Bits and pieces from an unsound mind wandering through a mall
1
Read book while waiting to get off freeway. I look up at one point to find a blue car jutting its head into the line (Fuck off, lady! I've been waiting for a long time, and you aren't getting in that easy! Line's back there!) The man in the truck in front of me applauds; his girlfriend turns around to look; I laugh.
2
No parking? No problem! Strategy's in place. Oh, darn, too few people leaving. Find a miraculously empty spot in 10 min. Wow, how did that happen.
3
Coffee is not supposed to be this hot. Burnt lips. Burnt tongue. Burnt mouth. Ouch.
4
What is it that drives people to a mall on the day after Christmas? Okay, the sales. But it's the day after Christmas! Nevermind, too tired to analyze the idiocy of Americans. Another theory: it's "the place to see and be seen." But no. However simple that explanation would be, no.
5
"...consumerism, bastardizing a religious holiday, which is true!..." -young Caucasian woman, slightly overweight, to woman beside her.
6
Reading... "The snowflake is the most fragile thing ever created...look what it can do..." -man with stubble to his companion.
7
Utter, complete happiness. Incredible. Weight off my mind for the first time in a long time because of something someone told me the night before. I miss being on my own. I hadn't realized how much I missed being able to think and analyze and criticize and just watch, just observe. My thoughts have been occupied by one thought and one thought only for too many days now. It still haunted me now and then, sure. But I've made peace. Until the end, when the pebble was thrown back in my shoe. But I'm going to pretend it's not there.
8
Two young men, signing to each other. The thinner, taller one, with olive-colored skin makes an odd sucking noise while forming a hook with his finger. It's slang and you can tell, don't ask me how, but you can. Red-streaked mohawk, black and white pants from the when? 60s? 70s? Very distinctive. His friend leans over the railing, blows out smoke. At the table next to them, three girls, high-school-aged or so they look. One stands, walks to another table, her fag's about done. Two women dine at tables beside me. Two women, two tables, strangers. Plus me. I wonder what they're doing at the mall by themselves on the day after Christmas? Come to think of it, what am I doing at the mall by myself on the day after Christmas? Oh well, je suis contente. C'est suffit.
19
CONCIERGE With speakers above blasting "Voulez-vous voulez? Voulez-vous voulez? Voulez-vous voulez?..." What a pointless song...and they call that music.
10
Follow the well-dressed couple ahead without looking up. You're always at the front anyways--why do people walk so slow? "I don't want to get hit!" --boy with baseball hat, behind you. Look up. Don't Walk sign still up. That big, red (no, it's orange) commanding hand telling you the cars are going to run you over. Why the heck am I in the middle of the road. Oh good it changed. Those bastards.
11
Interesting day. Same thing on my mind again. How troublesome. Driving with left foot. Same hours as day at museum. When a sign says 280, it means 280. Not miraculously 880.
Speechless
Not having a good night's sleep is like not sleeping at all. You wake and find the mind's a patch of fuzz, can't think, can't function, can't move, what? You can't hear because you can't see and you can't see because you can't hear. Just numb all over but mostly in the head. Emptiness between the ears. Desolation. Disconnection. Because you didn't sleep well. Oy vey.
---
Je donne ma langue au chat.
Knives
That brilliant silver gleam dances in the eye, the mind, the heart. It lies in ambush, waiting for the moment of weakness to pounce and kill. Mercilessly it will watch for that flicker of feeling, just biding its time for that opportune moment when it will hurt the most. Pick it up. Hold it high. Bring it down. Simple, swift motions to stop life and living, cease the pulse, end the breath. With a fascination for the morbid and the macabre, moments are filled by endless phantasmagoric flights of fantasy. You'll find no witches or goblins here. Only those you bring in your head. Welcome, then welcome, one and all. We deal in darkness and in death. They will all stop in here tonight. Tarry a moment, and you shall see...
Humdrum writing from a humdrum life
My life, in a word, is Boring. Nothing more, nothing less. Bending over the rusted railing, I search for the sight of land, or even just a horizon. I'm not asking for much, am I? But the sky does not listen and the sea does not hear, and I can see only an endless expanse of blue, blue-green nothingness. No change. Nor ever will there be. I feel somber and sober and tired. The dullness of everything is threatening to consume my last slivers of sanity, as I crawl upon this infinite desert of inchoate sand, my mind filled with inchoate thoughts, my heart leaking black oil upon the golden sand. Where is the oasis? Or the peak of the dune? Give me some beauty, that I may breathe it in and survive for another day. Utter exhaustion. Fatigue. Worn-down. Too many little things are dragging me down into a quagmire of emotionlessness. Oh, the paradox of it!
