the yeti from SkiFree as a metaphor for the inevitability of death

stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.

colour

At dinner, I had been telling you about my dream.

And how I have only ever had black and white dreams.

And how there has always been a violence to my dreams.

One that I can never understand.

You told me that Jung would have a field day.

As I explained this to you.

You nodded as I talked about the blurred shadows, and the noise like a detuned television.

The sickening scramble of images when my eyes snap open to a fully-toned world.

We talked about the self-indulgence of talking about dreams.

And how no one really ever gives a damn.

How they just wait in line, for the chance to talk about their own dreams.

And this somehow makes us feel normal.

'I am glad that I'm not the only one who can't dream in colour', you said to me after the movie.

I wish you had said this sooner.

After I had told you this, I had felt incomplete.

As if I was missing something vital.

Like you would push me away for a real man.

For a whole man.

Someone who's dreams bloomed in technicolour.

All flowers, balloons and baby animals.

'We have seen too much', you said.

'How can we dream in colour, when our lives are black and white'.

'The black is work and the white is home to a colour television and a microwave dinner'.

'After a while it all blends to gray'.

'And there is nothing left to see'.

I slept with you that night.

You asked me to hold you, as we listened to the slow beat of rain on your roof.

It was almost in time with my heartbeat.

The gap at the top of your curtains let in a soft light.

Which cast shadows on your face.

In my dream that night, we held hands on the beach.

Your eyes were green.

Your lips were read.

I woke up, and I was not afraid of the day.

two poems

friday night

GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP

saturday morning

the god of friday night is dead and
saturday morning i'm left alone with the ghosts in my head.

i will hug my pillows.
i will send apologetic text messages.
i will remember stealing drinks and laugh inwardly
cheeseburgers hold too much appeal
i feel like i could go out and order all of them.

i will have dreams that we tidied the house on friday night.
i will wake up disappointed.

i have never known what isotonic means but i will seek it out
in the hope of some modern witch-doctor cure

blue powerade has come to taste like regret.
but every other flavour is no good.
they are offered, i think, to allow us to revel in the illusion of choice.

no one ever thinks of the environmental cost of a hangover.
probably not even greenpeace.
the oil for plastic to make bottled drinks.
the trees felled for our burger wrappers.
the rainforests that are probably cleared for coffee plantations.

i think about this and it makes me depressed.
i think about this and it makes me hungry and thirsty.
i pray to Anything for the courage to leave my bed.
i pray for a vengeful, Old Testament kinda God to
S M I T E
my neighbours kids.
someone, lend me salvation.

the chemistry of common life

Chemistry is just a word we use to describe what occurs when subtle changes in our minds make energy from common lives, I thought. My heart punched my rib cage for what seemed like the three-hundred and sixty-fifth time in an endless minute. We were walking hand in hand and we were all strung nerves and muscle tension.

In the gardens you said to me 'We should sit down', and I said 'Yeah, that would be nice', and so we sat in the ornate benches just staring wide eyed out at the world, as if we were seeing properly for the very first time. Vibrant flowers framed the water cascading from the fountain.

'Sometimes when I come here I like to look at this fountain and think about what it means. Right now I am thinking that it is a stand in for how you make me feel', you said.

We were big on metaphors around this time, like cryptologists making sense from some lost meaning.

'I mean, this fountain is beautiful and alive, and this is how you make me feel'.
'That is a wonderful thing to say. And I feel the same way. About you, I mean. Not about myself. That would be weird. I'm sorry.'
'It's okay. I knew what you mean'.

We were young and the awkward, self conscious anxieties that go along with that still hung over our heads. We were vaguely terrified of absolutely everything except each other, and you had a theory that this was the true definition of love in the modern world. Maybe 'I am not terrified of you' would be printed on Valentines cards in years to come.

We sat hand in hand, watching the water. It was probably cascading, although maybe it was more like gushing, or surging. We couldn't settle on the appropriate verb, so left it at that. We made promises to remember this forever, living in the endless moment, making great heaping piles of seconds in our minds, a pile of sixty to be called a minute and a far bigger pile to be called a memory. The sun was setting directly in front of us, and you asked me to tell you about my ex-girlfriend.

