on giving up

"she was ready to dismiss the crew of her soul from the deck of her body." -kundera

tempting, i admit. but i've tried it before and it proved unpleasant; far worse than the suffering that comes with having your soul permanently lodged in your throat, adding flavor to everything you swallow while at the same time choking you.

i am reminded that masochism is self-imposed pain whose by-product is pleasure.

bombastics

The more i live, read, encounter, the more brilliant does Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" become.

justification

As I read the hard paper this morning, a relic of sorts that somehow landed on my doorstep, I recall a time when I was more interested in the Plural than the Singular; the Collective, the Society, the State. But now my universe seems to exist on an entirely different level. The micro level.

But then, isn't everything micro? Isn't the micro the main ingredient, the flour of the macro? I think it's interesting when we speak of social constructs without any seeming awareness that these things are made up of individuals, ones with impulses that drive their behavior.

I suppose I'm interested in psychology then, more than sociology, and even less interested in political theory, which examines the behavior of states as if they were living, breathing things entirely devoid of living breathing things! But they're there, and they eat, and fuck, and desire, and envy, and lust, and harbor delusions of grandeur, and with all these at stake, they act. So for now I'm focusing on that, and it's comforting to know that to zoom back out, all I have to do is twist the lens.

mean

Is there anything so cozy as staying in of doors in snowy madness with wine and food and chocolate. Life is about balance, yes, but for now I'd like more of this.

Soothe.

Life's been tough lately. Being home for the holiday compounds it. I've made mistakes. I've gotten hurt. I've walked into a chandelier, into many chandeliers. I've added injury to insult, insult to injury, mixed and repeated.

Sometimes I think to myself, look outside yourself and your little life. Look how lucky you are. But realistically that only gets you so far. And you end up feeling helpless and thus worse.

I've been having a great time in my new life in Iowa City. It is quaint, it is friendly, I am productive, I am, for the most part, happy. But accidents continue to happen--I think I have a sign on my head, underneath this bump, that says "Danger Welcome". I fall down, but I pick myself up, my friends pick me up, writing, it picks me up.

But then a rapid succession of punches comes, and I'm down for ten seconds and it's a Technical Knock Out. I can't get up. The bump hurts. Everything hurts. And I made the mistake, texted while walking, ignored the warnings, didnt' heed advice, so it's that much more painful.

Darkness. Looking up and seeing light very far away. It's dramatic but right now it's reality and I'm having a hard time escaping it. Which reminds me of something a poet recently told me: "You have to make your own escape."

I never understood it when people asked to be "saved from themselves." It sounds romantic but weird and abstract. But now I get it. To be saved from oneself is to be rescued from one's habits and addictions and recurring thoughts and fears. But like the poet says, no one can swoop in and do that for you. And I wish someone could. Instead here I am, trying to save myself.

Ouch, ouch, ouch. The bump hurts, resonates, tugs, somehow, at my heart. I am not supposed to be the girl sitting on the floor with a bump on her forehead. That couldn't be me. Not the me in my delusions of grandeur, not the me in the home videos, not the me, even, on my Facebook profile. I don't know who that is, though I want to. I want not to ache, not to cry, not to be in this hole.

It's dark now. But I'll go to sleep and morning will come, and I will brew coffee and at the first sip I will feel better. I will feel that little thing called hope, a sliver of excitement, of prospect, of healing, of home. And I will take another sip, and keep hoping.

Until then, I need to ice my wound.

visitor

she stared up at the ceiling as water soaked her hair and saw a spider inching towards the shower. "go away, bad spider!" she yelled, and splashed water at it until it scurried off. she dried off and went to the sink, where the spider was now hovering. she looked up and decided it had won this round.

next

He sat at the on-campus clinic waiting to be seen by med students. He knew he loved to save time, thrived on it, got off on it, so why he chose the campus clinic over the remote location was a mystery to him. He had a car, he could've easily driven there. Been in and out in fifteen minutes. Instead he was here, surrounded by sweat-panted, Ugg-booted, undergrads. He wonders if he did this on purpose. Waiting in a doctor's office is a great excuse to be away from one's computer. It's a great place to read a book. Maybe that was the only time he could read one--not in bed, or in his living room, but in between.