He was upset about the tree, and when I asked him why, he told me about benzene in the water
Exxon and Chevron and “The State.”
All non-sequitur ramblings with naught to do with paper.
Republican doctor.
Republican boss.
Republican plumber.
Republican stalker.
I shut the window and took a cold shower.
I must dig a tunnel out through the burning leaves.
What year is this?
The ground has been soaking for two days. It has been two days since you were coherent.
I’ve stopped counting.
It takes 30 seconds of fuzzy math to determine that you’re disturbingly ill-informed.
The cat attacked me and ran away.
I didn’t recognize the eyes.
It wasn’t Casper.
She was crying, but I don’t think it was because her tooth hurt.
I didn’t know what to do, and it felt terrible to watch her cry.
The wind will carry away the residue of bad dreams with gusts to knock me down.
The ground is cold and wet.
It sinks with a slosh with my weight.
I must tunnel out through the water.
…
…
Wait for the world to freeze.
It is giving me frequent, incapacitating headaches
heightened insomnia
anorgasmia
severely reduced physical stamina and chronic muscle fatigue
heart palpitations and nausea.
My short-term memory has improved, and my mood has leveled slightly.
My brain is mad at me and having difficulty adjusting to my recent decisions.
Be patient.
Inpatient ECT waits just around the corner.
I can hear you breathing through the floorboards
four years from where I rest
edging the water out as the cavities collapse
and the roof comes down on our heads.
I’ve been avoiding all of the people where I live as if they all have an airborne contagion, and I’ve been successful.
Someone blindsided me with a handful of CDs at work, however. We refer to this antiquated storage medium as the circle tape.
Strange creatures.
Giving Trainspotting another look for some reason…
I think I first watched it while still in high school.
All I could remember from the first viewing to the second was the bathroom suppository scene.
I’m fairly certain, my second viewing was as a freshman in college.
I was somewhat indifferent to it, or maybe I didn’t like it.
I read the book, decided I didn’t like it, and forgot everything but the dialect.
Late in college, someone I liked and respected recommended the title.
I couldn’t remember anything about it except that I’d decided somewhere along the way that I didn’t like it.
I picked up the book in the library about a year later while browsing.
I don’t know why I just rewatched the movie.
I’m not sure why I decided that I didn’t like it years ago.
Maybe I identified with the character, Tommy.
Maybe I lumped it in with shit like Requiem for a Dream and American Beauty.
Sigh…maybe, I still identify with the character, Tommy. I’m just a little further along in the storyline now.
I won’t remember later.
—
There was a dog at the bottom of the steps a few weeks ago, and I thought I was losing my mind.
I listened to the dog and the sound of someone breathing
thinking
at the bottom of my steps.
I didn’t go outside.
I didn’t want to know if they were really there.
I was afraid they wouldn’t be.
I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to handle opening my door and finding emptiness.
There was a man sitting at the bottom of my steps with a dog that wasn’t his.
He was concerned about the dog and contemplating what to do.
He sat out there with the dog for most of the night, and I sat listening.
A few nights ago, I woke up to pounding on the door.
Pounding followed by shouting.
Pounding followed by shouting followed by near silence
with a man sitting on the bottom of my steps
thinking
without a dog.
It wasn’t you.
I’ll never see or hear from you again.
Evidently, my mind is having an extremely hard time getting over that.
There was a dog, however, and there’s still a man
sitting at the bottom of my steps
thinking.
Americans do not call it aluminium, but the rest of the world does.
The crazy cat lady pronounced, “It’s illegal to take those cans!”
She should know better.
It is not.
“Contact your property manager,” was all the man offered in response.
He took my cans away.
I bring the cans home from work once a week, and I put them in the recycling bins where I live.
I fill the bins to the brim.
I would collect them and take them in for the deposit myself, but I have nowhere to store them without the roaches finding out.
I bring the cans home, because no one else where I work is willing to shoulder the minor inconvenience.
Only cardboard is recycled there.
I do not mind the can collectors.
Aluminum is very easily recycled, and very difficult to mine.
That is why a deposit is still offered for its safe return to the recycling facilities.
I wonder what made the crazy cat lady so territorial.
She does not collect the cans.
If she did, I would simply hand them to her every week.
You are a stalker.
