this is what it's like inside my head

In November of 2005 I wrote this haiku about my ex as she was flying home after staying with me after we met at burning man.

the girl has gone home
closeness no distance can change
tears fell as she left

Now, 2.33 years later, here is the end-of-chapter haiku.

difficult but good
love blooms slowly in the man
regretful timing

I keep having this nightmare where Erika never comes back from her trip...

Then I wake up.

It feels so unreal. That she was so unhappy that she would just walk away from our life.

I'm sorry for those times I didn't want to go with you somewhere. Or wasn't interested. Or didn't ask how you were. I'm sorry that you were unhappy with me.

I think about those early days of our relationship. It took me a long time to realize I really loved you. If I could do it again with less fear in my heart I would.

I wish I knew how you decided this. When you left I felt good about us, as good as i ever have... and now you're gone.

You convinced me to stay. You convinced me you loved me. We agreed our relationship would be based on truth, on growth, on love. And now you given up on me.

I'm hurting.

Its unfair that she blames me for holding her back.

I wanted to see the shuttle launch with her. I'm really sad about that one.

We had plans for April 20. I wish we hadn't needed plans.

I'm hurting.

Hey, read this http://blog.wilderspace.com/ not this.

Whenever I hear "Don't You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds I get depressed. It reminds me of Jennifer.

My god. I own a Mercedes.

For those of you not in the know, I am now here:
http://blog.wilderspace.com/

I just finished watching the Office (UK version)

I'm left depressed. With that funny urge to run around and do something. To find something new. To find new people.

I'm left wanting to make people feel things. To do something that might touch them the way the Office touched me.

I feel like there is something I have to do, now, otherwise I will forget again.

"Life is nothing but a series of peaks and valleys, and you don't know where you are 'till you're climbing a peak or sliding down a valley."

My brain is operating on about seven channels right now, but I can't do them all at once. I don't know how to use all that energy, here, right now.

*click click click*

There, signed up for improv classes. That's better.

Men and women are physiologically different... and not just in the fun bits!

His Brain, Her Brain an article at the Scientific American website.

DID YOU KNOW THAT

Andy Serkis (the man who performed Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy) performed the physical acting and facial expressions for King Kong in Jackson's 2005 version?

NOW YOU KNOW!

Push myself. Throw myself in. Dive right in. Right in. Right on. Just keep swiming. Dive right in, the water's all that is.

We think we might drown and we do with heads above the water. And fool ourselves to think we're not. We gasp at life, we grasp at straws and think at least I'm not drowning. And asphyxiate with smiles on our faces.

Some people climb the hill and stop half way and think look how far I've come and some keep climbing to the top and survey all that lay below and think I have it all and some come running tumbling falling laughing down the hill to everything beyond. And don't stop. Don't stop. Don't. Stop. Running.

Climb the ladder, enjoy the view. Trust the former, revel the latter.

Give your pussy some love.

♫ Life is not tried it is meerly survived if you're standing outside the fire. ♫

So little is done for fear of change. Change someone's opinion of yourself today. Change is all there is love. Change from what is to what will be, from what has been to what is. My greatest fear is to not keep up with the change to what is. That I will fall behind, and be stuck in the past. Can we ever go to far, and stumble past into the future? weird shit happens when we do. Yes we can, and

Hey, try this Kids At Home: While lying in bed awaiting sleep, picture yourself on a cliff, the bottom obscured and invisible. Feel the wind. Hot or cold? Where is the sun? What color the ground? Breath your air. Now, jump off and fall. Feel the air ripping at your body, the speed that you are moving. Now fall. Fall. Fall. Fall until something happens. Then explore that, where ever it takes you.

Everything old is new again. There is everywhen, and there is now. You have never experienced now before, nor will you ever again. Similar nows, perhaps, but never the same one again.

Life is the music. We are the needle on the phonograph. We can no more stay the same than can the needle remain motionless. And when the music has finished, we will rest.

♫ When will I be free? When I shall cease to be. ♫

We are who? So true, so true. Who are we? We be, we be. Who we are. We are. We are.

The old days are past. The new days are here. The sister's a star. The friend is a father.

Don't let the echoes of the past dull the edges of the present. Don't let your memory cloud your thinking. Live in sunlight. Delightful laughter.

Isn't it a wonderful feeling to be alive? — Fred "Mister" Rogers

Why this post? What salient concept blob is stuck high-lit in my mind that drives this literary itch? This is an exorcism. I feel that this truly proclaimed will help the curbing of this tendency. I want to be soft and resolved, clean of slate and released.

Stop.

Stop.

Stop.

Let it be.

Everything has already been going to be in existence. We just don't know it until it happens. We have some total velocity x that is mostly used up traveling through time.

Nothing lasts. But nothing is lost.

Stay on the edge or languish.