I am five years old and struggling for vision over the dashboard as we drive to the shops, learning the meanings of words like weekends and sunlight and the Bangles are playing on the radio. Suddenly, I am seventeen years old and struggling to see through blurred vision, learning the meaning of things like serendipity and the blues, as we drive home in this taxi, knowing that this is the last and final time this is going to happen, because things have changed. I am eight years old and throwing bark instead of kissing her, and learning the meaning of regret.

This is what I did not say about my ex-girlfriend.

These were my own 3am Tramadol meditations in F# A# (infinity) about her. These were the things I was not yet ready to tell you. I could have laid myself open to you, bearing all. I could have explained all of this, but instead I said 'She got fat. She has a kid, now. You're about 10,000 times better than her, in every possible, conceivable way', and this was, I think, what you wanted to hear anyway.

Sometimes 'romance' and the truth / memories / 3am meditations shouldn't cross paths, I thought. It is usually best this way.

With your arms around me and your eyes on mine, we felt eternal. We felt like were were running head first down steep hills, building so much momentum and energy that we were going to explode.

'Lets go'. You.
'But where to?'. Me.
'I dunno. We can take a walk'. You.
'I'd like that', and we took a walk. You were decisive, and I needed this. It was almost time for the park rangers to lock the sharp-topped gates – we could have been trapped.

Walking past the Art Gallery you told me how you don't like the sculptures above at night. How they seem so grand and looming and important, lurking in the sky. How they remind you of great extinct birds, ready to swoop. How you don't like to feel like the insignificant prey of giant imaginary animals. How you never got these feelings when we were together though. I told you that you were never insignificant, and that besides, I would protect you. You would protect me. Together we would be some sort of unstoppable super-hero duo, overflowing with the relentless energy of youth, running and believing and gasping for air, never stopping, in constant combat with the entire world. Taking on all six billion if we needed to. We both agreed that this, probably, was kind of over the top. Holding hands, we stopped to admire the Gatsby posters pasted to the theatre bollard.

'When I am with you', I said, 'I feel like this town is the ragged edge of the universe. Like we could be rolling champagne bottles down any avenue, under the light of a wanton moon. I feel like I want to give in to the world in all its cliched and romantic glory'. This was back when we were big on metaphors. Back when we were tragic and embarrassing, caught up in waves and tides of feeling, abandoning the Puritan restraint of previous years and lifetimes, as if this time around we'd been born feet first and never bothered trying to put ourselves right, or find out how it was supposed to go.

We walked towards the Square, bright lights surrounding us down Worcester Street. The quantity of streetlights meant we each had four shadows, in varying shades of darkness, and we weren't afraid of a single one of them. We stopped on the Bridge in view of the sell-suited drunks down the Strip, their heads all ethanol and property figures. The caged doors of the Our City gallery reminded me of a prison, and I had to fight the urge to offer you a private performance of Free Bird, grateful you didn't even hear me humming. Insecurities blooming, as we leaned against the same prison gate, pressing lips. Hearts racing, skipping to the same rhythms, without the need for the intoxication of the bars, or the choking commerce of the glass fronted buildings. Feeling drunk off of each other. Feeling like right then and there we needed absolutely nothing but each other, still absolutely terrified of the world, but no longer scared of ourselves. Discovering that maybe this is what love is, and maybe, just maybe, this is the most important thing that will happen to us, breaking free and offering ourselves up to the world, proudly offering our necks to the world, screaming 'come and get us, come and get us, you fuckers' because we are ready, we are ready and we are never looking back.

in this story i ripped off- fucked up, cold world, the great gatsby, every cliche 'love story' ever.

letting go

Thomas Packman sats in his room, making a new list. This was a list which he would pin next to all the others, on the cork board, next to his computer desk. He would (probably) use a red or a blue pin to put the list up – these two seem to be the dominant colours in the most recently purchased pin bag. This new list would probably go under the weeks shopping list, and beside the long unaltered Girls I Have Had Sex With list. Lists mean order, and we need order, thought Thomas, putting the final touches (having decided to turn the -'s into +'s) on his new To Do list. On final inspection, everything seemed to be in order:

+ Buy groceries

+ Pay phone bill

+ Letter of Resignation

+ RSVP

Thomas, with the sense of satisfaction that comes from having truly achieved something for the morning shining in his mind, decided that he could take the rest of the morning off, and get started on the list in the PM. 'Might as well spend the morning jerking off to porno thumbnails on Google Images. Why not. Treat myself. I have earned a break'. Etc.