When I don’t want to come home from work, because I dread the thought that you’ll be at the bottom of my steps…
When I consider parking somewhere other than our designated parking lot so that you can’t so easily monitor my days off…
When I sit in the dark, because I don’t want to turn on my lights and advertise that I’m here…
When I have to lock the door to my room, because my shitty housemate invites you into the common area…
When you physically block the bottom of the stairs so that I’m unable to leave my dwelling without acknowledging you…
When you make me late for work, because you won’t get the fuck out of my way…
When you call me while I’m at work…
When you comment about me to your testosterone saturated buddies outside my place as if you know a damned thing about me…
You are a fucking stalker, and it is not okay.
Leave me the fuck alone.
I’m not now, and never will be, interested in you.
I have given you no indication beyond an initial “date” that I’m even remotely interested, and that outing was coerced.
That outing was a mid-day disaster with no physical contact whatsoever.
You have never touched me, even in the most casual sense.
You will never touch me without me breaking bones in response.
I don’t want anything to do with you.
I have made that abundantly clear.
You’re outrageously judgmental.
You raised red flags for being controlling in the hour we spent in a public fucking area doing nothing but making small talk.
You’re clingy.
You’re obsessive.
You’re self-centered.
You’re fucking weird.
Stay the fuck away from me.
If you’re conveniently friends with my new housemate, I don’t care.
It’s not okay to bother me in my own goddamned kitchen.
That goes for the new housemate as well.
I fucking can’t stand him just as much.
You’re both creepy fucking weirdos who make me uncomfortable where I live.
Fuck each other.
Stay the fuck away from me.
I have an abnormally long QT interval…which essentially means my heart is slow with electrically recharging and prone to arrhythmia.
I’ve been ignoring this freshly gleaned information for the past few days and lack the motivation to start dealing with it now.
You were with me last night for the first time in over a year.
I know better.
I know it wasn’t you waiting at the bottom of my steps, and I know.
I know better.
This morning, I traded my car for a rental that flashes “eco” at me whenever I go over 5 miles per hour.
Tomorrow morning, I will be taking this odd little car to a 3.5 hour evaluation to determine, legitimately, if I might be
bipolar
or schizophrenic.
This will be the fourth and longest evaluation in a recent series.
They’re like hurdles I must jump in order to acquire free, privately funded, medical treatment
complete with blood work, counseling, and (possibly) medication.
Such things are not offered to the uninsured very often.
I will be relinquishing my car in a few hours.
I didn’t clean it.
I’m beyond caring what anybody thinks.
For all anybody knows by the contents, I do keep a large python in my car
read novels while driving
and sleep in the back under an umbrella.
What difference would it make if it were all true?
I’m still angry about my car.
Even if I could easily afford to pay the insurance deductible
I would still be angry about my car.
To distract myself, I’ve decided that I need visible abs.
I can’t afford to eat, and I certainly can’t afford to drink
so I’ll live on fucking oatmeal for as long as I can tolerate it
and I’ll exercise to receive my allotment of comforting endorphins.
I’m sure it won’t work out very well, although it is improving my atrocious posture.
If you can think of a better way to deal with yet another large financial burden, please, let me know.
The only concession I haven’t made is with this accursed internet access
and aside from becoming a drug mule, I do believe I’ve exhausted most of my options for quick extra sources of income.
I’d prefer not to spend all of my time thinking about the reallocation of money I don’t have
and despite necessity
still fail to desire attaining for its own sake.
No. My aspirations in life have proven exponentially dysfunctional, so what the hell?
Exercise is a free, mind-numbing, time-consuming distraction.
It fits half the criteria for survival anyway.
I don’t want to leave my car with strange people who are going to tear it apart to smooth and paste it back together.
I don’t want to rely on a strange rental car.
I don’t want to pay for this major inconvenience due to some self-centered fuck who was not only shitty enough to run into a parked car in a parking lot in the middle of the fucking day, but so shitty as to take zero responsibility.
Typical.
How is that I’m still angry when I know better than to expect anyone to do the right thing? It’s just not to be expected. It’s not really cynicism generalized towards humanity, or even bitterness over this isolated insignificance. Expectation is just not something to be applied outside of oneself.
It’s insidious…like judgment and hope. Absolutely unavoidable, but untrustworthy, illegitimate and a disdainful harbinger of disappointment and scorn.
I am gaining little to no ground in my efforts to realize my aforementioned dysfunctional aspirations.
Perhaps, it is time for another reassessment of these means to an end. I’m currently afloat in a sea of negativity until I get my mended car back and pay off the corresponding bills, and so…
oatmeal and shuffle pushups (which will kill me) between work and ten cent Mishima novels it will have to be.
and so we meet again 