emotional avalanches
1 of some
my chest started heaving this afternoon in the typical way that panic teases me, before developing into a downward fibonacci spiral.
naturally started thinking about bridges again and the first civil engineers and didn’t they ever dream of swan diving?
i’m watching 20th century women as a coping mechanism
(that sounds like a bad band name, or a bad sentence)
bad sentence fragments.
everything does feel like it is in pieces, if not for any reason other than by design
‘god’s plan for me’;
some type of tormented chiaroscuro, or whatever it is that travels beyond the lightest lights and the darkest darks.
I wonder if I were a wolf, would I howl at the moon tonight, or would I see how small that crescent is and remember that I will soon forget it all?
my short term memory? impressively curt.
my long term memory? been second guessing that one.
I might be confusing werewolves for wolves. the thing from the other thing.
last night I dreamt about being on a vacation with a group of friends but also maybe it was family and actually, some of them might’ve been made up, but we kept getting lost or…rather…I was getting lost or getting left behind and it made me feel left behind and
I feel left behind but feel, almost molecularly, that I am supposed to be-
separated, another synonym that I am not quite ready to claim, deconstructed;
in some way or some context these days.
…
these days my therapist tells me that I have no need to view myself as so despicable but I assure him I cannot help it and what I did not tell him is that it feels like having a third arm that grew with one sole purpose as an arm and that arm keeps punching me square in the face.
/
try again.
and again and again and again.
over
under
over
under
tie a knot don’t tie a noose weave it into the threading of my veins-
is this how one figures it out? how one finds enlightenment?
I had a professor in college who was the smartest human being I personally have ever met and not only that he’s aware and talented but strangely intelligent.
he told us he could tell us tales from the bottom of the cave.
I had to reference books he had written in the essays I wrote about zen buddhism because he had studied zen buddhism in a monastery for 12 years in Japan (I think I have those numbers correct) but even at his age, which was old back then, I recall him being 65 or so when I was between 19 and 22,
he told us that he lived alone, still searching for enlightenment. he also told us how he only had one spoon and one bowl and those were all the dishes he could ever need in his home for just him and I thought very hard about how he said it as if definitively, no one else would eat with him.
I like to believe he would share if he had someone to sit across from him, if he had two chairs. seems unlikely about the chair count. after he screened The Red Shoes for us and we as a class dissected the existential dread of being an artist and how to also hold space for romantic love, maybe in the sense that an artist could not love their art and love another person simultaneously, he told us he had a partner once, but no longer. he had loved without enlightenment, and now he had no love. he had neither.
I do not want to find out if he is still alive and well because
I do not want to confront death again and in this manner or rather, in this manner again and
I do not want to know I do not want to know
those are not answers for me but I have many others to find
hands are tired
been biting my nails
been pulling out my hair
been having those nightmares where someone I once loved or still love tells me directly to my face the exact things I already despise about myself and punish myself for (even though my therapist told me to stop punishing myself)
how do you stop punishing yourself when all! I! ever! had! was! a fucking hammer so of course I look like the fucking nail
in
my
own
coffin
(I still have the fortune cookie message from the summer of 2013 in Ohio that taught me the lesson of how everything looks like a nail when all you have is a hammer - I still have not mastered the art of eradicating this predicament within myself).
/
my fingers hurt now. my cuticles pulse and my thumb aches from opening a jar of maple syrup earlier that was so stuck and crystalized on the lid that I sat on the floor of the kitchen and cried about it and then I cried about a few more thoughts and I haven’t even touched upon those yet
but I still made the muffins because
eventually
the lid came off
took a breath
screamed a little
until timers beeped and I closed it back up and
sorry,
that was going somewhere but I grew flushed from frustration, all thought circles fading like pencil scratchings from a left hand.
…
more impassivity,
less impulsive standstills?
can’t stop thinking about that professor. he made us read the razor’s edge and countless other books and excerpts. didn’t read most of them. can’t remember the point of them so I resort to google now to remind myself what is the point of Zen Buddhism.
appears that the goal is to “let everything go as it goes” and “open the mind without philosophizing”
is it antithetical to be in this much therapy where I overthink and I speculate and analyze each step my soul makes when all I desire is to transcend beyond the need for self reflection as i’ve always known it?
oftentimes I have equated my existence to a performance art piece, as if just living and breathing with this bitter brain and ever-aching body was of a purpose I would die trying to define and couldn’t—wouldn’t*— be limited to the confines of my interior.
again, the interior has always found it’s way to unfurl itself to the exterior.
digression: feeling pulled inside out like a cable knit sweater, I recall my professor bumping into me on Pine Street about a week or so before my senior thesis. this was April or May of 2015, and I had shingles.
another digression before I land where today’s last train is heading: I hadn’t had class with him since the previous semester, when I was in the deepest throws of my phobia-induced anxiety attacks that led to unparalleled bouts of agoraphobia. some days I would leave class to get fresh air and quickly become immobilized on the ground of the 12th floor bathroom for hours after class had ended. all of my belongings left behind on a desk until I gathered myself and found my way back home, head hung in shame.
end digression (?): he must’ve been a neighbor of mine, living around Antique Row where I did, as we often saw each other on the street on strolls to and from school. he stopped me to ask how I was doing, and I said “i’m doing fine in spite of looming thesis reviews and graduation and then I have to be a real person”. probably made worse small talk than that. wish I could speak as wisely as he did.
gave him the details of when my work was going to be installed and open for viewing. said I hoped he would come see it. said I referenced Siddartha by Herman Hesse in my thesis statement, thinking he would appreciate it, having been the professor who introduced me to the book years prior in another course of his.
"I know nothing, I possess nothing, I have learned nothing," he quoted with a smile.
“I think i’m still in my well-upholstered hell,” I responded, smiling back.
with aged eyes and growth ring-like creases around his face, he looked at me knowingly…understanding in ways I could only dream of ever reaching on my own. he gave my shoulder a quick, firm, and encouraging pat, smiled once more, and continued on his way, likely heading to eat alone with nothing but a single spoon and bowl.
I walked home, to the multitude of utensils and plates and bowls. I took the medicine for the shingles I was combatting. I tried to eat something, but I couldn’t stomach it.
in my patterns of those days,
in the nature of Uroboros,
I chose to swallow my own tail
(this means something; I am sure of it.)
how strange it is, indeed, to be full of myself, even when that very self is empty.
no love, no enlightenment. neither.
