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Dec. 28th, 2005 01:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
phthalombrageJesus is giving me a chance to eat Doritos.
I run with it.
I don't know where I want to be.
I was driving home from work, looking out the window at line after line of cars stretched out across the road like a spent typewriter ribbon, leaving no real room for error. (Unreal room ok. (i))
So many people.
Privacy doesn't exist in this city. It's not even a big city, but people have expanded to fill their container like gases... or like leprosy. You try to get away from it all and listen to yourself breathing and just as the silence settles around you and tucks itself in, a family tumbles enthusiastically out of an SUV, ready for a picnic, or a strange man with a goatee briskly jogs seven dogs on a tangle of leashes past. Even in the woods you run the risk of being discovered. Why the hell shouldn't you be allowed to go there? Nobody lives there. You're only breaking the privacy of trees and raccoons. And you want so badly to cross the canal at the little cement dam/waterfall, but the water level's never low enough or you're afraid of being caught. Mostly the latter. You don't mind tremendously if your shoes get wet or sludgy.
Everywhere you go, people will find you. It would be a comforting thought if you weren't borderline paranoid.
You're not even safe in your home. Today I awoke to a raucous drilling of holes in something and a random man, not even Sean this time, was replacing the doors again. A strange white van was parked in the drive. A white-haired man glanced critically at me as I maneuvered my motorcar out past the ficus into the stream of traffic trickling down the street.
"This door made it through the flood," my father noted with a trace of pride. (Dad and father have entirely different meanings.)
They threw it away. Bastards. It had a raised heart in the top panel and two recessed bullseyes in the lowest thirds. More than once I had done a handstand against it. Sure, the deadbolt was no longer functional and it smelled like cat pee, but I loved it. The rich color of the thick oak. The new door is so... light. Insubstantial. Light stares in through the nine rectangular panes in the upper half, brightening the dark lair, the family room. I'll (grudgingly, at first) get used to it. It's a nice door. (She opened the door, placing her hand on the door handle and twisting it gently clockwise...)
The hibicus bushes no longer bloom, or even grow. (edelweiss) Among other things.
Day by day he cuts out the roots of our past and piles them at the curb for garbagemen to heft into their putrid chariot au petit matin, and cart away to oblivion.
So I'm not making new curtains.
Yet if you're stabbed in a stairwell, secure in the heart of industrial design, you can bleed unnoticed for quite a few hours. Nobody looks there.
So many tourists airing their doughy white feet out in sandals, so many locals with children home from school bouncing around like rogue helium balloons inside of the cars, so many tiny fish crammed into their tin boxes (and no great goats to thin the flock) careening down US-41 on a bright winter day. To the beaches! To Blockbuster! They fill restaurants you never knew existed, spending the precious green notes speckled with traces of sweat and spit and blood, among other things, and wallow in the lukewarm sunshine. They may even be buying circus peanuts. Nobody eats those. At night, so many blinding halogen high beams streaming into your rearview mirror and illuminating your face against the dark of the car's headrest. You can't even run your tongue across your upper teeth, for the men in the white truck beside you will interpret this simple action as something depraved and catcall and wolf-whistle and roll away, the pigs. Yarr, filthy delicious creatures. (Even though I never liked them even when I didn't obstinately shun meat) Women come from ribs.
Even if you run to the mountains, you may come across some hermits or country folk or reckless adventurers like yourself. But there's a shortage of mountains here, except at gas stations when your car breaks down.
I guess the only place you're safe when you don't know where to go is in a tree.
People never go up there. Too much trouble. Don't got time. Lizards are creepy.
Eyes on the ground, on the cracks in the sidewalk they tramp on (every mother's back is webbed with tiny fractures), following the filagreed hands of the timepieces encircling their wrists, making sure their necktie is straight, scanning their coats for loose hairs to brush away or maybe methodically pinch, lift, and let float on their way to future use by birds as nesting material (how boring) and dust bunnies and lint antelope or other schmutz, watching their thick clumsy red fingers punch the tiny buttons on their cellular phones, scanning the horizon for more red lights to run and chicks to pick up... People barely even look up. They've been told not to stare at the sun. It burns out your retinas fiercer than a naked man on a football field. Plus you might see a cloud shaped like a teddy bear. Nostradamus warns firmly against those.