You know why I hate my mom? She's an apathetic parent. Oh she thinks she's good at it, but really she just does it for you and then goes unfortunately deaf whenever you have something to say.

Like the time I had a new piece for my model train set. It was a powered crossing guard that was supposed to go up and down automatically when the train passed. You had to rig little wires to the tracks that the train would trigger when it was approaching. I tried forever to get it to work correctly. I thought and rethought how the wires worked, I could get it to work manually but I couldn't get the train to do it. I went to ask my mom for help but she was talking on the phone and told me she would help me later, but I was excited about my new train piece that went up and down so I asked her to please come help for just a minute. So she yelled at me: "Not now! I'm on the phone!" I was so upset and frustrated that I went and stomped the little plastic crossing guard gate to splinters. When she finally came to help me she yelled at me again for destroying it. I was about six years old at the time.

Or the time when I was eight I was taking a bath and ready to get out. "Just call me when you're ready to get out." she said and left. I called when I was ready, "I'm on the phone just wait!" was her reply. So I waited. And waited. And waited. I got bored and started playing with the soap. Sliding it around the empty tub, sliding around with it, getting very sudsy. I waited. Eventually I could wait no more and wandered out to find her, still covered in suds. Still on the phone. "Hey mom I cleaned the tub!" I said. She got mad at me because now she had to rinse all the soap of me.

Or the time when I spent all day working on a car made from Construx. I was really excited about it and proud of it. I had a sheet of stickers that said things like "WOW" and "YES" on them. I took it down stairs in the evening when dad was home too, to show it off. I really wanted some praise for it, so I asked my parents to put the stickers on it, to decorate it. They didn't really know what to do, until mom took one of the "WOW" stickers and put it on upside-down, so it said "MOM" and the laughed. In that one moment she took this thing that was mine and I was proud of, and claimed it for herself, without acknowledging my work or ingenuity. I ran upstairs, angry, and took the car apart.

My mom has this funny habit of not remembering things she's said. I really wanted a Nintendo when I was a kid. More than anything. My parents refused to buy me one because they thought it would rot my brain, or something. Really I think they were just ashamed that they never paid attention to their kids. So one day I'm asking my mom yet again and I say "what if I save up half, will you pay for half?" and to this she agreed. Remember, $50 is a lot of money for a seven year old. So I save for months. Eventually I have the money, I had anticipated the day for weeks. I know my mom knows that I have the money, and I'm just waiting for her to take me to the store to get one. I avoid her all day long because I don't want her to think I'm pestering her and annoy her into being angry and not take me. So I agonizingly wait, excruciatingly wait, biting my tongue, I ask her just once in the morning and she says later. So I wait. And now it's getting time for dad to get home. Maybe he'll take me! So I wait. And he gets home. And I wait for the announcement that we're going. And I wait. And now it's after dinner. "I saved up half, shouldn't we go get a Nintendo now? The store will close soon." I say. Mom and dad argue. "We're not going to the store." Mom says. "I never agreed to that." Devastation. I cry myself to sleep that night.

Or the time my best friend and I went to see a movie. She was going to pick us up when it was over, but she was two and a half hours late. She didn't even apologize.

Or the time I said I wanted to be a cosmonaut, and she laughs at me because only Russians can be cosmonauts.

Or the time I said I wanted to learn espanol and she said "spanish?" and I said no espanol and she said "spanish" and I thought is she not hearing me correctly? "no, espanol!" and she laughs at me because I don't know espanol is the spanish word for spanish.

Or the time I said "I want to study biochemistry" and mom says "oh wow, that's REALLY hard, that's like the hardest kind of chemistry." and I feel discouraged.

Or the time I walking into the kitchen one morning and said, "Mom, I want to be an actor." And she said, "oh really? that's really hard and takes years and years of school." And I say "oh" and another ambition is quashed.

My mom would tease me when I was very young. We would go to the ice cream store and ask me what flavor I wanted, vanilla chocolate or strawberry. I would say "strawberry!" because I liked it. Then she would say again, "strawberry, vanilla or chocolate?" and I would say "...chocolate?" because I thought I couldn't have strawberry because she asked me again like I answered wrong. And she would say, "chocolate strawberry or vanilla?" and I would say "vanilla??" getting desperate because no matter what I answered it would be wrong. they would do this until I was on the brink of tears before finally giving me ice cream. and I would eat my ice cream, hot tears of bewilderment in my eyes.

When I was VERY young I would play with my mom's car keys all the time, and hide them as a game. And she would look in one of the few places I hid them and find them. One day she lost her keys and blamed me for hiding them. But I hadn't hid them and she didn't believe me. This was the first time I ever realized that the world I perceived in my head didn't correspond to the world other people saw. She got angrier and angrier and made me help look with her and I couldn't find them and she got even angrier because she was convinced I had hid them and was lying to her and I couldn't make it better and I just wanted to go hide from her because if I wasn't there she wouldn't have blamed me for losing them.

