It's nearly midnight on a Saturday night and here I am drinking blue Kool-aid that I used to wash down some kratom, not drinking any alcohol, listening to RainyMood and I wonder how many people would feel sorry for me that I'm not at a dancing skeleton ball or in a bouncy-castle or some other kind of party or experience that should fill my life with richness, instead of typing on my Facebook. I want to tell you that I've structured my life so there's enough quiet so I can think for a goddamn minute. I don't want to go to your goddamn barbecue, your child's birthday party, a wine tasting, an orgy, a communal gravedigging, and I wish that you would be filled with relief instead of pity when I said I stayed home and stared at the interior of my skull instead of shoving dirt in my mouth. I've thrown up in enough bushes in my life. I've kissed way too many Canadians. There are only so many times I can be pushed up onto a stage to sing a screechy Karoake rendition of a Dolly Parton song or to balance a sword on my head. No, I'm here, talking to you. Sitting still. Watching the twisting lights of my kaleidoscopic sunset simulator that seem to turn my room into a space station. Listening to dubstep. Writing and rewriting notes for my novel that hangs over me like the Sword of Damocles while I sleep.
Thank god I stayed here.
Now there are enough stories inside of me to at least fill the shallow-end of a kiddie pool.
What kind of stories, you ask? I would like to tell you a story about how the laundry I ignored and left on the floor made me realize that I've been trying to hide from the entire world. That someone told me one of the scenes I wrote was the best they've read all year and I want it to make up for the self-abuse I've slathered myself in hoping that the bears would smell it and come to me, leave nothing but the bones, but what's real and good. I would like to tell you a story that isn't really a story, but a poorly camouflaged list of all my flaws. I want to write a story that is really this idea, you see, that gnosis (epiphany) is a lightbulb that when you screw it in and flick the switch poisonous gas leaks out of it. Maybe there is a story inside of me somewhere about how I turn a key in the back of my throat with a snake that I shoved down, suppressing the gag relief, and all the things that I hid from myself came pouring out. "My god," I gasped, "I'm a complete idiot." THE END. I sent that story to Tor. I sent that story to Cemetery Dance. It's both a fantasy, a horror, a realist portrait, an improvisational dance, and a tribute to the Dada movement.
Okay, I'm not an idiot. That's not completely accurate. I'm actually really smart. I just don't know how to ask the next questions.
There's no guarantee of an upward trajectory and evolution is the result of an applied accident. Time to get back to asking the right questions. (Better questions) I want to tell you a story that is the forever story, the eternal biography, the story of how thousands, hundreds of thousands, making the same mistakes and feeling the familiar, haunting reptilian pain, have already gone through this same ordeal that I am experiencing right now. "No! I'm special!" Please. (Stop shouting) Unfortunately we haven't yet acquired the ability to transfer memories. So it's taken me nearly 28 years to realize that I no longer want to stumble around blind, reaching out with worn hands with fingernails that smell like smoke hoping that maybe one day I will fall into, crawl into (epiphany) a wall, a doorway (the best novel ever written), a moment untainted by the threaded strands of a past worn like augmented contacts to defile everything that they touch with busted tooth and a hiss and an (Ow!) and a "See? I told you everything was rotten!"
My birthday is on All-Saints day, the day after Halloween. I'm going to give myself a few birthday presents. A good story, or at least, working towards one. Better questions. Or more bad questions that will lead me to better questions. I want to get back to writing. I write everyday. But I mean real writing, not this half-blind stumbling toward busted out unscrewed in light-bulbs. In order to do that I will give myself eyes. A good pair of eyes. Eyes that are learning how to really see.
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Stock photo from Pixabay
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