Problem is, when they do notice you up there, they stare.
Maybe they ask you to come down.
What if you don't want to come down?
The branches stretch as if cats in prayer to the sky around you cradle your body and the wind rocks you; the branches sway to its whispered rhythms. The leaves blot out the sun in patches, freckling your cheeks with sporadic shade. You're listening to the wind, waiting for the cue that will tell you it's safe to come down, or simply the snapping of one of the branches, which will bring you there breathless itself, but all you can hear is the clamor of a very annoying man in a blue uniform requesting that you alight at once. That never happens. Johnny Law cares not about children in trees, and firefighters only save kittens. You're no kitten.
You're content not being saved.
You go to church maybe twice a year nowadays.
You can't just refuse to come down from a tree when you're sixteen. The keys in your pocket, still warm from your touch, bind you to the responsibility of the clockwork world.
You'd love so much to stubbornly thwart all attempts at bringing you down.
"She's stuck in a tree and she won't come down."
"I'm not stuck and I don't like you! Now go away!"
To step on everyone's toes at once and, then upon your return to sea level... receive a warm reception.
It's just no longer possible. People stare at you when you go down the slide, and when you try to revive your memories of the monkey bars, your feet rest solidly on the mulch.
Up in the branches, (It's fascinating-- almost a miracle --that they even still support you after all these years, all these livres) away from the world, you half hope to be discovered just to see if you can refuse to come down, just so you eccentricity does not go unappreciated, just so somebody else knows what you accomplished so you can remember it all as the truth. Regardless, that's not the reason why you were there.
Part of it is the thrill of a challenge. Like a mountain there's a way up... and there's a highest point past which you cannot go. After that you're only going down. Gravity works with you then. But in a tree, the way down is yet another challenge. You don't want to fall, and your feet come down onto the branches, then the rest of your weight. Somehow it's scarier. You can't see them and hope not to slip. Closer to the ground, you can swing from branch to branch and do whatever since if you fall, your bones will remain intact. Climbing trees is such a cool thing to do.
It would probably be worse if they climbed up too. Maybe it would be interesting if a passerby elected to join you, but it's another body with which to burden the tree and worry about shattering and the solitude is usually what you're aiming for anyway.
Besides, they wouldn't.
The noises are on an entirely different level, even the ghost cries of mockingbirds in a rotten orange tree felled years ago, and you can see into your neighbor's backyards, if you're at home. There you feel conspicuous. Backyard trees are thus invalid as a refuge.
If you're somewhere nobody expects you, you're better off.
I don't want to be at home.
Then sometimes when I go places I don't want to be there either.
I doubt that I'm happy, actually. I'm not usually sad. For the first time in a while, I can't remember when I last cried.
It's a refined sort of ambivalence.
I'm kind of hoping to get run over by a car or something. Just before New Year's.
Nonetheless, whenever I whine about things they work themselves out and most of it goes smoothly. In a way, I wish I had the gall to whine about everything.
But I like past-midnight conference calls with cakkiepe and chole and hearing from lauren in vegas and almost-midnight pretty foreign films with good music and actually developed themes and melody.
Somehow I knew that whatever movie we picked in the store wouldn't matter. But I remembered that I want to see Kill Bill sometime and we never spoke French in a 7-11. Maybe we can do it at Leather Express or over past the shark. Or on a Tuesday Adventure.
Which reminds me, on vacations, Tuesdays, when I have spare time, or in any time of need or crisis, I'm quite willing to drive my friends around (within the 941 area, hopefully) because I usually have nothing better to do and I remember hating being stuck places. I like being useful and helping people in general, and hanging out, usually, and gas money doesn't matter, so don't bother. Having people in the car makes driving more fun and helps me not get lost, which is tonnes harder than it should be. Now that I have a phone, it'll be easier to arrange. And believe me, you'll know when I'm overwhelmed by other things...
