a definite beginning
In your head, in your head.
The problem with writing is that it always has a definite beginning and end.
In this way it feels a poor tool to capture the feeling of consciousness. Being finite. Being set in stone.
Still some times feel that way. Like you’re hardened and stuck in place.
No going back, and everything before just a murky primordial past.
The future no clearer.
Going full tilt, the momentum carrying you off the tracks. Where will you go?
Go out with Garrett on his birthday, somehow ending up there early, talking to Olivia.
All night, somehow I find the sense not to ask her.
In the dark, swimming. And wanting to go back, through all those lost years, to a time when I was younger, and more handsome. Back to a time when things might have meant more.
When I was still crazy, but tempered by the best intentions.
Swimming at night, in a pool, naked with two girls I went to highschool with.
A strange feeling now, to be adrift in a sea of people like this. Washed and lapped with new waters.
But still always the same person beneath skin. Scathed and raw, letting the light bleed in. What am I doing here and why am I staying?
In the darkness, a million points of isolated light washing over me. But every star is dead when the light finally arrives.
Under any veneer of sociability, gregariousness, or even general warmth, there’s still a rotten, unreclaimable core.
Under every finite word is a slippery, slimy concept that bends and flexes like a strange, sick shadow. Try to nail it down and it squirms away.
Keep going.
Listen until ears hurt. Smoke until lungs hurt. Walk until feet hurt. Work until soul hurts.
Stare into windows and steel and water seeking something there. Now familiar, now strange.
Wondering if.
First comes art and photography.
Second, family.
Then friends.
Fourth is your soul.
Fifth is the earth.
Sixth, a livelihood.
Seventh, promises made.
Now good acts.
Next to last, your humanity.
Finally, romantic devotion.
