42

Does this resonate with you?

There is a life I live inside my head.
A person, a story
I imagine - feel - is what actually exists when you strip away all of the noise and bullshit.
This is what's important.
Who I really am. My role in this.
Connecting up through my whole development.
From before my first memory.
Some inner shadow of being.
One that I think only I have ever seen, or believed.
For more than a moment, at least.
Someone unknown to most who have met me.
The full potential of who I could be?
A holistic entity. A higher arch. A realm of thoughts unsaid.
Because it wouldn't be prudent, or friendly, or right, or you wouldn't understand.
It wouldn't be easy to explain.
It wouldn't be easy to defend.

Thoughts to be shot down by someone else.
Someone who would have no way of knowing.
Ideas I start to keep even from myself.
To push away with some kind of logic or forgetting.
They would believe me to be crazy, egotistical, even idiotic.
So in the moment I might stuff them down.
You do that long enough, and you begin to doubt.
Forget yourself. Forget your own experience.
And yet, eventually you remember, because it's still stronger than you.

If you forget yourself, how are you supposed to save yourself?
How do you know what was important to remember, and what is free to be forgotten?

If memory is always a retracing, how do we know how well we stayed within the old lines?
As we progress, it condenses.
And we can only know what repeats.
What stays.
What won't go away.

Are we born blank slates, or do we retain generational knowledge?
Not just instinct and reflex, but some piece that has always been?
Drives and decisions, mentalities, moments, and lessons...
A mix of both, then?
These are the thoughts known through feeling.
What gives me a sensation of truth, of knowing.
That voice of authority.

"We all know we don't know where it comes from." (SK)

That magnetic propulsion, unseen, pushing on us through our lifetimes.
But mislabeled, I think, by most of humanity.

So call it nature, or god, or the force, or common consciousness, or just: the-way-things-are.
But somewhere between here and there, birth and death, there are events.
And when we put those events in order, it is natural for us to try and find a connection.
To tell a story.
To make sense of all this.

We have a great number of logical flaws - fallacies.
A classic is the misapplication of our mental processes.
The way we might try to piece together a new version of our life story
when the old doesn't suit our egos or our morals any longer.
And isn't that survival? Adapt, or die.
But just what is surviving, is the question.
Something that would bend our ideas about truth and reality, and we can't have that now can we?

Trying so hard to maintain consistency.
To create a master yard stick with which to measure the whole world by.
A dichotomous key for existing.
After all this time, how very wrong could we still be?
About what it means to be living - and what we should be doing with our lives?
If we had only been told differently, how differently might things be?
How differently would it have felt?

I can't find the exact quote now, but I think it was George Carlin who said that ideas were gifts from the universe and we would do well to pay attention to them.

And Stephen King opened "On Writing" by saying that writers "know we don't know" where our ideas come from. These things can just come to you.

And, undoubtedly shaped by these sentiments, I have felt - recognized - that current - river - sea - the flow of consciousness - which can slip through me and so long as I am good enough I can catch those thoughts and keep them as lessons and guides and markers of my journey. Plot points in a script transcribed from the great illustration of all that is and has been and could be.

Or is it all an excuse, a rationale, to feel like I'm living?
To feel like I know anything
in a world where you can only know what you are told?
Or is it possible to know some things, some intangible things, by your own volition?

I believe life has whatever meaning, whatever purpose, you choose to give it - which will be based on the experiences and influences of your own path - but some options might include:
- To be happy
- To learn (on a personal level)
- To learn and then share in order to progress as a community/society/species (to spread what one believes is truth)
- To uncover mysteries
- To apply discoveries to maintain survival (of the self or the species)
- To right wrongs, reap justice
- To do whatever it takes to survive
- To get what you want
- To help / leave the world better than how you found it (somehow)
- To procreate

And all along the way - for century after century - we've been figuring it out.
Trying to.

And within the smaller scale of my own, singular, life, that's what I've been doing.
Even subconsciously.
As if I were a concentrated consciousness.
I am not here for pure amusement.
Even when I'm stoned all I want to do is progress somehow.
And maybe that's what the universe - nature - all that is - wants, too.

Have I always wanted to live a life much larger, much bigger, than myself?
Has that been the futile struggle of all human kind, through history - recorded or not?
Or is it that we do contain those multitudes, and ignore them in order to get through a work day?
In order to function in a constructed society?

Yet, if I shut out the idea of others telling me I am crazy.
If I stop caring and only listen.
What I hear is this:

I am an ancient soul. Timeless.
There are queens, and sorceresses, and warriors in my past.
Genocide victims. Maybe even a nun.
Dancers, artists, heart-felt people propelled by something - else.
Something more.
Call it kindred spirits, if that makes it easier to swallow.
Believe they are within you too, if that helps.
I'm sure I am not alone in my feelings.
But I sense this.

I also sense that I have been violated.
I feel I was molested before I can remember.
As a small child, before 3 years old.
Or else some time I have blocked out, can't picture.
Was it a family member? One of their spouses or partners?
An authority figure I was left in care of?
A doctor? A therapist? A day care worker?
Was it a mistake or was it deliberate?

