panta rhei

 This is sort of how I always feared I would go: slowly declining, inch by maddening inch, at a pace so slow I can't tell when it's worse and when it's not. 
I suppose I've always been at least a little in love with death, but the crossover from the abstract (divine) into the concrete (earthly) is like an x-ray reading. Everything is freakish, here in reality; everything is so smooth in my mind. Rocks tumbled in the endless rolling plane. When I die, if a funeral must be held at all, I'd wish it to be held in silence. Everyone sit and think for two hours; could you even do it? Maybe if you were properly medicated. Just don't fall out of your seat, now, and keep your swaying to yourself.
The urge to find answers is a justifiable human trait, but see how 'they' pick and choose when it's allowable and when it's not. There is little to know rhythm.

My headspace is a cool breezed field lit by starlight. I don't know what I mean, not really, but it's important. I keep coming back to it, keep trying to figure out what the import is in the way I am-being.

A chemically-induced sleep is going to roll me under before I can sort out my thoughts through this tapptaptapping. Last night I was kissed by a boy I thought I was attracted to and found it quite boring, I was heavily flirted with by a girl whom I'd thought too judgemental to spare me anything other than an utter innocent's desperate musings, and saw a soul bared through inebriation that was more like what I take myself to be than any other I've seen/felt/heard. Where I go from here, I don't know. These people, these people... parties here are like fragmented safe spaces of recognition, my own social failings notwithstanding. In one night, I both liberated myself and solidified the structures of my self. 
Thus the quiet feeling that saturates my mind. Sober, but not brooding; a nice change.

I almost forgot to get my books before I left this morning, almost forgot that he never gave them back. "Kenneth," I said, waking him up, "I'm just going to grab my Kierkegaard and Foucault, k?" 
"Yes, ok," he says, rolling over slightly, blanket wrapped around his body as always.
"I don't work until after you're gone," I say after I pick the books up off of his dresser, "so good luck and safe travels."
His figure goes slightly stiff. "Are you saying goodbye?" he asks.
"Uh. Yes?" I say.
"Oh. Wait. Shit." He rolls the rest of the way over. "What to say?" he asks, and I leave it unanswered, wait for him to decide for himself. "Have you ever considered studying economics?" is what finally comes next.
"It... it never really occured to me," I say, "I mean, I never gave that any thought." I keep my face clear; I have to around this place.
"You should put off graduating," he tells me, "stay another year, study some economics. You could probably find some that is not mathematically based." 
"Well, the university is expensive, I don't want to be paying off loans for the rest of my life. It will be bad enough as is."
He blinks at me, and I say my goodbyes again, remind him to get those goddamned library books in to the staff before he goes, and the reluctant goodbye that he finally gives trails after me in such an open-ended manner that I feel like I'm leaving silken threads behind me. Who knows what bonds we leave when we go?
Out the door, this time, and another resident stops me for yet another goodbye. I'd forgotten that he was leaving as well, probably because he didn't have library books that are checked out in my name. That's two of the more conversational ones gone (which is, I suppose, as it should be...), that's the parting of two people who perhaps considered me a strange sort of friend in their sequestered exile. I wish I could feel the sorrow I know is buried somewhere in my chest, but it's buried by a confused nausea -- I can't grip the idea that people feel attached to me, it's such a slippery concept, not when so many of my reaches have be left ungrasped long enough for me to grow embarassed of the efforts and ultimately withdraw them. Over and over and over again, so that when connections, bonds, whatever happens...
Well. What on earth am I supposed to do with that? Embarassment is default; I try not to look at it while not turning away from it or pushing it away (urge as the dark corners of my mind may).

