A Lonely Place of Dying

Ah, hell. I've got a ton of things to write about, even a couple of half-finished posts, but I'm not in the mood to complete anything. I hate filler posts, but it's worth it to use that title. Fuck Jason Todd.

Graceful Reprieve

The standardized unit of measurement for nakedness is the nude (abbreviated as ñ.) The scale is measured as follows:

0ñ:   a winter jacket, snow pants, and an unattractive scarf
0.25ñ:   taking your shoes off in someone else's house
2ñ:   taking a shirt off in public and your belly kinda flops out for a second
5ñ:   wearing a bathing suit
10ñ:   plumber's crack
30ñ:   wearing one of those paper smocks while sitting in a doctor's office
45ñ:   being pantsed in front of a boy/girl you previously thought you had a shot with
100ñ:   sharking
3000ñ:   naked open casket funeral

Hopefully this has given you a greater understanding how to measure your nudity and that of others.

That Terrible Strength

There used to be this website, Dammit.com. It was some guy's dream journal, mostly. Not just the usual chronicle of non sequitirs and places that are someplace but also someplace else, it gave an outline of the writer's life until that point. A cycle of regrets and fears and people who he'd never meet again but still existed as shades on the shores of his subconscious. Am I projecting?

6 jul... Long, sad dream about pam. Laying in bed together, talking. Catching up. "do you still smoke? Do you run? Oh you get cramps and have to poop? Hahahahaha. Do you still drink? Oh I stopped two months ago." Just knowing that I love her, and that nothing feels any different than it did years ago. She gets out of bed and goes in another room. My sister comes in and climbs into bed with me, and asks me if I am upset. "what do you think?"

Going back through his archived website, I found out this guy's name. Which is awful. It spoils the spell cast by his words. Once he has a name, he's just another person I'll never know. Some things need to remain ineffable.

4 Jun... A girl is reading a newspaper, seated with long legs crossed. The headline is something like, "2ND CHANCE STILL TO COME!" 

In 2000 or so, when I was reading this for the first time, I was rushing into the bigger part of teenagehood. It felt like my third eye was opening wider every day, like there was this world beneath the world that I was sinking into. I'd watch episodes of Saved by the Bell and cry because of the weird 80's-ness I'd missed out on. The cliché is that it's like you're experiencing all these new, strange feelings, right? They're still new and strange to me. I still don't understand them.

30 May... A long coversation with pam. She has left her boyfriend and says she regrets leaving me. She loves me, she says. I am tortured by her. As we kiss she asks me, "did you really think I was pretty?" and I tell her that in my eyes she was truly beautiful. I am happy to be in bed with her, but I am ambivalent as well. I don't want to be hurt by her again. And even as we are going at it, I remember that sex was never the biggest thing in our relationship. In fact, this whole thing is kind of grossing me out. I pull back from her embrace, and she gets up and begins compulsively cleaning. She is on some new anti-depressant and it is making her manic. 

I tried keeping a dream journal once, but it didn't take. The only thing I remember is: Bruce Willis and I are in bed, and I love him deeply. We're playing a biographical version of Street Fighter based on my life, and something in it hurts his feelings. I try to explain it away, but he turns into a priest. See? Dreams are terrible. I'd like to tie this all together by weaving some message about the universality of the unwaking realm, but that's just sweet-smelling shit. I like sad stories, and something about Dammit.com just makes me feel so sad.

A Speck in a Sphere

Some kind of illness is creeping up on me. A generic coldfluspiratoryinfection, probably; nothing heavy-duty enough to merit a doctor's visit, but just enough of a nuisance to slow a week down to a crawl. It's not a good time for a leukocytic showdown. I picked up another job doing short-term government work. It pays well, but it's grinding me down pretty awful. It coexists in my schedule along with my sadly extant retail job and a single college class. By the numbers, it's really not that much of a commitment, so I don't understand why it's kicking my ass so unequivocally.

Whenever I get a new job, there's always a period of panicked scrambling to get into some sort of equilibrium. I'm flailing wildly to catch my balance at the moment, and it's stressing me out mentally and physically. Thus, the illness. I wonder sometimes if I'm made of the proper stuff to do the 40-hours-a-week life, if I can hack the basic requirements of anything beyond a marginal existence. What confidence I had that self-reliance was within my abilities is eroding. Things would be easier if I had some overriding goal that propelled me or some gift that I could rely on, but if it's there, I haven't identified it. I don't write out of passion, but because I need to.

I suppose it troubles me that this blog has become a bit of a Livejournal, but I suppose it's a bit more acceptable considering that no one really reads it anyway. In high school, I'd check the Diaryland and Livejournal accounts of my classmates more often than necessary, searching for mentions of myself. Some proof that I was central to somebody else's life. I think maybe only one person ever mentioned me. (Thanks, Magda!) It's good, though, to have a secret public journal. I try to discuss what I'm feeling with my friends, but I never really feel like I'm getting through. There's a catharsis to this sort of confession, I think. It's a prayer addressed to the void; whether it gets answered is immaterial.

Mucho Dollar Care a Junk CIA

I want to write something, and I've got a couple topics lined up, but my heart's just not in it right now. Consider this an IOU.

An Eternity in an Eternal Place

I was playing cards at a friend's house when I got a call from work. They offered an extra shift tomorrow morning, and I said yes. Now, I've gotta finish baking a cake for another friend's birthday, take a shower, and get some mediocre sleep before I go to work and start the cycle anew. I get all pissy when I feel I haven't enough time to myself in a day, such as this one. I don't necessarily want to relax, I just don't want to be around other people.

