things which escape those who dream only by night

one time, a long time ago, at a party, i began to- or would have if i hadn't been restrained- slit my wrists. granted, i was very very drunk, but still. i failed then but succeeded later, not at slitting my wrists but rather at working out our steak knives on the inside of my arm, an ugly and surreal incident where watching blood ooze from my body was the only thing grounding me in reality. i lived to regret that, as a teenage co-worker mistook me for a fellow cutter and took to following me around rhapsodizing about the beauty of pain and control. another time i almost slit my wrists again but it was out of rage and in revenge, and not at a party but in the shower. none of these incidents were as melodramatically emo as they sound, and i'm not actually a goth. what happens is that sometimes i am overcome with a certain feeling, not counting that time in the shower because that was 100% rage, the kind where you are literally seeing red and hearing a strange buzzing in your head (the kind of rage that only a mother can rouse, obviously), and that feeling is the distinct sensation of being completely and totally alone in a vast and cold universe. not lonely but alone.

i was a fairly happy kid, and i had billions of friends, so when jeff pulled me aside for a talk at 13, while we were supposed to be watching the game going on in front of us, and somewhere in that conversation insinuated that being exceptional also meant being lonely- from which i was to extrapolate one, that i was exceptional, and two, that i was or would be, down the line, lonely- well, clearly, i didn't know what to think, though pretending to be the mature little person he expected me to be i nodded sagely and agreed that being surrounded by people was the loneliest experience there was. i would, much to my chagrin, realize the truth of my words a mere five months later, upon entering that nightmarish institution also known as "high school."

but lonely and alone are not the same, and the difference is, i think, this: lonely is knowing that someone out there understands you, but you have yet to find that person or those persons. lonely is needing a hug and a sympathetic ear. alone is knowing that wherever you go, however long you live, you will never find a person to understand you, because no such person exists. does that even make sense? mon dieu.

i'm a generally cheerful person. i love to laugh, and to make people laugh, and feel that i have a well-developed sense of humor and the absurd. i have many close friends, most of whom i love dearly and would not trade for the world and with all of whom i am honest and forthcoming and strange. and for all this, i can't think of one person i could point to and say: this person understands me, or this person is very much like me in a pleasing and reassuring way.

there are stories we tell about ourselves that depict us as the people we want to be. but if you, wishing to be known as courageous but knowing yourself to be a yella-bellied cowahd, pretend at courage when facing down whatever (a mugger, your boss, a dragon, etc.)- are you brave, or just a good actor? or are those one and the same, in the end? IN THE END. what big words.

i don't know about soulmates or any such bullshit, and i don't know about 'the one' and 'true love' and all that kinda old-fashioned jazz, but the concept that's always caught my imagination is the idea that there is someone in the world who is 'made for you.' as if life's this paper cut-out storybook where everything is manufactured for some predetermined purpose and all things and people fit together like in a puzzle? as if you can date as many chaps as you please, and even work on building strong relationships with some of them, but IN THE END it will all be for naught because one day, someday, you will be on your way to the post office or the grocery store, and while your attention is diverted from in front of you you crash into someone, let's say his name is hermann and he's from germany, which is like, so random, but anyway you and hermann crash and your papers go everywhere and as you bend down to pick them up your eyes instead fall upon the book he dropped, which is, let's say, a well-thumbed copy of the principia by isaac newton, and your heart skips a beat because, omg lightning and junebugs, that's your favorite book of all time. so then you and hermann say fuck the post office and you get coffee together, because luckily he speaks english, whereupon you find that though you have lived all your life in bumfuck, ca and he's from nowhere, germany, you guys are like, exactly the same person: you love opera, picking your nose, and anal sex and he just like, loves opera, girls who pick their noses, and anal sex. so then it's goodbye david or whatever poor chap you were dating at the time, and you and hermann move in together and live happily ever after because IN THE END, he was made specifically for you, like you ordered him from a catalogue and you just can't believe you ever lived without him. there was a point to this story, somewhere back in the beginning.

point: ummm this girl and hermann are like, total sickos, right? another point: that would be like, totally awesome and radical, if you were you and someone who exactly complemented and could understand you was developing, as in growing, as in existing, along some parallel line, possibly in the next city over or maybe even in germany or something. which is to say that i don't buy it, this 'made for me' thing, this convergence or congruence thing. i think, and i think i've had a small taste of it already, perhaps as much as i'm ever going to have, that for someone to be made for you, you've got to make him yourself. all of which is besides my original point anyway.

the original point is that i feel that i am strange in a novel way, which is not the same as being a dick and saying i'm 'special' or exceptional, except it is but without the overtones of superiority. like i'm different, but not above you, instead next to you, in some weird parallel zone that doesn't ever intersect but only appears to. like if stephen dedalus weren't a snotty prick but instead slightly insecure and more amiable. i'll be damned if this isn't all rambling bullshit. more tomorrow on How I Am Not Like My Age Group And Why It Makes Me Crazy But I Don't Relate To Old People Either Because Like, What The Fuck I Know Stuff, Bitches.

nobody say love

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.