My non-directional anger spends the day tripping back and forth over the boundary that separates strength from weakness. It's not my normal gruff irritation, which is something I'm convinced developed as a way to syphon off the hot emotions so that I can be calm when the pressured times are stumbled upon.
With this new anger comes new ways of dealing with situations. Tomorrow I'll stand in front of a woman I looked up to for my first three years away from home and I don't think I'll be able to keep from being angry, though I imagine it will be more like ice than fire; but I will not (be able to) sympathize with her anymore, I will not (be able to) seek the happy medium, I will not (be able to) rationalize, redirect, rephrase, clarify... I don't know where the list ends any more than I can believe in any sort of difference between Can and Will.
Has my peacekeeping spirit bled out, or has my idea of peace been radically shifted? 

Life is fucking hilarious, either way. It may be amusing only to me that I wasn't caught up on my reading until this morning, that I was effectively touching on landmarks by sheer accident last night.

"For every girl who is tired of acting weak when she is strong, there is a boy tired of appearing strong when he feels vulnerable. For every boy who is burdened with the constant expectation of knowing everything, there is a girl tired of people not trusting her intelligence. For every girl who is tired of being called over-sensitive, there is a boy who fears to be gentle. For every boy for whom competition is the only way to prove his masculinity, there is a girl who is called unfeminine when she competes. For every boy struggling not to let advertising dictate his desires, there is a girl facing the ad industry’s attack on her self-esteem. For every girl who takes a step toward her liberation, there is a boy who finds the way to freedom a little easier."

I don't remember where I found this, but I was 17 and I found it moving enough to write it down for future reference. Now all I can think is "god, this is still reproducing the gender binary system, it's not good enough."
Times have changed, my head feels overfull. Can a brain get stretch marks? I shudder at the thought.

Another symptom of stress has manifested: uncontrollable tears over stupid, stupid shit.

My heart hurts; I think I'm dying; I have cancer, I have arthritis, I have a sinus infection, I have ice in my blood; why is it so goddamned cold in here? My chest should be self-heating, like the rest of this breaking-down system that nature is so highly praised for.
"The human animal is so amazing!"
What do They know? Who do They tell, and in what language, and are we (MY we, this mix of fantasms, sylphs, and polymorphic plants) anywhere near reasonably certain that there wasn't something lost in translation?

I am weighted down past the point of constructive challenge. Cement -- not ice -- I see.

I charmed the lady behind the desk into being nice; it wasn't very hard, which makes me think that perhaps it had more to do with her having a good morning than me having people-skills. But I spent the night informally counseling my coworkers and the residents of the hospital (one after another after another), so maybe I'm just firmly in that mode of thinking/talking now and thus the ease...

In any case, the conversation didn't go quite as I'd planned. Although I exacted an agreement of compassion from her, she also elicited an unexpected amount of sympathy in me. This sucks, because she'll go back on her word many times before I feel fed up with her again. Today may have been a good enough morning for her to listen to me, but there will be a thousand more moments in which she's stressed and uncaring and willing to pass on the negativity.
We've reached an impasse, but c'est la guerre.

Perhaps my sympathy has much to do with recent disappointments in the self-same people who constitute most of the grievances which led me to sit down with the lady behind the desk; they seem so unwilling to put in more than the bare minimum, sometimes, and there have been a couple of instances of outright lying about mistakes.
I shouldn't even be here right now, I should be sleeping, but one of them contacted me because she couldn't do her shift today. I didn't even bother to check with the others since the last few times I asked for volunteers to cover a shift or to pick up an extraneous one I was greeted by silence and an empty inbox. So today I just came in myself. Fuck it.
And, so, perhaps my sympathy is borne of a degree of empathy.
The difference lies in the way I'm still dealing with the people I coordinate; I hope that I don't become as bitter and unwilling to compromise as the lady behind the desk has. I shall cross my fingers, knock on wood, and write reminders to myself in odd places. Assuming I don't expire from lack of sleep too soon to see if I pass the test of leadership (and I must confess that I'm very curious to see how I'll fare), then perhaps I will manage to dodge the fate of my own nominal leader.

Medicines are a funny thing. Speaking to people in ways that move them, even funnier. Or odder if you like, if that makes more sense to someone out there.
The world stays within my grasp if I just keep as still as possible. I have to keep my "even" head steady on my shoulders, keep my eyes fixed on whatever, or at most moving slowly.