As 1pm rolled around, Thomas is feeling increasingly nauseous. Could be the result of three hours over-stimulous and relentless self-abuse, but is more likely a side effect of the new sleeping pills his doctor has him on. Big, obnoxious looking red pills, but christ, they lay out out flat. The entire ordeal would be better titled temporary coma, rather than 'sleep'. Closing his eyes, fluorescent colours swam like spilled oil in rainwater.

“Those fuckers” he thought.

“Oh Christ” he thought.

“I should go to the store” he thought.

Walking to the supermarket, he feltnothing but anger towards everyone he saw. Fucking kids in their weird baggy clothes. Old people and their sense of entitlement, their free bus rides. Middle aged mid-day drunks picking up cigarette butts out of the gutter to re-roll. Obese teen mums sweating over their children.

“There is something wrong with me. We should love our neighbours, or something”.

Bearded women. Handicapped me choking themselves at bus stops and screaming 'let me out'.

Thomas can at least empathise with the last group.

The supermarket was crowded, but seemed like a bastion of calm civility compared to the manic, overpowering streets surrounding, where humanity overflowed.

There are rules to supermarket shopping, and rules mean order. You line up, and you're polite. Because otherwise, the whole god damn thing falls apart, and everyone has to go back to hunting our own potato chips and juice boxes. This is the kind of regression we need rules to avoid, thinks Thomas, standing in line.

The checkout girl smiled at Thomas. She was kind of cute, and Thomas smiled back, wondering if smiling was in their contracts, as some sort of explanation, before realising that even if it is, who cares.

“Have a nice day”

“You too!”

Walking home, Thomas ignored almost everything, staring fixedly at the pavement. Even the broken glass and asphalt cracks provided minimal distraction, as he went about mentally composing his letter of resignation. By the time he was kicking his stuck front door, the letter had arrived at its final form.

Dear Sir / Madam,

Please take this letter as notice of my intention to cease employment, effective two weeks from the date of this letter. I thank you for the employment opportunity you have provided, and feel that things have gone well. It has been a pleasure working for your company. This is an “it's not you, it's me” kind of resignation. By way of explanation – I am simply no longer in need of employment. I would appreciate it if my accrued holiday pay could be included in my next pay cheque, if this is possible.

Regards,

Thomas Packman.

'This is a good letter', he thought.

'Maybe my best effort yet. Saves me having to talk to them, too, which is a bonus'.

Carefully reaching over the humming computer, Thomas unpinned his to-do list and black lines through two of the items. Letter and shopping. Done. Five minutes later, another black line. The phone line would stay connected for the next month, at least.

Thomas stared for a few minutes at the list's final item. Just four letters – R.S.V.P. These four letters had made it through the last three Saturday's to do lists. His head hurt just thinking about it, but he knew what was required. He had to get it in the post tomorrow, or it would be too late. He could feel his brain pounding at his skill as he pulled the invitation from the desk's drawer. The familiar crest at the top meant more headache.

“These cowards”, thought Thomas.

Class of '99. Ten year reunion!

His vision narrowed as he tore the perforated bottom off the letter. His glasses slid down his nose as he ticked the form's “Attending” box.

It is important that you R.S.V.P BY WEDNESDAY 16 MAY to ensure we can book for the correct numbers.

For weeks, the invitation had been pinned to the cork board. Sitting right under the “List of People Who Fucked Me Over”. This was the longest list, amongst a large collection. It was a list dominated by high school class mates, and so this this seemed like the natural place for this sort of invitation.

“These cowards”, thought Thomas. He had, after two weeks, put the invitation away in the drawer. It had become painful to look at, especially right next to the List. A single glance its way could meant being hit with memories which felt like a sack of hammers, falling from a great height.