Was it something I saw on TV and I was so sensitive that it felt like it happened to me?

I do not know.
But I feel it.
As if it were something which has returned to me, now that I can better deal with it.
And I can't deny that it makes everything else make more sense.

Which means I have an even greater burden to prove it.
If I am to prove it...
To find out if that's the truth that is,
and not just the truth that I might need.
Though I wonder if I might be better off just trying to forget it.
Forget the feeling.
The unanswered question hanging over me.

What happened?

There's some possible, concrete, evidence
mixed in with events which are up for interpretation:

As of today, the present, I do not want sex.
Or, I do, but I want to enjoy it - and I don't.
I am not a-sexual because I do feel attraction
but I do not need it, just like I do not need ice cream or cigarettes.
Things which tend to hurt you anyway.

I have told would-be partners that I think I need to be in-love to enjoy it.
To be with someone in-love with me.
But I think I really mean that letting someone who was in-love with me fuck me might feel worth it
as opposed to someone who was just looking for a causal, good time.
While physically speaking, I am not sure if I will ever really, truly enjoy it.
I think, physically speaking, for whatever reason, I have an aversion to penetration.
And I do not think it is because I am simply "closed", or "a prude", or "inexperienced".

I do not think it's because I am "gay" though that would be an easy answer for some.

I consider myself pansexual if anything - why should I shut you out before I even know you?

I could love you, maybe.

I do not think someone with simply a different technique would solve it.
I think I have experienced enough by now with enough partners to just know.

As a little girl, G and M were particularly obsessed with the threat of my "being stolen".
S had a teacher who turned out to be molesting his students.
I believe they decided it hadn't happened to her.
G was strict and archaic about sex. Not unexpected for her time period.
Told me god could see me, even under the covers.
From a psychological stand-point, maybe that just left a mark on me.
The power of suggestion.
All those themes coming together later in life to create an impression.
An impression of an illusion of an experience.

However, years and years later, when I was 16, I would have my first gynecological exam at school.
Never had sex. They couldn't entirely finish the exam due to crying and in my report stated that I did not have a hymen and there was a question of past sexual abuse.

No one ever talked to me about it.
I wouldn't have had anything different to tell them than what I am saying now.

Later, 19, losing my virginity was painful.
But the pain wasn't restricted to the first time.
It was always painful, and it seemed worse each time.
So I went to a doctor who told me I had scar tissue, but that I seemed fine.

I had connected these things to an incident with S when I was about 6 or 7. G had an above ground pool which we had long stopped using and turned green by the time G died when I was 9. S - a teenager at the time, says she was late for a date and I'd peed in the pool - had me strip and bend over on the back porch while she sprayed me down with a power hose on full blast. I remember it hurt. I remember it happened at least twice.

S has undergone so much Electroshock Therapy that I wonder if she wasn't trying to erase truths she knew. She admits using the power hose. I just wonder if that was enough to create this reaction within me or if there are things she isn't saying, or truly doesn't even know. Maybe something else did happen and I just attributed it all to this other thing I actually remembered.

Either way, so it went that G died and I lived at foster care, then D, then school.
For a whole combination of reasons, genetic and environmental, I was an introverted kid.
Perpetually uncomfortable in my own skin.
Totally normal, expected, given the circumstances.
Not to mention plain old adolescence.
No reason to make up some molestation story, right?
Not even subconsciously, as a way to deal?

Later, by my junior year of college, after I'd become a sexually active being
I was stoned whenever I did do anything sexual.
Until it was that I was just stoned all the time.
No matter how much I loved my partner,
either I wasn't there...
Had numbed out.
Was waiting for it to be over.
...Or I was in pain and wanted it to stop.

I have cared about, if not fully loved, every partner I've had.
But still, sex has never been for me what it seems to be for most everyone else.

This continues to this very day.
As I hang out with a man I have been crushing on forever.
Dreamed about.
Who now shows intimate interest in me...
even when I get what I wanted
it doesn't work.

It's not a good time for me.

I'd rather we cuddled and watched the X-Files and smoked weed and talked about life.
I'd rather we did that forever and ever.
Lived as some kind of overgrown children, perpetually.
Or if we could even have a sexual relationship
that didn't involve his dick inside me.
If only he could honestly want that.
Same problem then, though, isn't it?
How much of your own comfort should you be willing to sacrifice
before you're just hurting yourself for someone else?

Am I so wrong for wanting that?
Am I delayed in my development?

Could it be that I'm just feeling ugly?
I don't think so.

Is something wrong with me?
"Well, yes." Seems like such a good answer, doesn't it?
Almost a relief.
Yes, all these control issues and insecurities and paranoias -
socialization issues -
yes, they all came from something.
They weren't just the random manifestations of a fucked up mind.
They weren't excuses to stay in my comfort zone.
No, I am not that small and sad of a person.
No, I am someone with reasons...
Don't we all have our reasons?
Isn't it possible not to know what they are, but to still have them?

My greater point doesn't stop there.

There are other things. Other coincidental dots that might be connected...
should they be connected....
form something discernible.
Something that makes sense.