Now that the near-dementiated state of today is being flushed away (I hope! Maybe just glossed over...) I can see the bits worth remembering coming through. I will have to look them over, give them a spit shine, and then tuck them places where they won't be so easily drawn into the muck and mire that my moodpool has a penchant to become. Recently, anyway, perhaps it didn't always have such a disposition.

I wish things were included in the instruction papers, or the consultation. "Don't move to fast, and you can go to sleep whenever you want," maybe, or "it gives you a really cool head space, but be careful about how quickly you move."

I hope they gave Karl this shit. His mind never stops though, whereas mine seems to prefer those airy states that aren't so resistant to full-on sleep. So on one hand, it might not do as much for him, on the other it's plain that he needs it more. I probably don't even need it at all, but playing with the medical system at whim is becoming a new hobby.
Networking in odd places is even better. Onward and outward and inwards alllll at once. Not quite backwards, as that realm is left to another Other than which is normally spoken of.
But I shall have to ponder it more, that last direction and its occupants.

The two drunk women were angry at my disbelief, but I was just as angry at them for daring to refute my beliefs. Maybe there're plenty of compliments in what they said, but they were still telling me that I'm wrong.

When I'm not engaged in conversation, I either feel blessedly blank or completely miserable. The blank times are the best, because they usually involve going into super-productive mode, where I reorganize the hell out of my room, do all the reading I think I might have to do in the next few weeks, and take the long routes to classes so that physical exertion ("good for the heart!" I tell myself) makes thought blur and fade into something too light to matter.

"You have no right to be unhappy," a former friend informed me. I laughed and laughed and couldn't stop. When I'd finished, he was gone from the table. Rights and purposes and causes are nothing. Human-made nothings. Fuck 'em all, I've been in an undeserved fog since Friday, and the more I tell myself that there's no reason for me to feel this way (which is probably a rich untruth, but I can't face the other direction), the more of a secure grasp I'm enveloped in. I am its company, and it knows that I've been had.
So, whatever. I'll keep hiding, keep organizing my room, keep overdoing the schoolwork. People can't -- people won't? -- help, and I'm having trouble communicating within myself so it's mostly a moot point to look outside of me.

He watched me finish reading his story, excitement and nervousness in his eyes. I couldn't tell which of the two emotions was for caution's sake, but I figured I'd play it safe anyway; we'd go with a piece of gently-spoken honesty. Total honesty was, as usual, far too daunting of a task (one which I suspect lies beyond the scope of mere language).
"I don't think you've done enough drugs to write like your heroes," I said, gently and honestly. I could feel my eyes and voice project an odd sense of concern. Like, oh dear, that's no good, this just won't do, etc. It might have been a by-product of trying to speak without giving any opportunity for pity to be heard. Not that I pitied him; not that I didn't? Anyway. I probably shouldn't have been as shocked as I was when he teared up. Unknown soft spot, bullseye. He hadn't even actually told me who his literary gods were. In fact, we hadn't spoken much in four years.
To some people, though, "let's get some coffee and catch up" ends up meaning "let's give you another chance to break my heart."
Why you gotta crumble that way, cookie?

It's almost irritating that I can't simply let fear conquer me (as I used to). It's like I've lost a valuable excuse and now must shove my sleeves up and get to work on fighting this shit.
Day after day after bloody, mind-numbing day of fighting demons. The same ones, over and over. They find new tactics, they hide in new experiences, and it's up to the rest of me -- for they are indubitably a part of "me" -- to recognize their shadows and name them for what they are. Is there ever any progress? It seems not, though I get the feeling that the process of recognition is going more and more efficiently as time wears onward. The actual battles seem more tedious and less noteworthy. Whereas before they were epic! In my head rang the clamor of war, and the outcome seemed a matter of absolute importance.
Now... Now the struggles in my head are just my demons pushing at things; "look, here, this is bad," comes the whisper, and as I begin to despair there's a nagging sense of something off about it and "AHA!" I cry, "foul play!" The demons just shrug as they recede to await another opportunity to press at boundaries. Intensity and frequency have gone down, insidiousness and craft have gone up.

