I recline, eyes closed, and pretend to be asleep. I pretend to dream, and in that non-dream I pretend to be a Builder, constructing the world around me.
Some electronic device is beeping softly in the next room. If I am in control of my world, then I ought to be able to make those beeps last longer.
I concentrate on slowing down the world around me. I picture a peach-pit, for some reason. I probe its texture with my pretend-self, and it seems that each beep from the other room describes another furrow on its surface. Long beep, deep ravine. Short beep, shallow.
I try to concentrate, but something prevents me. It’s hard to explain.
I feel like raw skin, cicatrized. They took the sutures out too soon; I’m in danger of splitting along the seams. Any sudden movement could unpeel me.
Once on a boat off California’s coast, she and I watched off the starboard bow as the captain told us,
“What you don’t want to do is dart your eyes all over the place. You’ll never spot one if you do that. You’ve got to relax your vision. Look out into the horizon. Your eyes will automatically focus on it if a plume goes up. Just relax your vision.”
There’s a new tone, very faint---coming from the hallway. I know that pitch. I know what it means.
They don’t like to tell the patients, but I figured it out.
I understand why they don’t want me to know. The imminence of death is a difficult thing to accept. Not for me. I’m more afraid of my past than my future.
I wish I could put a frame around it. I wish I could tend and prune it like a bonsai. I want to place it upon my mantle, I want to look at my past with a snifter of brandy in hand and think, that was that.
Instead I’m stuck without a conclusion, an impassioned speech (full of sound and fury) but no end-piece. Life is a candle melting into a pool wax, but the wax will stay there a very long time, pooled at the bottom, the wick submerged or burnt completely---useless.
The lights come up but the credits continue to scroll up the screen.
“So, what’d you think?”
Well, to be honest I’m stuck between “Fuck everybody” and “Please love me.”
I was born in agony and I am slowly dying in agony, and I bore the pain myself both times, naked, alone, unknowing. I spent my whole life learning, being taught: how to read, how to speak, how to use the toilet. And now I can’t do any of those things properly, so what do I have to show for it? I read the story of my life, then promptly forgot it as I lived it, and now I realize the whole time I was burning fuel, and I’m just about on empty. So fuck everybody.
On the other hand I feel like a hot air balloon whose mooring has been severed, and now I’m drifting upwards and it’s marvelous but the further I ascend, the smaller everything gets, until I can’t even remember what I’ve forgotten, and it’s becoming cold and I’m, I’m scared. So please love me.
Some electronic device is beeping softly in the next room. If I am in control of my world, then I ought to be able to make those beeps last longer.
I concentrate on slowing down the world around me. I picture a peach-pit, for some reason. I probe its texture with my pretend-self, and it seems that each beep from the other room describes another furrow on its surface. Long beep, deep ravine. Short beep, shallow.
I try to concentrate, but something prevents me. It’s hard to explain.
I feel like raw skin, cicatrized. They took the sutures out too soon; I’m in danger of splitting along the seams. Any sudden movement could unpeel me.
Once on a boat off California’s coast, she and I watched off the starboard bow as the captain told us,
“What you don’t want to do is dart your eyes all over the place. You’ll never spot one if you do that. You’ve got to relax your vision. Look out into the horizon. Your eyes will automatically focus on it if a plume goes up. Just relax your vision.”
There’s a new tone, very faint---coming from the hallway. I know that pitch. I know what it means.
They don’t like to tell the patients, but I figured it out.
I understand why they don’t want me to know. The imminence of death is a difficult thing to accept. Not for me. I’m more afraid of my past than my future.
I wish I could put a frame around it. I wish I could tend and prune it like a bonsai. I want to place it upon my mantle, I want to look at my past with a snifter of brandy in hand and think, that was that.
Instead I’m stuck without a conclusion, an impassioned speech (full of sound and fury) but no end-piece. Life is a candle melting into a pool wax, but the wax will stay there a very long time, pooled at the bottom, the wick submerged or burnt completely---useless.
The lights come up but the credits continue to scroll up the screen.
“So, what’d you think?”
Well, to be honest I’m stuck between “Fuck everybody” and “Please love me.”
I was born in agony and I am slowly dying in agony, and I bore the pain myself both times, naked, alone, unknowing. I spent my whole life learning, being taught: how to read, how to speak, how to use the toilet. And now I can’t do any of those things properly, so what do I have to show for it? I read the story of my life, then promptly forgot it as I lived it, and now I realize the whole time I was burning fuel, and I’m just about on empty. So fuck everybody.
On the other hand I feel like a hot air balloon whose mooring has been severed, and now I’m drifting upwards and it’s marvelous but the further I ascend, the smaller everything gets, until I can’t even remember what I’ve forgotten, and it’s becoming cold and I’m, I’m scared. So please love me.
