4/2
The last time I kept a continuous journal was just about a year ago, when I was living in Tukwila. At night I’d huddle under my quilt on a mattress on the floor, since a bolt in my bedframe had shorn through in the middle of the night, and the creaky metal skeleton lay uselessly a few feet away. I wrote by the light of a dawn simulator and for a few weeks I filled a spiral notebook with longing, deliberation, verses, drawings, averaging a page a day. Writing was difficult. I forced myself to persist, even when all I could write about was how horrible I was at writing, and I found that, after my self doubt passed, the words came easily. I’ve heard it told that the worst thing you can do while writing is take your pen off the paper, and it’s that focusing on process is more fulfilling than focusing on results, and better for overall development. I was learning something, and not just journalling: I was attacking the guitar ferociously, teaching myself to play by finding patterns just out of my ability to play and practicing them relentlessly. My guitar and my journal were my tools of release, separate but not exclusive; as I wrote riffs without melody and verses without song a pattern I’d been strumming found its way into my journal, or a scrap of writing from attempted poems came to be set to music in my head. All and all it was an experience of growth. I’m not sure why my journalling tapered off–probably malaise settling in and the habit rotting out–but I believe writing on a regular basis again will be good for me, good to have a place to air out thoughts and the record to analyze.
4/4
Beth’s out of town. Camping with family. I think it’s good for us to have a chance to be apart, but I do miss her. It’s kind of amazing having a best friend who is always ready to go do stuff with you. Surely she’s off on the peninsula, sunning by the sea and recording her own thoughts similarly. Maybe not.
Things have been better for us. We’re having fun together again. I’m not so crossed up inside, although I can feel depression clinging gently to my actions, like gravity, slowing me as I progress through the day, but it’s not more than I can manage. I’ve gotten stuff done today. I dipped my nose into Proust for a good second. It was refreshing to read in the woods, by sunlight, and the beautiful scenery that Proust describes which characterizes Swann’s way and the Guermantes way was easily summoned up by my mind, using the surrounding natural beauty not as a distraction from but a platform for imagination. I wrote in this journal, which I had been putting off and sort of dreading, but for no good reason, as it’s pretty compelling work. I can imagine struggling to find something–even just one sentence–to write without hiding my face with shame, which might be way I was hesitant to begin. Imagining possible failure can be more terrifying than actually encountering it. I guess I should remember that I can do most things I put my mind to, and here I’m putting my mind towards re-developing the habit of writing.
4/5
It’s Easter. The weather is appropriately temperate the sun shines with intensity through my window. I can feel it on my skin. I think I could appreciate the sun more if I hadn’t made the executive decision to get drunk last night–I’m talking pretty drunk. It was really excellent, really, throwing back a bottle of pissy malt liquor (and getting appropriately pissed) on the beach with my friends, playing guitar songs to the sea and playing 3-on-3 chess under the dim LED glow of a headlamp, but I woke up feeling like my head was covered in gauze and gently spinning. Oh well. Hangovers mean lazy mornings, necessarily, and coffee and cigarettes on the back porch, and greasy breakfast. Today I’ll have the coffee only, but memories of mornings after nights of debauchery flit through my head–Kendra tearing through a pack of Kings, squinting under massive sunglasses–
4/6
Week two. Monday. Early mornings. Beth is back. She had a hard time getting out of bed. She told me she feels disconnected from her body and her family–camping turnt with bigoted strangers’ll do that. I wish I could have been a refuge, a person to vent to while she was experiencing her frustrations, but I don’t mind pulling together now and helping her though these subsequent rough mornings. Today my heart feels light, buoyant enough to carry two souls out of bed sheets and into the sun. I’ve got my work done, I’m prepared to tackle this week–I’m ready
4/8
Today I feel limited, like my vision, instead of shooting out in cones in front of my eyes, stops just in front of my face, like my head is submerged in thick mist, and even though I can see, my perception and processing of my senses is blunted. Today I feel pain gently piercing my heart like a hot blade slipped between my ribs. If I could I’d phase out of my skin and my clothes and sink through the floor and foundation and let my spirit soak up the cool soil not-so-far beneath my feet. Participation in class seems impermissible. I feel isolated and inaccessible–alienated but not like a Parisian, like an alien in an ill-equipped human-suit, barely passing, barely breathing, succumbing to toxic atmosphere.
4/9
Non, de rien. It’s nothing. You’re nothing. Just a slack-jawed lowbrow Neanderthal clutching a church-pew pencil, biting down to keep from biting off your own tongue, metallic taste spreading across your taste buds and subsequently across your cortices. Self-abuse is your sustenance. Self-destruction is your muse, and you rape her every night. Your Calliope descends on you like foggy mists, and all I can do is stumble through sentences like a drunken fool into the night, to the whon the pooling fog conceals infinite possibilities.
“Speaking about queer hair studio, how about a mullet?”
Proust get out of my head!
Engineered to get fucked up. Mothra is in the your room! Mothman was on campus. I heard his half-moth-half-man cackle echo on campus. I heard his wicked laughter, on the path to the dorms, and in
4/11
Look where you cut me!
Look at where the hot coals melted your flesh into a twisted caldera. I wonder what you saw in those glowing embers, Zodiac, and what synaptic snap compelled your drunken feat–your drunken feet, too numb to feel skin burning? Your numb heart, too drunk on self-destruction to care? I hope you heel where you need to.