Yeah life is okay.
I run with it.
I don't know where I want to be.
I was driving home from work, looking out the window at line after line of cars stretched out across the road like a spent typewriter ribbon, leaving no real room for error. (Unreal room ok. (i))
So many people.
Privacy doesn't exist in this city. It's not even a big city, but people have expanded to fill their container like gases... or like leprosy. You try to get away from it all and listen to yourself breathing and just as the silence settles around you and tucks itself in, a family tumbles enthusiastically out of an SUV, ready for a picnic, or a strange man with a goatee briskly jogs seven dogs on a tangle of leashes past. Even in the woods you run the risk of being discovered. Why the hell shouldn't you be allowed to go there? Nobody lives there. You're only breaking the privacy of trees and raccoons. And you want so badly to cross the canal at the little cement dam/waterfall, but the water level's never low enough or you're afraid of being caught. Mostly the latter. You don't mind tremendously if your shoes get wet or sludgy.
Everywhere you go, people will find you. It would be a comforting thought if you weren't borderline paranoid.
You're not even safe in your home. Today I awoke to a raucous drilling of holes in something and a random man, not even Sean this time, was replacing the doors again. A strange white van was parked in the drive. A white-haired man glanced critically at me as I maneuvered my motorcar out past the ficus into the stream of traffic trickling down the street.
"This door made it through the flood," my father noted with a trace of pride. (Dad and father have entirely different meanings.)
They threw it away. Bastards. It had a raised heart in the top panel and two recessed bullseyes in the lowest thirds. More than once I had done a handstand against it. Sure, the deadbolt was no longer functional and it smelled like cat pee, but I loved it. The rich color of the thick oak. The new door is so... light. Insubstantial. Light stares in through the nine rectangular panes in the upper half, brightening the dark lair, the family room. I'll (grudgingly, at first) get used to it. It's a nice door. (She opened the door, placing her hand on the door handle and twisting it gently clockwise...)
The hibicus bushes no longer bloom, or even grow. (edelweiss) Among other things.
Day by day he cuts out the roots of our past and piles them at the curb for garbagemen to heft into their putrid chariot au petit matin, and cart away to oblivion.
So I'm not making new curtains.
Yet if you're stabbed in a stairwell, secure in the heart of industrial design, you can bleed unnoticed for quite a few hours. Nobody looks there.
So many tourists airing their doughy white feet out in sandals, so many locals with children home from school bouncing around like rogue helium balloons inside of the cars, so many tiny fish crammed into their tin boxes (and no great goats to thin the flock) careening down US-41 on a bright winter day. To the beaches! To Blockbuster! They fill restaurants you never knew existed, spending the precious green notes speckled with traces of sweat and spit and blood, among other things, and wallow in the lukewarm sunshine. They may even be buying circus peanuts. Nobody eats those. At night, so many blinding halogen high beams streaming into your rearview mirror and illuminating your face against the dark of the car's headrest. You can't even run your tongue across your upper teeth, for the men in the white truck beside you will interpret this simple action as something depraved and catcall and wolf-whistle and roll away, the pigs. Yarr, filthy delicious creatures. (Even though I never liked them even when I didn't obstinately shun meat) Women come from ribs.
Even if you run to the mountains, you may come across some hermits or country folk or reckless adventurers like yourself. But there's a shortage of mountains here, except at gas stations when your car breaks down.
I guess the only place you're safe when you don't know where to go is in a tree.
People never go up there. Too much trouble. Don't got time. Lizards are creepy.
Eyes on the ground, on the cracks in the sidewalk they tramp on (every mother's back is webbed with tiny fractures), following the filagreed hands of the timepieces encircling their wrists, making sure their necktie is straight, scanning their coats for loose hairs to brush away or maybe methodically pinch, lift, and let float on their way to future use by birds as nesting material (how boring) and dust bunnies and lint antelope or other schmutz, watching their thick clumsy red fingers punch the tiny buttons on their cellular phones, scanning the horizon for more red lights to run and chicks to pick up... People barely even look up. They've been told not to stare at the sun. It burns out your retinas fiercer than a naked man on a football field. Plus you might see a cloud shaped like a teddy bear. Nostradamus warns firmly against those.
