life is strange because: just when you think you have it in hand, it loop-de-loops around you with a pat on the ass and those are your own wide eyes staring back at you, bewildered but only superficially, really, because by now you know it's best to fail to make plans and what you want has but the slightest effect on what you will get, ain't it funny?
so this is the new year and i've learned; she hates me, and i am willing to do exactly nothing about that because ultimately, truly shockingly, i came to the realization that there is nothing wrong with me, nothing i am willing to change, not for her anyway. this is the new year and the one thing i want is left behind in the old year, never to return, never to be mine, and it's a real tragedy that i was born without a sense of time, or that time exists at all, or is reported to anyway because who but a nutcase would make a case for linear time, the time that i'm aware of is like silly putty or those 25 cent stretchy hands you get at the supermarket and it shoots forward quickly only to snap back and slap you in the nose before diving down to gather lint from your shirt and when you pluck at it to shoot it out again it just sags like runny like boogers like what the fuck you cost a whole quarter and i only got one use out of you you fucking thing and in frustration and grossed out because now it's just dirty and no longer translucent you fling it at the window and it sticks and doesn't slide. that's what time is.
and life is weird because this is the new year and so far not that different from the old year aside from the death of potential and the branching off of all sorts of new possibilities, none of which are as pregnant with promise as that deceased one but isn't that just the way it goes. you never know where it's going to take you, this thing, you and your child's sense of magic and your alexander-the-great eyes and your limitless capacity for sorrow and the very exacting-flexible standards you maintain for what will and can happen to you.
i'm like a child in so many ways that it astounds me, because i think i know how i feel about something up until that something comes to pass, and then i hope against hope and believe against the bald facts of things and what i mean is this: i look like a grown up, sometimes, and walk about and function like one as well, but when you get down to the nitty-gritty, to the bare bones of the matter what i do is walk around expecting a miracle, every moment of every day, and every moment that it fails to pass, i wallow in my disappointment and gather the pieces around me and regroup them and still keep on hoping and waiting, in spite of my rational mind, in spite of what i say and do, in spite of the ineffable, ineluctable progression of mundane life.
i wish i believed in something more concrete than possibility, that i had something as simple as your judeo-christian god and devil, something well-defined and drawn out to call upon and barter with. barter! i sing the body electric, etc., which is to say i'm glad i'm alive, that i exist and can touch and be touched and that there are aspects of me that you can't touch, that you don't know, even some that i don't know come to think of it, but anyway what i mean is that while i am consciously, while i decide every day to be, glad to be alive, there are some things, there is one thing for which i would risk that so-called fact- not a thing, really, a person, i suppose, six foot one inch of proteins and chemicals and shaking hands and soul and peculiar timbre, etc. etc.. god so what the fuck!
i woke up this morning from a beautiful jungle dream, very vivid and so on, to a question posed to me by some morbid little reptile part of my brain that hates for me to be content, and the question is this: if by some alchemy, if by some supernatural trade agreement you could have been sick instead of him, knowing very well that you could die just as easily as he did, would...? and the thing is that yeah, i woulda. and it's bullshit that in this magnificently large and mysterious universe, this cornucopaeia of possibilities and potentialities, you can't just call up the devil or some other shadowy force and strike a bargain, a tough bargain, a big deal, something really scary, but if you're willing to do it then you should have the goddamned option, am i right? and that's the crux of it really, that we're given this hideous ability to know that we're alive and that we can die and to contemplate the various implications thereof, but we get no options- not to cheat death, i wouldn't presume, but to rearrange it a little or to- well, the point is, when i say miracles, i really mean options: the option to sacrifice what you're willing to, to whatever end you wish.
none of which is to say that life can't be shocking in a good way, occassionaly. new year's eve was a delicious dark fumble and proof that you can change without fucking well having to think everything to death. this year looks the same but feels different, in more than just the obvious, sad way: if i could wipe the slate clean, i would, and goodbye mother country and friends, hat off in a jolly salute, but i can't or rather, wouldn't or rather- not yet. the next best thing, which you can't see or feel or smell or hear, but which i know the same way i know when my heart skips a beat, is that inasmuch inasmany ways as i can manage, i'm not going to stay where i am. because if it weren't pathetic and cliche, i'd inscribe on my skin this saying this mantra this should-be-obvious lame-o revelation but- there's nothing wrong with me.
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