“These fucking cowards. As if the ever present sour-milk taste from expired milk enjoyed across the table from this week's New Dad wasn't enough. As if being legally fucking blind wasn't enough. The petrol-drunk mind fuck weekends trying to escape it all had been in vain. The electro-radiance of flashing screens and 10c space invaders to get away from it all really didn't mean shit when Monday mornings kick in the teeth rolled around. There was no escape. No escape, and no sleep”.

Thomas knew he would go, and he would set things right. Looking at the completed R.S.V.P form, he wanted to scream at it.

“My blood is thick now! My eyes are clear! I will prove you wrong. You bastards. I could break all the glass in the world with these eyes now, and I will break their windows. They will shatter”.

There was two weeks left at work until the reunion, and the days passed like clockwork. Thomas was methodical in his job – processes were established, and followed to the letter. He found the cleaning work relaxing, and enjoyed the fact it meant avoiding ever having to talk to the public.

Later, his boss would describe him as a 'conscientious worker', who 'kept mostly to himself'.

Thomas had worked nights before the sleeping pills. They let him go in whenever, as long as it was after 6pm. Might as well work later, rather than thrash around in bed at home, fighting the hallucinations and restless ghosts that circled in his bedroom. Might as well go mop some floors and watch the walls melt, listing to his own brain sing sing singing out in deserted office blocks. This had been his logic for night work, but after the pills, he started going in earlier. The walls now blurred, rather than melted. His brain hummed, rather than sang. It was a reduction of all things, and he felt Better. Still not good, but Better.

Every night after coming home from work, Thomas would take the small grey shoebox out from under his bed, lifting the lid off.

“You're the only one I ever loved”, Thomas would say to the box. This wasn't necessarily true – he thought he loved his mother, too. He knew he would have cried, had she died before him. It was just that Thomas liked to dwell in the affect of his shining, heartfelt love for the box. To explore the tragic fate they now shared, and cherish it.

On the Thursday before the Saturday of the Big Event, Thomas found his bank account flush, with five weeks worth of holiday pay. $2,000.00.

“This is my life, in totality”.

On the Saturday, the day of the Big Event, Thomas walked to the shopping centre. Today, there was no need to write a lift – two weeks of mental planning had etched the day's progress all over his brain. He was focus and purpose, for the first time in countless years.

1. Buy a suit for the evening - $1,189.00.

2. Buy new shoes - $109,99.

3. Get a haircut - $30.00

4. Post a letter to Mum in Auckland – 50c.
   

He didn't care about the money. He spent freely, cherishing the experience. Wanting to look his very best. Tonight is a special occasion, after all! Hours wound past, and his nerves built up. At home he was in a pacing, shivering kind of mood. The internet bored him. The television was a disappointment, like usual, and in his time killing mood his hatred towards it was only affirmed.

“God damn Dr. Phil telling people how to live their lives. Fucking movies about girls and their horses. Stupid music videos. Endless loops of soldiers with legs blown off. I don't need you, television. Goodbye, television”, Thomas shouted at no one in particular. He felt like punching the wall, just for something to do. He checked, and re-checked the box, and finally decided to take a walk around the block, fists clenching and unclenching as he walked.

“Houses”, he thought.

“Trees”, he thought.

“People”, he thought.

“Animals”, he thought.

“Fences”, he thought.

“Shops”, he thought.

“Insects”, he thought.

“Cars”, he thought, the meditative rhythm of simple thought dulling the jagged edge he felt he'd spent the last ten years walking on. The sun was setting behind an abandoned house.

“Goodbye, sun”.

At 6.34pm, Thomas ordered a taxi. The invitation had said 7.00pm, but he hadn't wanted to be early. There's usually no rush, at these things. No point in seeming desperate, and all that.

When he heard the taxi's tyres at the start of the long gravel driveway, Thomas opened the box, glancing towards the Glock 17 which lay on inside on a bed of folded napkins.

“You're all I've got” he whispered, before slipping the pistol into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. It felt right, there. When he had purchased the pistol, years earlier, Thomas had been made to swear a declaration to only use it for sport, or in self defense. He found himself still smiling at the absurdity of this as he got into the front seat of the taxi.

The taxi ride was pleasant. The driver, a Samoan man with a wide smile, talked religion with Thomas.

