt
I speak in generalities now, specifics elude me. so much fear surrounds them. baseless fear, I believe.
For your consideration: a list of things I’m doing wrong
one: I did not respond to your texts (you?)
two: I didn’t tell you why I will never respond to your texts
three: ?
?
I’m not nearly polite enough
I told you you were wrong when you were in charged
i don’t give you the benefit of doubt when you belittle me
I didn’t tell you you were wrong nearly enough
she ended up marrying a firefighter. Eventually, she threw everything he owned out on the lawn and burned the things he cared about the most. She burned each item methodically, carefully containing the flames from the flourishing rose bushes and tomato plants. She burned his shirts first. The trading cards he kept between plastic in pristine conditon. The couch he used to eat his dinner on in lieu of a dining table.
marriage doesn’t change people, despite popular belief. it entrenches them, validates them, enables them. and there are many ways to hurt someone in a marriage.
You know, I made two cups of coffee this morning and neither turned out right. They were just…bitter. And on the way to work, I went to merge lanes, and the guy, some blue fucking Nissan, he wouldn’t let me in, he fucking honked at me. So yeah, I guess I’m just bitter. I don’t even remember why. I think I just woke up that way. But like, people like coffee, even though it’s bitter. Even when it’s made right, it’s bitter. But people still like it. it’s just the way it is.
Though the 4th floor of the psychiatric hospital was permeated with glass door and floor-to-ceiling windows, this particular room was primarily lit with a series of flourescent tubes, so when those harsh humming lights were turned off, the room was actually very poorly lit.
It was supposed to be lit at 3:16pm on Friday, April 28th, there was supposed to be an individual psychotherpay session. It had been requested for, perscribed, scheduled, all the boxes had been ticked. But at 3:16 on Friday, April 28th, room 421b was dark and empty except for the patient.
It’s apalling how badly most people handle encountering someone in distress. This same patient had curled in a fetal position on the floor of her room, had cried until she passed out from dehydration. All she had to show for it was timid platitudes, a 60 piece puzzle, and couple “Chicken Soup of the Soul” books. It is especially shocking to find this kind of timidy in a place meant for helping people in distress.
The Landmark Indepenent Theatre was falling apart long before the world was. As we were all adjusting to new computer screens in shiny new cars that felt more like spaceships, cupholders were falling off seat arms, the popcorn kettle squeaked ominously, an HVAC drip plagued theatere 3, the shelf in the freezer where the pretzles were kept tilted precariously, joints permenantly unmoored, and the concessions counter was barely temperature controlled at the best of times.
At that point, the lake was already rapidly drying, the arsenic slowly seaping into our air supply. But we were still humming along, streaming our TV shows that refused to pay writers and absorbed in our smartphones full of blood-soaked rare-earth minerals, either ignorant of the end of the world or hoping, naively that it would not catch up to us for a few more years.
An apocalypse is not so much and “end of the world.” instead its more of an ending of a certain civilization, structures and systems we rely on heavily collapse and alternatives must be found.
She sits across from me, studying her straw as if realizing for the first time that someone has chewed on it. She looks back up at me.
“She wants to tell you something, but she can’t”
“Why not?” I ask, gritting my teeth against another cryptic answer.
“Because she doesn’t know how”
I looked down at the greasy linoleum table and shook my head. She shook her head too letting out a soft laugh.
“Why do you care so much about all this anyway?”
“Why do I care? I care because people of your same description have been popping up all over, first just the city, then the state, now the whole fucking country.”
She scoffs.
“Come on, why do you really care?”
Nihilistic Porcupine 