We all have these terrible depths inside of us. They take on everchanging appearances: one enormous hollow cavern, a network of claustrophobic black tunnels, a hole with a narrow entrance that continues down into infinity. And sometimes, if we lose sight of ourselves, the entryway to them disappears entirely. And we think it's gone.
Everything can be made more complicated than it needs to be. Two extraordinarily complicated people can develop exponentially complicated situations and feelings, thoughts and emotions. The weight of these is a hundred times that of lead. The struggles and turmoil born of such rare entities compound on each other and engulf them. The amount of strength required is staggering.
I had such a difficult time coming into the real world. I grew up on the internet. In real life, I was utterly unsure of myself, grasping at any stray bit of pride I could gain in pursuing the art of besting other people at whatever they thought they were good at. I was physically weak and awkward, much as I am sure he was at that age. I was very bitter and lonely with Taisa so far away. I pushed at everyone, content to scowl and bare my teeth alone in my room, typing furiously for years. I didn't know what it meant to be happy. I didn't know what it felt like to be content, or to have gained something you had been tearing after for a third of your life.
And on a Friday, he is there in my driveway and that hateful, black thing that I had inside me no longer had a place. We had won. We were together. So it retreated back inside me, and I ran head-long through all sorts of strange situations and circumstances, nothing I knew how to handle, and in the bliss of being granted the freedom of adulthood, I went after any whim, any feeling, any thought. It was easy to do so, as I had no concept of consequences or reactions. I was so smart, and so stupid. How could he had loved me then, I have no idea.
The truth is I never had sight of my real life self to begin with. I knew so much about everything and everyone and so little about who I was. I never knew how to express myself offline with any sort of accuracy. I didn't like how things were going, or how he was treating me? Instead of "The least you can do is be civil while we're trying to work this out" I said "I'm leaving". He says something I don't like hearing? Instead of "Explain" I say "I'm leaving". He beats me at something? Instead of "I'll do better next time" I hit him.
I did nothing but destructive things and flailed in all directions, attempting to gain ground somewhere and have something to identify my real life self by. I harbored a feeling that something was wrong, something needed to change perhaps but never knew what or how or why, completely oblivious to how it could very well have been my own doing.
The warning signs were all there. I stopped writing in every capacity. I stopped waxing philosophical. Our interactions changed drastically from what they had been on the internet. My entire view changed, I had gone from in total control to lacking even the understanding of what control would be in such alien landscapes and interactions. I had regressed from adult to child.
Those times are over. That regression of myself I am no longer. I am done with this place. I am done being brown.
It is time to sing.
11.20.2007
11.11.2007
Acceptance letter ahoy! I am overjoyed. :)
I went today for a bit and watched Frank Doran give a demonstration at the Aikido dojo we study at. He's very fluid, very exact, able to pay acute attention to where the weight is going and how to make sure he's throwing gently but firmly. I can only hope to be so graceful at his age.
New fucking song locked into my brain. I don't know what it is with me, I get these songs imprinted into my being, just the way they... feel in my ears... so difficult to explain but I'll try.
When I was dancing for years, it was never important what I was dancing to, just that I could feel the rhythm and beat in the core of me so I didn't have to focus on the music and could push my concentration into my muscles. Now, whenever I stumble across a song that has an intriguing beat, I absorb it into me and it sticks there, my heartbeat matches it sometimes (doubled up if it's too slow, but still, how disturbing to realize your heart is thumping in time). It influences how I move, how fast I'm thinking, and quick as it happened it leaves after a few days or a week. I've never tried to stop it because I never wanted to. It's OCD. A tick inside some part of my brain that latches onto a rhythm and loops it and loops it and loops it and the only way to satisfy the feeling like something's missing is to listen to it over and over and over agh.
It drives me crazy sometimes. I've ruined certain songs for myself for some months afterward. I've been better about it lately though. Able to control it to some extent, in that I can stop myself from listening to it and move on for some time before going back to it once or thrice. I hope it stays this way.
---
I've been leaving the lyrics out lately. They don't really matter much, mostly breaks between lines of thought. Or there to make a point about how I was feeling at that moment, to give future me a reminder in case I forgot (unlikely!).
Speaking of memorizing everything, I'm beginning to get curious as to the hows and the whys.