In a day, I'm sure I'll be in a completely different place, but that's no reason to deny what I'm feeling right now. It's all sour in my mouth.

Alodia Gosiengfiao

I ride public transit here in Chicago. Often enough, I get in confrontations with people who have some sort of problem with me. One time, some random, crazy-eyed guy screamed "DONUTS!" and punched me in the face. I responded by telling him to get off the train until the security guy hustled him out. Still, for months afterward, I'd replay the scene in my head, my reaction growing more and more violent. At the apogee of my fantasies, bits of the guy's skull were in my hair. My brother is the sort of person who will take brutal umbrage at an insult, and when I told him the story, his first response was, "Why didn't you punch his ass out?" It was a difficult question to answer. The best I could come up with was a partial truth: I didn't feel it was worth getting kicked off the train, and possibly crossing paths with the police. And the truth is, getting punched in the face by an amateur doesn't hurt.

But there's more to it than that. I'm a big person, and rather strong for it. Should I truly need to, I'm well convinced that I could disassemble anyone below the 90th percentile of ass-kicking ability. If I uncorked my violence on someone, I'm not sure I'd stop before they were meat on the floor. Beyond that, I'm a calm person nearly full-time. Not quite a pacifist, but I try. It'd feel like I was betraying that aspect of myself if I allowed some fool to make me lose my cool.

I don't want to paint my dilemma as anything high-minded. It's the classic struggle of Id vs. Ego, with Superego throwing in a few words every so often. The primal reaction I feel precludes all of this reasoning (and, perhaps, rationalization.) Today on the bus, some teenagers were talking shit about my attire. Homo/transphobic stuff, enough to get me riled. My fists clenched, my heart raced, and I couldn't decide what to do. Looking back, I feel I should've cussed their asses out, but at the time I couldn't see that ending in anything but blood. Which wouldn't have proven anything . . . but maybe made me feel better.

I always feel diminished after getting into a confrontation with somebody. My father tried to instill in me a sort of manly martial pride, and chastised me when I didn't return measure for measure. It didn't really land for me, but sometimes the teachings we reject stay with us. He died when I was 14, far before the revelation of my ladyness. And now his voice is the one I hear chastising whenever I find myself lacking in some masculine virtue. Most of the time it doesn't bug me, but there's always a pressure. To, y'know, Be A Man.

Power is not evil, but it tempts one to use it. That temptation scares me as much as it elates me.

Horrid Tropical Paradise

Many weightlifting techniques sound like sex acts, specifically the sort of imagined deeds contrived by eleven-year-olds at the tail end of a slumber party. Bent-Knee Good Morning? One Arm Pushdown? The Seated Underhand Row? It goes the other way, too. Tell me true, can't you imagine a personal trainer recommending five sets of Donkey Punches to energize your core?

Gespenst

I've got a vague sick thing going on right now, some sort of sneezing sore throat fevery thing. It's not super terrible, but the weird thing is I've started to zone out completely. I'll kind of stare at the computer screen, and then ten seconds have passed without my recognition or consent. It's kind of disconcerting, but I also appreciate that it skips over some of the boredom produced by convalescence. Really, I want this to be over so I can get back to my exercise regimen, which had kinda gotten on a roll. Soon enough, I suppose.

I've got that overheated-brain feeling right now, the notion that any idea that hits my mind is a fragment of cosmic genius. Drugs are usually my source for such imagined grandeur, so it's strange to experience that elevated self-estimation from a simple fever.

Dead Man's Notes

This Valentine's Day, I'm going to be at home, with my cat, baking a cheesecake. I guess my life is a Cathy strip now.

Recently, my capacity to play games increased dramatically. Before, I would rarely be able to keep up with the larger ongoing conversation about games. The gaming media predominantly focuses on the most recent thing, which is lost on the value-conscious/broke. Maybe I'd rent a new release the week it came out, but most games crossed my palm once they'd hit the twenty dollar sweet spot.

Now, I'm trampling my way through Mass Effect 2 along with the rest of the gaming biosphere. It's a curious feeling, to be on the cutting edge. Without financial limitations, I don't feel any desire to play games that don't land completely true on my mesolimbic pathway. If a game doesn't demand my attention, I let it slide. Assassin's Creed 2 is on the shelf right now, barely played - good, but not quite good enough. It's no tragic alteration to my pattern of play, but it's awfully strange to switch from quiet serial monogamist to globetrotting, lackadaisical Lothario.

I've been trying to work out a bit. There is an awesome, narcotic feeling that comes with the mastery of one's body, and I want that feeling back. From the cradle, I was a pudgy little fuck. Everyone looks at you differently for it, though I'd hesitate to say that fat's among life's greater burdens. When I was a senior in high school, I took a weightlifting class, catapulting me to the best shape I had and have ever been in my life. Before, I had been three hundred thirty pounds of bubbling disdain. After the class was over, I was a smug two hundred twenty pounds. Everyone outside of my inner circle seemed to treat me differently, and it made me happy, because now I had a chance to spurn them.

Valentine's makes me reflect on these things. I'm alone and still a bit afraid to admit that I'm lonely. Right now, I carry three hundred pounds of undead fury. But if I lost the weight, if I passed properly, if I got my stuff in order, would I like my choices any better? Would I just use it as an excuse to revel in the power of rejecting others? God, I really want to draw a parallel between this and my mostly-virgin copy of Assassin's Creed 2, but I'm drawing a blank. That really would finished this post off spectacularly. Well, at least I got something out of Valentine's Day.