Problem is, when they do notice you up there, they stare.
Maybe they ask you to come down.
What if you don't want to come down?
The branches stretch as if cats in prayer to the sky around you cradle your body and the wind rocks you; the branches sway to its whispered rhythms. The leaves blot out the sun in patches, freckling your cheeks with sporadic shade. You're listening to the wind, waiting for the cue that will tell you it's safe to come down, or simply the snapping of one of the branches, which will bring you there breathless itself, but all you can hear is the clamor of a very annoying man in a blue uniform requesting that you alight at once. That never happens. Johnny Law cares not about children in trees, and firefighters only save kittens. You're no kitten.
You're content not being saved.
You go to church maybe twice a year nowadays.
You can't just refuse to come down from a tree when you're sixteen. The keys in your pocket, still warm from your touch, bind you to the responsibility of the clockwork world.
You'd love so much to stubbornly thwart all attempts at bringing you down.
"She's stuck in a tree and she won't come down."
"I'm not stuck and I don't like you! Now go away!"
To step on everyone's toes at once and, then upon your return to sea level... receive a warm reception.
It's just no longer possible. People stare at you when you go down the slide, and when you try to revive your memories of the monkey bars, your feet rest solidly on the mulch.
Up in the branches, (It's fascinating-- almost a miracle --that they even still support you after all these years, all these livres) away from the world, you half hope to be discovered just to see if you can refuse to come down, just so you eccentricity does not go unappreciated, just so somebody else knows what you accomplished so you can remember it all as the truth. Regardless, that's not the reason why you were there.
Part of it is the thrill of a challenge. Like a mountain there's a way up... and there's a highest point past which you cannot go. After that you're only going down. Gravity works with you then. But in a tree, the way down is yet another challenge. You don't want to fall, and your feet come down onto the branches, then the rest of your weight. Somehow it's scarier. You can't see them and hope not to slip. Closer to the ground, you can swing from branch to branch and do whatever since if you fall, your bones will remain intact. Climbing trees is such a cool thing to do.
It would probably be worse if they climbed up too. Maybe it would be interesting if a passerby elected to join you, but it's another body with which to burden the tree and worry about shattering and the solitude is usually what you're aiming for anyway.
Besides, they wouldn't.
The noises are on an entirely different level, even the ghost cries of mockingbirds in a rotten orange tree felled years ago, and you can see into your neighbor's backyards, if you're at home. There you feel conspicuous. Backyard trees are thus invalid as a refuge.
If you're somewhere nobody expects you, you're better off.
I don't want to be at home.
Then sometimes when I go places I don't want to be there either.
I doubt that I'm happy, actually. I'm not usually sad. For the first time in a while, I can't remember when I last cried.
It's a refined sort of ambivalence.
I'm kind of hoping to get run over by a car or something. Just before New Year's.
Nonetheless, whenever I whine about things they work themselves out and most of it goes smoothly. In a way, I wish I had the gall to whine about everything.
But I like past-midnight conference calls with cakkiepe and chole and hearing from lauren in vegas and almost-midnight pretty foreign films with good music and actually developed themes and melody.
Somehow I knew that whatever movie we picked in the store wouldn't matter. But I remembered that I want to see Kill Bill sometime and we never spoke French in a 7-11. Maybe we can do it at Leather Express or over past the shark. Or on a Tuesday Adventure.
Which reminds me, on vacations, Tuesdays, when I have spare time, or in any time of need or crisis, I'm quite willing to drive my friends around (within the 941 area, hopefully) because I usually have nothing better to do and I remember hating being stuck places. I like being useful and helping people in general, and hanging out, usually, and gas money doesn't matter, so don't bother. Having people in the car makes driving more fun and helps me not get lost, which is tonnes harder than it should be. Now that I have a phone, it'll be easier to arrange. And believe me, you'll know when I'm overwhelmed by other things...
Yeah life is okay.