Why do I remember so much? I don't try. Really. When I try to specifically assign things to memory, I use mnemonics, which I don't particularly practice often because I usually remember what I'm trying to memorize anyway. Everything imprints itself, or my brain just sucks it up (all these references to spongebraining), and there I have it. When I forget things, it doesn't bother me much. I'm ok with, say, the fact that I don't remember the names of most of my teachers. I wonder why some of the information gets saved where other information doesn't.
Memory is such a funny thing to me. Fascinating, and like feelings, beyond my control. I have no control over what I commit to long-term memory if I am not trying to memorize it. I can tell you why I might have remembered something, but for all of the memories that contain nothing special, no reason can be discerned. They are simply part of me now.
And I can't "let go" of these because I don't know how to erase things from my memory. Is such a thing even possible? Certainly not outwardly verifiable; no one knows what I do and don't remember/forget. If I can actively pick what's assigned to memory, why can't I actively pick what's erased/lost/obscured?
Is that even... possible? Have I ever tried before? I'm sure everyone is noting the irony of asking myself that question, yes? ;)
My theories on how memory works still have yet to be verified or proven to my knowledge. (Someday I should probably write them down.) But I'll get hold of more information than I ever wanted to know (impossible) when I'm in school again.
I went today for a bit and watched Frank Doran give a demonstration at the Aikido dojo we study at. He's very fluid, very exact, able to pay acute attention to where the weight is going and how to make sure he's throwing gently but firmly. I can only hope to be so graceful at his age.
New fucking song locked into my brain. I don't know what it is with me, I get these songs imprinted into my being, just the way they... feel in my ears... so difficult to explain but I'll try.
When I was dancing for years, it was never important what I was dancing to, just that I could feel the rhythm and beat in the core of me so I didn't have to focus on the music and could push my concentration into my muscles. Now, whenever I stumble across a song that has an intriguing beat, I absorb it into me and it sticks there, my heartbeat matches it sometimes (doubled up if it's too slow, but still, how disturbing to realize your heart is thumping in time). It influences how I move, how fast I'm thinking, and quick as it happened it leaves after a few days or a week. I've never tried to stop it because I never wanted to. It's OCD. A tick inside some part of my brain that latches onto a rhythm and loops it and loops it and loops it and the only way to satisfy the feeling like something's missing is to listen to it over and over and over agh.
It drives me crazy sometimes. I've ruined certain songs for myself for some months afterward. I've been better about it lately though. Able to control it to some extent, in that I can stop myself from listening to it and move on for some time before going back to it once or thrice. I hope it stays this way.
---
I've been leaving the lyrics out lately. They don't really matter much, mostly breaks between lines of thought. Or there to make a point about how I was feeling at that moment, to give future me a reminder in case I forgot (unlikely!).
Speaking of memorizing everything, I'm beginning to get curious as to the hows and the whys.
Why do I remember so much? I don't try. Really. When I try to specifically assign things to memory, I use mnemonics, which I don't particularly practice often because I usually remember what I'm trying to memorize anyway. Everything imprints itself, or my brain just sucks it up (all these references to spongebraining), and there I have it. When I forget things, it doesn't bother me much. I'm ok with, say, the fact that I don't remember the names of most of my teachers. I wonder why some of the information gets saved where other information doesn't.
Memory is such a funny thing to me. Fascinating, and like feelings, beyond my control. I have no control over what I commit to long-term memory if I am not trying to memorize it. I can tell you why I might have remembered something, but for all of the memories that contain nothing special, no reason can be discerned. They are simply part of me now.
And I can't "let go" of these because I don't know how to erase things from my memory. Is such a thing even possible? Certainly not outwardly verifiable; no one knows what I do and don't remember/forget. If I can actively pick what's assigned to memory, why can't I actively pick what's erased/lost/obscured?
Is that even... possible? Have I ever tried before? I'm sure everyone is noting the irony of asking myself that question, yes? ;)
My theories on how memory works still have yet to be verified or proven to my knowledge. (Someday I should probably write them down.) But I'll get hold of more information than I ever wanted to know (impossible) when I'm in school again.
11.09.2007
11.07.2007
I have all of these thoughts, these muscle memories (brain memories?) that I know are inside of me somewhere. I keep stretching for them physically, mentally, but most of them seem so unobtainable now.
I have a separate story floating inside of me like driftwood, looking for a place to beach itself but no sand or shore to be found. It is a sad story. It is a story that breaks my heart because it is my story. But it is also the story of so many others who have lost circumstances they fell in love with. Who are trying to hold onto them, even if it's no good to do so.