I wonder if maybe ultimate serenity, peace, happiness are myths of an odder sort than cynics would have one believe.

"I want to spend the rest of my life with him," she says with shining eyes and that gentle smile (her lips remind me of childhood toys, which is odd yet not offputting). The cracks in my corpse of a bloodpump break open just a little bit more. How can you say that about someone you can't even talk to about these emotional things? I wonder. But it's not clear if I'm actually sad for her, or for the concepts that I see making their way out of my belief system a little more each moment I allow myself to think. She pauses, and the lack of sound roars between us. Soon, she's satisfied, and I'm left alone.

The phenomenologists, the existentialists, these are my messiahs; betimes when I read their legacies I can feel God in my head, for God is Anguish and Mystery and Oneness. The philosophies of my heroes are exquisitely opposed to the ascetic solitude of the masses of holy-book-literalists who swarm our tiny blue marble of a home. The word(s) they swear by and to would not leave them so empty if only they would truly feel them, think them, and take them for the human history that they are. For in each person there are shadows and whispers which smack of depths that defy language, logic, knowledge... and the truly great minds have given us tools with which to seek this yawning chasm of something. At times the written paths send us inward, away from the world, and some send us outward, away from the ourself, but I feel most enlightened by those which posit a unity of mindbodyworldotherLife; it's ambiguous at best, but as far as I've experienced, ambiguity is best.

And those who believe that science has trumped religion tell me that ambiguity is foolhardy, that only objective truths hold any hope of sanity. If that is true, I'd rather be wildly insane than believe in the numbing, bleached facts of scientific objectivism. Their road leads only to being strapped down and force-fed artificial meaning which they've hidden in the core of their "facts," their "common sense."

No, no to both of these roads; they are two sides of the same coin! I will be mad, I will take up the invitations that Life offers, and I will not be swayed by their petty, commercialized gods, whether they call them thus or instead sciences, prophets, saviors and so on ad-fucking-infinitum.
If only they could escape the What in order to better see the How of their dogmas...

Goddamn. If I didn't feel rather emotionless right now, I would probably be completely overwhelmed with all the blindspots being swamped at once with things I'd thought were neatly tucked away for at least a while longer.
As luck would have it, though, I feel rather like a vulcan, or 7-of-9 (I'm not a trekkie nerd, I swear, they just have the best examples of not-cold but still neatly logical beings who aren't robots or benevolantly smug elders or whatever the fuck, you know?). I'm all like "Hmm. Fascinating." and "that's irrelevant."

I don't liiiiiiike writing analytically. It's all so bleached-out and mind-numbing. I want to write about wonderful, ambiguous, hippie crap :(

There were strangers dancing with one another on the streets in celebration of Obama's well-earned victory; then there were strangers crying in each other's arms in mourning of proposition 8's success.
What a buzzkill, California.

I'm trying to write an email explaining my rather ill-founded anger, but I can't get it at all right, and so I keep getting more frustrated and wrathful. I tried calling, even though the prospect of the more-immediate communication of phone conversation seemed daunting, but he didn't pick up. Maybe it's a sign, Life saying "no no, not now. Chill out."
I'm torn.

Where is the distinguishing line between suppressing and letting go? It shouldn't be difficult to find...
How do I refrain from negativity and still feel like I'm taking care of myself?
Pride is unnecessary, yet without it I feel deflated, weak.
"Your own logic used against you!" he crowed, and my half-formed thoughts of interest in the newly-raised topic were crushed beneath a wall of IWillNotFeelThisNow. There was, I think, a nano-moment of hot indignation, shame, pain, and a final blinding ray of rage, but it was all quickly bundled up and at least temporarily subsumed by my subconscious; too extreme for processing in public.
It mightn't have been so bad if not for the precursory accusations of "that's YOU, not HER," "that's YOUR brain, not HERS," that stopped me ice-cold with the immediate descent into BadThought.