“There is something for all of us after we die, you know, this is what the bible says. We find salvation, then. We are with God.”

“I don't know about religion. All I know is that no priest ever did shit to help me out, excuse the language. But maybe you're right. That's a god thing, though, and maybe a soul thing. Right now, we're stuck on people things. I'm stuck on people things, anyway”.

This was the final exchange, as the taxi pulled into the hotel's fore-court.

“$26.80. We'll call it $25.00 though, eh?” smiled the taxi driver.

“I have around $800.00 here. I don't need it any more. I want you to have it. Please, take it. I promise you, I don't need it. So take it! I am just going to leave it here. You'll never see me again, probably. Just do me one favour. Don't let it touch the hands of a priest. Spend it on yourself, or your family. Do something nice. Live life, or something”.

And Thomas was unburdened. No more job. No more money, just him, a heavy pocket and a high school reunion.

This is people stuff.

Inside, Thomas took his seat at the assigned table. The pleasantries were already in full swing.

“St Pauls High School – Class of '89 – The Best Time of Our Lives!” hung on a banner, in the school colours. Thomas felt sick again. Saw the oily colours floating again. The conversations circling around him were all “You look fantastic” and “Haven't you done well for yourself!”. He was himself subjected to the same set of questions and declarations. Oh, they were all so nice to him now. So damned polite and grown-up, everyone looking their best. Any failure was made invisible, at things like this. These cowards, acting like nothing had happened. Flashing their teeth at him like it wasn't these same mouths that had meant ten years sleepless and fucking terrified and alone. Thomas felt his heart thump against the gun's cold metal, and knew what was necessary.

As he reached into his pocket, Ashely King appeared by his side.

“Hi, Tom! It's been a while, huh?”

“It sure has. Being here... it really takes you back.”

“It does. And that's why I wanted to talk to you. Look, I know I was an asshole to you Back Then. We all were. And to be honest, I sometimes still feel bad for it. I wanted to apologise. I know it doesn't mean much now, but anyway”.

This was unexpected. They were meant to deserve what was coming, not be fucking apologising to him. Ashley was never the worst of it, though. Relatively, he was a fucking saint. It was those other bastards. Chris Jordan. Kyle Smith, those types of guys. Ash didn't need to be here for this. Just the rest of them.

“It's okay, man. I try not to think about it, to be honest”. This was the truth.

“Do you think you could do me a favour, though? I left my camera in the car. My leg's still kinda busted. Don't walk so good. Maybe you could go and grab it, for me? I'm so sorry to even ask, but y'know”. This was untrue.

“Of course, no problem. Promise to send me the photos, thought?”

“It's a deal. Mine's the red Toyota, off to the left. The valet should have the keys. Camera should be under the seat, up front”. More untruth. Thomas had no idea if such a car existed.

Ashley King walked at pace out of the main room. Thomas, watching him depart, realised that he had limited time until Ashley would return.

“We could have been friends, maybe”, he thought.

Thomas checked his watch, as he climbed steadily up the stairs to the stage. 7.46pm. “Goodbye, time”. From the stage, he had a better view of the crowd of suited men, and women in bright dresses. There were no speeches planned until later, and Thomas felt conspicuous up on the stage. Usually, he hated people looking at him. Hated being the centre of attention. Right now, though, it was necessary. He screamed, at the top of his lungs.

“St Paul's High School fucking rules!”. He was met with cheers, and applause. Conversations came to a halt, with expectation. Slowly, Thomas reached into the pocket of his brand new jacket. He removed the pistol. It's smooth grip was reassuring in his hand. It gave him a new confidence. The women in the crowd screamed. The men shouted. People dove under tables, ducked behind doorways.

“These fucking cowards”, thought Thomas.

7.47pm

“This ones for all of you. Sleep well, you fuckers”

Thomas felt the cool metallic weight of the pistol pressed against his temple. He blinked twice, and tasted the static in the air, one last time. And finally, he let go.