Gasping for air
To embrace life. And revel in change! To breathe in always a different air, from a different place, at a different time! To explore the unexplored and conquer the unconquerable! That would be living. To set your dreams on mahogany shelves but set your feet on emerald hills! To accept and love the unchangeable, even while it changes, and they change, and you change, and nothing can ever hold still, except for Time, who is still moving in place. But you love him, because he is change, although he does not change, and we are fools not to love him and hold him dear and treasure him and lavish him with the gold of our minds! For tomorrow may not come, and tomorrow will not come if we stop loving, and living, and breathing.
---
And tomorrow, oh, tomorrow! I want to relapse into despair. Because tomorrow will be the mirror-image of today, and today was hopeless and empty and tiring. Today is past and gone and time ill-spent and dreams unfinished and goals unmet. Today is today, not tomorrow, but tomorrow will be today, and all of eternity will be always a never-ending today that is not new, nor fresh, nor inviting, nor exhilirating, but merely, forever, NOTHING.
Advocating Detachment
I could and I should but I can't so I won't. Or something like that. Utterly meaningless. Like cold hands on a warm day. Or a butterfly in winter. Or truth and beauty in the human soul. Incompatible. Incongruous. Inconceivable! But I digress.
Attachment is blindness and letting go and hoping and believing and trusting. Detachment, on the other hand...anyone who has ever sat in a theater and watched the reality around him/her instead of the idyllic simplification of life on screen can finish that statement. Anyone who has ever stepped into a puddle and laughed instead of cursing can finish that statement. Attachment creates an illusory independence, while detachment creates a nearly tangible one. Attachment is the insidious lie they've fed you from conception, and detachment the tonic they've denied. Why must we slave under the merciless whip-bearing hand of complacency and contentment? Why must we smile as it trods upon us and sneers derisively? Why must we laugh when it tears our hearts to shreds and fills our souls with parasitic hopes? Why, indeed, must we care at all? Forget, and all will be well. Let go, stop dreaming, stop wishing, stop hoping. STOP BEING HUMAN. And watch the tears fade away into peace. Real and complete. And nonexistant.
Okay, I have no idea what I just wrote there...
Woe is me...Ha! Ha!
It was a short moment, a brief one only, but I felt awkward. Later, I could not remember what I felt but could only see what others might have seen: a bent figure, standing there, eyes vacant.
What is it in the teenage psyche that compels them to hang their dirty laundry outside their front doors? It's such an abnormal thing. Wear your artificial pain on your shirt sleeve and receive a free gift of $20 retail value! If you tattoo it into your skin, we'll even send you a free sledgehammer, valued at $50! Do it soon, because the offer's good only while supplies last!
Indeed. But nobody's yelling that at them. Does it ennoble their angst somehow? Being able to set it down in writing, guaranteeing that all of their friends--and then some--will see it. Does it? I'm just so utterly confused by so many things, and the fact that I can't find answers only frustrates me further. I'm not supposing I'm any different at all. But, please tell me...why?
Blog-hopping
In the restraint-free blogosphere, it's a welcome relief to find that Blogger, at least, maintains an excellent level of respectability through its fantastic, viewer-dependent flagging system. Yep, basically, Blogger is awesome. Just clicking through the blogs is such a humbling experience, reminding you that you're not the center of the universe, even while you realize how interesting other people's lives can be.
It's particularly fascinating for me to stumble across one in a foreign language, which happens not infrequently. Spanish, French, Malaysian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, other languages I can't even recognize...Bound together by invisible, unbreakable threads spun by an impressive, impersonal spider, collectively forming the World Wide Web. Whoever coined that term was quite the idealist to believe the future Internet would connect more than it destroyed, but perhaps it has...
Kites
The string tingles and jumps and bites in your hand. It pulls tight, and your heart soars, knowing, connecting, living, breathing. You feed out string bit by bit, hoping against hope that the fickle wind will keep blowing. You hold your breath as you watch; and your hands, like two birds, flit before you in their rhythmic dance; and yard by yard the string leaves and stretches and smiles. And you smile, too. Because the worst is over. You fling your heart upwards to the end of the string, and as the kite spreads its wings and flies, you, too, cast off your cares and fly for one moment. After, your soul will quietly await its release once more and it reminds you every night of your freedom of a moment until the next time a fair wind blows, and it heaves a sigh of relief and anticipation...