Better sense than the aimless life, flailing in the sea of thoughts.

No, there is a message.
And I must carry it with me until I can figure it out.

I admit right now I am so hungry it's gotten harder to communicate.
And these fragile things must be dealt with carefully.

So I will post this believing a few things:
-If I die in the next hour, next month, next year, I will have been glad I wrote this.
-Should I live to be 100, I will be glad to have had this - and the rest of my blog.
-I hope someone today or in the future would be helped by what I've said.
-I hope, if nothing else, I am moving toward a greater sense of truth.

Truth which I believe trumps anything we are dependent on as creatures of this earth
or as citizens of this social order.

What Home Means

On the bus an older lady and little girl get up and move from their front row seats for a man in a wheelchair. The lady tucks into the last open seat on the outside of a pair, the little girl holding her hand, unseated. An older man across the aisle slides over to give his spot to the little girl. She looks at the stranger and starts to cry. Her lady pulls her close - keeping her safe from the stranger but allowing her to stand, half between her lady's lap and the seat, and half in the aisle.

Another lady comes down from the back and takes the open seat next to the man - she must be family, because the first lady hands the little girl over to her and she picks her up and holds her enclosed in her arms - next to the man but now safe from him. At home among strangers.

Of course one could argue that the ideal thing would be to teach the little girl not to be afraid, and not to expect someone to keep her safe. But then again, maybe she has that luxury. Some people do.

It'll probably just be another moment none of them remembers anyway.

It only matters to me because I saw something in that moment. I saw the raising, the social education, of the modern american woman. I saw fear, perhaps unnecessary fear - depends on the stranger. Or is that just my own fear talking? No, no, it happens. Everything happens to somebody.

I have to be careful not to let myself get carried away by what I wish was reality - that's the curse of positivism. That's the problem with belief. And then I swing so hard in the other direction - or is that just in contrast to society's hyper positive position?

I just want to be where I can be completely myself.
To be myself without insulting anyone. Without boring anyone. Without depressing anyone.
Without having to fight them. Without feeling it is my personal responsibility to refute them.
Or at least to be able to do so from the distance of a computer - that way physical violence is an impossibility.

I must have seen two hundred houses yesterday. I walked and wound through neighborhoods from Hawthorn to Hollywood. I was down on Foster where things seem up-and-coming (there are cafes and late night shops selling board games among the convenience stores and concrete that reminds me of 82nd). I was seeing an apartment there - I'm still unsure if I'll take it. Bused up to Hawthorn where every ten steps is some whimsical surprise or picture perfect hipster and started walking - searching for apartment buildings hidden among the homes of every imaginable size, color, architecture.

These houses are beautiful. Each one has a personality of its own. You imagine the inhabitants. You imagine the background stories. A million dollhouses. All those homes I built in The Sims as a kid, come to life. Some of the homes are so big that I am skeptical as to whether a single family could even occupy the whole thing. A home so tremendous it must have four families in it - but an old fashioned car makes me think otherwise. How do you even have enough stuff to fill out all those rooms? How do you even have time to use it?

I wonder to myself: what the hell did they do to get a place like that? How?

I catch myself feeling surprisingly hateful and angry when I see a giant mess through their big beautiful bay windows - what a waste, what a waste. And I say that being a mess myself. (Please let me grow out of all the things I hate about myself...)

My heart leaps at the sight of an attic window, especially the ones that sit above porches with wind chimes and rocking chairs. With touches of care and beauty and good taste. Vines and flowers spread across a yard, a swing hangs from a tall evergreen, a cat paws the moss on a rooftop - I imagine being inside - you could forget entirely that you were in the middle of a city.

Along the sidewalks little libraries and notes on telephone poles and sweet small shops and coffee spots that sell bicycle bells. With the sun peaking through the clouds, a burst of heat, someone's art sculpture garden tinging in the breeze, casting rainbow shadows along the ground through broken beer bottles rearranged into mobiles of jewel colored glass; you feel so pleasant you could almost fall in love.

They tell us we'll want children when we're older, but so far I just want a place of my own.

A place I can be myself without hurting anybody's feelings.

A place where I can imagine the world is exactly how I think it is
and it could be exactly how I wish it would be.

I wonder if that's what we all want, no matter what it is we believe.
If that's what 'feeling at home' means - or could.

Sometimes I think to myself [this is not a poem]

Sometimes I think to myself:

I cannot have your happiness

and it kills me

Due to my context

who I am

where I am

I don't think I'll ever touch

anything close to that

(Even this sounded better in my head)

and the last thing I want to be 

is some jealous bitter hag

who can't be happy for nobody else

who is too busy wanting other people's lives

paths

friendships

instead of making her own

too torn between the writing life

(disciplined, secluded, focused)

and living a life worth writing about

(outgoing, wild, where the best nights are the ones you forget)

because she wanted it all to be now now now

So people were always characters

and life split into chapters

and lived as though there were some cohesion

until the day nothing mattered anymore

Maybe it works out in that way

In order to see all that I do

I have to be a distance away from it

nothing new here, nothing new