3am tramadol meditations in f# a# (infinity)

This was, I think, around four months after we started smoking. It all started off naturally enough – explosions of teenage vigor in experimentation, lungs and cones made from empty $1.50 Coca Cola cans down by the creek after school, holes punched with Mum's kitchen knives. Ignoring the aluminium threat of Alzheimers before an afternoon of bad television or knife-cheating on foreign Soldier of Fortune servers. Just dead Ramones, just living for the soft static kick of electric feedback and brain-buzzed loudnights. Everything was so straight forward. At school you pretended to listen, and six hours shot by five times til freedom. We were invincible and the weather was blessed and an almost holy holy ghost obsession was dripping from our pores. It was, I think, summer '05 and we were kicking down fences and running running running. We were young. We took the endless sucker punches to brain cells which were at that point in time far too abstract, far too infinite. They existed in the same sense that gravity exists – invisible but, presumably, always there. Hour long bus rides to far off lands, to crawl over the same well-trampled grass to the same state-looking houses open to the public, fifties and foils only, trying not to pay with change, too scared to cause offense or fuck with what seemed like our connection to this wonderful wide ol' world, so big so big and oh so fucking majestic. Our fear of the keepers of our habit, their almost aposematic ways of dressing and talking. Their aversion for anything resembling customer service in the parts of town where we never knew anyone, has never before had occasion to hit out into. And we would talk shit on the bus, just to catch the time. White noise to fill the stale emptiness, a distraction from the way you could see the dust particles in the shafts of light, and just how terribly impermanent it all made you feel. And we would talk about anything, composing what we were sure were symphonies of dialogue, knives to time.

“Dudes who catch the second bus when there are two leaving at the same time are making a statement. They are the laconic, time-less coyboys of our age. They simply do not and can not give a fuck. This is their identity, and they cling to it, damn the consequences”.

“And lonely, overweight people should get dogs. They will have to walk them, and lose weight. They will feel loved. They will love. They will meet other people at the park. This is flawless. This is what you would call killing two birds with one stone or getting two birds stoned with one joint, depending I guess on how old you are and your relative subcultural capital”.

Days seem to melt, from this kind of psychic distance. There are devils in the detail. We were running backwards down hills to feel our hair in our faces, and we were leaning with intent to fall. There was a girl we knew, and she'd never got high before, and so we said, but we must! She was older and in her lap lay promised lands, and we were all sweat and breath and muscle tension around her. She was wonderful, and we were secret contest scheming to claim her, pink-laced skate shoes and all. She was not scared. She lay herself open, overflowing, bubbling from the attention. Not realising her future as little more than the epaulets on some shitty kid's jumper. Little more than a story told on slower bus rides. She wanted to get wasted. Get cut. As far as all other nights go, this was infinity. This was just like any other night, at her shitty top story flat down a gravel and weeds driveway east of Central. We came prepared with junk food and indoor, diabetes clearly the least of our worries. We sat down on rugged couches, and watched bad music videos. We passed around the anodized purple and silver cone. We said things like “it's cut” and “out of it, man”.

My heart pounded.

My heart pounded.

My heart pounded.

My head screamed.

Pins and needles sung from the very back of my brain, and thoughts rushed like a cracked damn. I felt sick. I felt everything. I looked in the mirror and saw myself as an eight year old boy. I felt sick. I felt so, so sick. I thought about life, and I thought about thinking. I was smoke haze and panic. The room spun, but everyone else was still. They smiled and laughed and threw food at themselves and complained about dry, dry mouths. I panicked about every single thing that had ever and would ever happen to me. My brain spat at me.

Everything hated me.

I was collapsing inwards. It was not like, ‘do you every like, think about thinking man’, it was like ‘oh shit oh shit I never thought about life ////////// my own consciousness ///////// the universe //////// I am a voice inside my own head head spinning in circles, I cannot fucking handle this kind of thing right now shit shit. I am me’.

God, I thought, must hate me. I am lost and so fucking alone. This is maybe divine intervention, assuming there is a God and he is one vengeful spiteful kinda Old Testament mother fucker who just wants to fuck us up for being pathetic humans, I thought. Life weighs too much, I thought. Don't panic don't panic don't panic I thought, for three hours.

And I panicked. I didn't sleep. I was, mentally, out in a desert – as if every single second of my life up until this point, this fucking goddamn whatever you call it, that fell down on me in this shitty fucking cursed room in this bastard town, had been severed from me. I had no memories of anything before this.