Or the time I came out of my room an adult and said, "I want to sign up for some homeschool classes" and she said, "oh it's the middle of the month you can't." and that was it.

She didn't help when I needed it. She wouldn't listen when I had something to say. I could only ever do what fit into her life. She never helped me fit into mine.

Or the times I would be at the computer in my early teens, engaging in my new found hobby of talking to people, or teaching myself something, when she would come up behind me and wrench my arms up from the keyboard into the air and wave them about, making me "dance" with her. I used to get angry, and try to pull my arms away, but I was no match for her full-grown strength. Eventually I took her advice about bullies, and just went limp -- ignored her until she got bored and went away. Then I could continue my own life until she attacked me again.

Or the time when my best friend's family (my adopted family) were going on vacation for several months and I wouldn't see them or have their support for all that time, and I had to clean all the dishes in the sink before she would take me to their house to see them one last time before they left the next day. She called me about half an hour later to yell at me for the one plastic cereal bowl that had been in the sink when she got home (put there after I had finished the others) and to tell me she was coming to get me because I hadn't done my chores. I tried explaining, reasoning, and then I yelled at her for being petty and childish. She came to get me and we drove home in angry silence. I go to the kitchen to clean the offending bowl, and she had already cleaned it. So now me being home isn't about doing un-done chores, it's about her being vindictive and spiteful, because I have no way of fixing the supposed problem.

You know they made me clean the dishes without ever teaching me to use the dish soap? Or that you could mix hot and cold water to get a bearable temperature?

So mom, for all the times you ordered us to do chores until you exacting and never defined standards were met without ever showing us what you expected, while you sat on your ass and watched TV all day: fuck your parenting.

My dad says "benevolent absence" is good for kids. I think benevolent guidance would be better.

The fellow opened the front door. "Hello?" He called out. "Is anyone there?" There was no reply from the stale darkness inside. Dust motes floated languidly in the air. A few shafts of light broke free of the boarded up windows to stab against the floor, those airborne specks of neglect lit like tiny falling stars when dare they stay across the intruding sunlight. The smell of stale air, heavy, unwelcoming clung in his nostrils. He was aware of each breath as the scent, with every inhalation seemed to be silently imploring get out. This house had long been reclaimed by time, by entropy. It was a house that no longer cared for it's inhabitants.

Pushing the door open against reluctant hinges, the fellow stepped inside. The floor creaked and sagged ominously when he set his weight upon the carpet that was more mold than carpet now. Patches of moss here and there like pools of green, white tendrils rising up like ghostly grass. It was a verdant landscape of mildew and spore.

"Hello?" He called out again. The light he had seen had been flickering dimly from a second story window. He had been sure he had not imagined it. Stepping further into the gloom he saw the dim outline of a banister and stairs leading upward, years of dust laying undisturbed on each flight. He crept up to the foot of the stairs, peering upward, straining his hearing, but discerning only silence and age from the inky blackness of the second floor.

Discouraged, and feeling the weight of the dilapidated house pressing ever more strongly against his will, the fellow turns to leave when out of the side of his vision is a motion. Just a rush of blackness to blackness but it is enough to make his head snap around and his heart race. He stared intently at the spot where nothing was for a moment, again straining his senses against the unrelenting stillness. He froze, he could hear breathing! Softly, in the darkness, something was breathing slowly, It sounded like dry leaves across pavement. He felt chills down his back. Quickly he turned and ran the few steps through the open front door back into the cold night air.

He kept running down the path, away from the house. When he got to the gate he stopped, his hand, white knuckled, gripped the fence as he gasped for air and fought to regain composure. The air bit into his lungs with it's temperature, his breath great plumes of smoke. Snow glittered on the ground with reflected moonlight. Dimly he was aware that many hours must have passed in the house. He looked up at the house, the light in the second story window still flickered there but only for a moment, for as he watched it faded and was gone.

the girl has gone home
closeness no distance can change
tears fell as she left

Depeche Mode
Playing the Angel

A Pain That I'm Used To
2/5

John the Revelator
4/5

Suffer Well
3/5

The Sinner Inside Me
2/5

Precious
5/5

Macro
3/5

I Want It All
2/5

Nothing's Impossible
4/5

Introspectre
(instrumental)

Damaged People
3/5

Lilian
3/5

The Darkest Star
2/5

Waiting For the Night (Bare)
2/5

PROS:
Alternating between World of Warcraft and house chores.
Cute Bostonian geologists.
New pesonalized license plates that say FNYQUIP.
A computer program that plays birds chirping at dawn for an alarm.
Writing my own checkbook balancing program.
A clown for a sister.
The way the air smells before rain.

CONS:
A house that smells like pot smoke when you don't have any.
A stereo that turns it self off randomly.
Not having a lot of money to put into checkbook balancing program.

iTunes Music Store ate my balls.