I can feel them as if they were yesterday. A map of points in time exists inside me. (Alas, the map is not the territory.) And these points have no affixed location, only the most general of placements based upon each other. I have such vivid physical and mental memories of all of these different places and times inside me. I don't even need to close my eyes to go to these points, wandering through and weaving around each other. I can feel myself at the computer, blanket wrapped around me, pounding my love out on the keys before me, shredding my heart to pieces and rendering it electronic, sending it to him packet by packet, piece by piece.
Age does not change this feeling. Time does not change this feeling.
It was living inside of me all along. I wouldn't let myself feel it. Kept it like a quarantined sickness inside of me.
I would lay in my room on my bed, on that same down comforter we sleep with now and whisper to him over the phone in the blue glow of my room. Staying up with him for hours and hours and hours till my eyes felt like they were bleeding, falling asleep over the keys at times, always with thoughts of him flooding my head. Wake up late, sprint to the bus, wander the halls of the school that I resented, scribble in my spiral words of love, words of hate, words of curiosity. I felt like I could carry him around with me through my day, thinking about our conversations, our private moments, the dirty things he'd say, all of the furious typing back and forth trying to dig to the bottom of a philosophical problem.
No more.
Sequestered in my room with my Things That I Do (my violin, my drawings, my Japanese, my writing as always and forever), the computer I still cannot let go of, the same computer I would stay up so late with him on. Him with his things and his people and his friends, things that are not me.
The conversations he has with others that we used to have. That we stopped having long ago.
I am limited. He says.
Reminding me that I am not her.
"I just thought... you were my Valkyrie. I guess not."
(Those words still ring in my ears after three years.)
I am.
I am.
I can feel it, the muscle memories, the mental memories. I just can't reach them yet.
It's in me. I know it.
Every time I stop to think how he is sitting at his own desk underneath me, tucked into his room, I am shocked that he's here. Shocked that so much time has passed when I feel timeless. And each recurrence I have that bubbles up to my consciousness, I get the urge to touch him, kiss him, make sure he's real and that I have not been dreaming one of my intricate dreams. And I see his face and his broad shoulders and his slender fingers and he is beautiful as he has always been. His words are food for my mind. I have been trying and try and will try for my entire life to find the words for this experience.
It's just one of those qualia that is mine and mine alone. Mine to keep. To savor.
So because of this, I have to write my sad story, my heart-breaking story. It might get me that much closer to being able to explain the unexplainable.
I am in love with the violin, and chastise myself whenever I make it sound less beautiful than it is capable of. Like I do to myself with everything else. No, not that. Not that either. No, start over again.
Make it sing.
And when it does sing, a series of a few notes here and there, I can feel the harmony, tangible under my skin. Resonating through my jaw to my joints, my skull, my brain absorbing the waves. Spongebrain soaking it in and giving it a point. Giving all these moments points inside my memory palace.
He will be gone this weekend, I guess. (Details are lost to me, he does not supply and I do not ask. It pains me in a way I don't want it to.)
A weekend spent in my memory palace?
We'll see.
I have a separate story floating inside of me like driftwood, looking for a place to beach itself but no sand or shore to be found. It is a sad story. It is a story that breaks my heart because it is my story. But it is also the story of so many others who have lost circumstances they fell in love with. Who are trying to hold onto them, even if it's no good to do so.
I can feel them as if they were yesterday. A map of points in time exists inside me. (Alas, the map is not the territory.) And these points have no affixed location, only the most general of placements based upon each other. I have such vivid physical and mental memories of all of these different places and times inside me. I don't even need to close my eyes to go to these points, wandering through and weaving around each other. I can feel myself at the computer, blanket wrapped around me, pounding my love out on the keys before me, shredding my heart to pieces and rendering it electronic, sending it to him packet by packet, piece by piece.
Age does not change this feeling. Time does not change this feeling.
It was living inside of me all along. I wouldn't let myself feel it. Kept it like a quarantined sickness inside of me.
I would lay in my room on my bed, on that same down comforter we sleep with now and whisper to him over the phone in the blue glow of my room. Staying up with him for hours and hours and hours till my eyes felt like they were bleeding, falling asleep over the keys at times, always with thoughts of him flooding my head. Wake up late, sprint to the bus, wander the halls of the school that I resented, scribble in my spiral words of love, words of hate, words of curiosity. I felt like I could carry him around with me through my day, thinking about our conversations, our private moments, the dirty things he'd say, all of the furious typing back and forth trying to dig to the bottom of a philosophical problem.