“Pass the cone bro”

“Aw, shit is cut. Yous got any left?”

“Nah, bol. I'm pretty wasted though, eh”.

Nothing. I remembered faces, pin numbers, email addresses, but nothing that had actually happened. This is to say, I was fucked. Comprehensively. And, still the next day. I was trapped. I had no idea what to do with my mind for 18 hours a day, now that I was aware of it's presence. I forgot, in totality, whatever it was that I had used this foreign, screaming internal voice for in the preceding years of my life. Like I said, I was fucked. This was an unanswerable question, the sort that flings confusion like tar in all possible directions. Every time I thought about this, I was sick. I thought about the days that stretched out ahead of me. A constant nausea washed over me. I had no escape and besides, no idea where I was (metaphysically speaking). I looked around my room and saw everything far too clearly, like it was over-bright and hostile. I couldn't explain everything. I did not think this was the sort of “self discovery” that anyone had in mind. I saw days stretching endlessly, forever. I could not escape my own life, and it terrified me. I was constant panic and sweat and nervous piss and no sleep and night tremblings and mental connections gone horribly fucking wrong. I was floating way way above everyone, when all you really want is two feet stuck firmly to the ground, and you hope and you pray, you even goddamned pray, with no success. I was internal screams and I realised that '05, it was not such a great year, any. Externally, maybe, I was the same. I couldn't tell anyone. They would lock me up somewhere, shit, this was all far too giant and looming for me or for anyone. I had no idea what anxiety disorder or panic attacks were, and everything was through a screen of surreality. Memories of dinner with parents at a Mexican restaurant still feels like tacks on my brain, the same with days at school. 6 hours is bigger than space when you're taking it each second at a time, making piles and stacks of saved up seconds to call a minute, an hour, lunch time, home time. Endless days stretching out forever. I quit.

I quit smoking anything. I quit going out. It all meant nothing, is what I thought. I discovered, somehow, that drinking was pretty much the best thing I could do. Alcohol to kill the brain / pain. I spent far too much time drunk. I learned not to think. Not to feel. I was anhedonia and I was coping. I read about anxiety and I identified. I read books and forgive myself. Wilbur Smith saved me when I was fifteen. The words harden the fuck up took on a post-ironic, First XV Rugby Team-Free meaning, and I suppressed. I was floating and alone but I was rational and drunk and with these bags of sand I saw that all that remains is to get used to life in the low oxygen disconnect. To know about neurochemistry, and hit out. To tell know one. To evolve. To realise that life goes on, and soon enough you slip back to being just another face. Things will always get better, that kind of positive shit that always seemed so cliché seems to hold true. Maybe, I thought, I have grown as a person. Maybe, I think, 2005 was an okay year.

Infinite

I have been reading Infinite Jest lately. David Foster Wallace is (was? shit) a fucking genius. RIP. My second attempt at this book, I guess. This part struck me:

'Well, love, but you know the idiom “not yourself” - “He's not himself today”, for example' crooking and uncrooking fingers to form quotes on either side of what she says, which Mario adores. 'There are, apparently, persons who are deeply afraid of their own emotions, particularly the painful ones. Grief, regret, sadness. Sadness, especially, perhaps. Dolores describes these people as afraid of obliteration, emotional engulfment. As if something truly and thoroughly felt would have no end or bottom. Would become infinite and engulf them.

'Engulf means obliterate'

'My point here is that certain types of persons are terrified even to poke a big toe into genuinely felt regret or sadness, or to get angry. This means they are afraid to live. They are imprisoned in something, I think. Frozen inside, emotionally. Why is this. No one knows, love-o. It's sometimes called “suppression,” ' with the fingers out the the side again. 'Dolores believes it derives from childhood trauma, but I suspect not always. There may be persons who are born imprisoned. The irony, of course, being that the very imprisonment that prohibits sadness's expression must itself feel intensely sad and painful. For the hypothetical person in question.'

**

Kind of think I am afraid to live, maybe. Not really sure right now. Going on a tropical holiday, anyways. Back in 8 days - might write some shit and read a bunch and swim lots and drink from pieces of fruit. Hopefully!