Ugh. My stomach is twisting itself into all sorts of interesting shapes, the more I think about it. Why can't I focus on the election? I was so excited/terrified last night... now all I can think about is how tiny, useless, pathetic I feel.

They treat the symptom, consciousness.
Or is it that they treat the symptoms OF consciousness?

I don't bother to care that I cannot convey myself in any way that would be understood. It appears to be better to ignore those aspects as things which are meant only for strangers in bits and pieces.
"I don't understand." ... I know. I iknow. The only danger you face is the possibility of someone else with a wide-open mind coming along and "understanding" what you do not.
But that's not much of a danger, is it? You are secure in your ties with me; I am secure in my own obscure way.

I don't lie, exactly, but I think that perhaps I do make things up as I go along. Sometimes (so many!) my mouth speaks more honesty than my mind actually bothers with. It startles me.
Other times, thoughts twist and churn and my vocal cords hastily spit out something - anything! - to end the tense pauses.
Therein lies the contrast between intuition and distortion; light and shadow.

I remember hating the metaphors, the poetry. Our ability to communicate in real, concrete terms shows how we've grown... but sometimes I miss it. There are so many times lately when I've wished to simply translate chaotic, choking thoughts into flowing and innocuous words. But you would question, now, instead of simply settling for either your own (probably incorrect) interpretation or mere silent puzzlement. We have given each other that right. The right to question, the right to reach out, the rights to request, demand, pull, plead.
I feel as though the only people we question more than each other is ourselves.


Goddamn. I'm overstepping myself constantly these days. I must keep more silent and watchful. Why is the balance between confidence and caution so hard to find? I've got a foot on either side of the teeter-totter and the damned thing keeps shifting! Confidence is ultimately embarrassing and caution is exhausting, frustrating. L'bleh.

I suppose there's no point in my attempting to help others when their awkward responses never get any better... in fact, there's no reason for me to think there's anything but resentment in their hearts for my actions (which fits with the lone-selfish-bastard persona being projected). It's hardly any effort for me, all quite little things that I'm happy to offer. But, fuck it, I'm out. It's not worth the bad feelings that I get out of each try.
I think this makes me the second-to-last person willing to go the extra mile... one more bitch to go, and they'll get the isolated peace that they're clearly convinced they crave.
I should probably stop trying to save people from themselves, especially since I can barely keep myself going half of the time.

Also, I'm quite annoyed that the HPV vaccine hasn't been approved for males. Why the fuck wouldn't that be tested at the SAME TIME as for females? This country is absurd; Europe and Australia both studied and approved of the vaccine for males, which as far as I can tell is identical to that used for females. *frustration*
I think the original excuse was that "males don't get health complications from HPV," or as one guy put it to another who was worried that he had it: "So? That shit don't affect you."
However, males are more likely to get the cross-gender complication known as "anal cancer," which sounds super-exciting to have. It's different than colon cancer, more localized I suppose. There's also been new discoveries of HPV causing penile cancer.
So, now that our wonderful doctors and medical corporations here in the U.S. are realizing that, shit, HPV isn't just negligible in guys, they're trying to play catch-up in the vaccine game. Nevermind that Europe and Australia took the route of vaccinating the greatest number of people it would be beneficial to vaccinate (age group and # of sexual partners can indicate how likely it is that the person already has one or more strain of the virus) in order to actually slow the spread of the more statistically harmful strains. I can't even decide if this fuckery is caused by monetary values, inability to speak of sexuality, or what. My mind is boggled.

"To be be-souled (empsychos) is to be living, animate, a cause of motion."
And so, it's not enough to sit there and tell myself that all things flow, that I shall float back and forth in the tides of it all; no, to be conscious is to act...