No more.
Sequestered in my room with my Things That I Do (my violin, my drawings, my Japanese, my writing as always and forever), the computer I still cannot let go of, the same computer I would stay up so late with him on. Him with his things and his people and his friends, things that are not me.
The conversations he has with others that we used to have. That we stopped having long ago.
I am limited. He says.
Reminding me that I am not her.
"I just thought... you were my Valkyrie. I guess not."
(Those words still ring in my ears after three years.)
I am.
I am.
I can feel it, the muscle memories, the mental memories. I just can't reach them yet.
It's in me. I know it.
Every time I stop to think how he is sitting at his own desk underneath me, tucked into his room, I am shocked that he's here. Shocked that so much time has passed when I feel timeless. And each recurrence I have that bubbles up to my consciousness, I get the urge to touch him, kiss him, make sure he's real and that I have not been dreaming one of my intricate dreams. And I see his face and his broad shoulders and his slender fingers and he is beautiful as he has always been. His words are food for my mind. I have been trying and try and will try for my entire life to find the words for this experience.
It's just one of those qualia that is mine and mine alone. Mine to keep. To savor.
So because of this, I have to write my sad story, my heart-breaking story. It might get me that much closer to being able to explain the unexplainable.
I am in love with the violin, and chastise myself whenever I make it sound less beautiful than it is capable of. Like I do to myself with everything else. No, not that. Not that either. No, start over again.
Make it sing.
And when it does sing, a series of a few notes here and there, I can feel the harmony, tangible under my skin. Resonating through my jaw to my joints, my skull, my brain absorbing the waves. Spongebrain soaking it in and giving it a point. Giving all these moments points inside my memory palace.
He will be gone this weekend, I guess. (Details are lost to me, he does not supply and I do not ask. It pains me in a way I don't want it to.)
A weekend spent in my memory palace?
We'll see.
11.05.2007
Missy, out of nowhere, messages me at 8pm at night while I'm out with Conrad and Sarah on our way to the Happy to Be Alive Party.
So, naturally curious, I go and look her up on Facebook and, uh, manipulate the settings so I can view her profile.
Wow.
She's:
+ Pansexual
+ Married (?)
+ Graduated GRCC
+ Going to WWU as a junior
+ Chopped her precious hair off into a pixie cut
+ Finally being herself
I'm really happy for her. She's probably sorting herself out proper now, like I am, like Jade is. We're all sorting out.
I can't wait to talk to her when she's around next. :3
So, naturally curious, I go and look her up on Facebook and, uh, manipulate the settings so I can view her profile.
Wow.
She's:
+ Pansexual
+ Married (?)
+ Graduated GRCC
+ Going to WWU as a junior
+ Chopped her precious hair off into a pixie cut
+ Finally being herself
I'm really happy for her. She's probably sorting herself out proper now, like I am, like Jade is. We're all sorting out.
I can't wait to talk to her when she's around next. :3
11.02.2007
Words words words words words surrounded by words in love with words loving words ugly words all kinds of words words words sloshing around in my skull words to fill my mouth words to fill his mind words to keep me going keep the momentum keep the words coming words pouring words gushing raining seeping out through every orifice every inch of me covered in words words words.
Catching up I'm catching up coming up to speed up to snuff up to something so big so vast so profound my hand can't keep up with my brain and the pen is leaking words all over the lines filling the pages filling the spaces smothering the white in black covering the blankness up in words words words.
Catching up I'm catching up coming up to speed up to snuff up to something so big so vast so profound my hand can't keep up with my brain and the pen is leaking words all over the lines filling the pages filling the spaces smothering the white in black covering the blankness up in words words words.
11.01.2007
Great worlds and realities rise and fall by my hands, the mere mention of any arbitrary detail sends my mind spiraling into theoretical storylines: a pigeon in Hungary, a song that urges unrequited lovers to kill themselves, the outline of a sleeping face pushed into a pillow. Any of these things and all of these things. My amalgamations are treasure troves of my life and experiences, full to the brim with encryptions of my life expressed in complex rearrangements that can be plain to the eye or deceivingly camouflaged, stark and contrasted or elusive and paradoxical.
The dualities of my existence pour out of me into series of words relating my qualia to other conscious beings able to decipher my intricate scaffoldings of language.
I am a creator.
The dualities of my existence pour out of me into series of words relating my qualia to other conscious beings able to decipher my intricate scaffoldings of language.
I am a creator.
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