introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- shedding it turning my vision - twenty third of october, 2002 "and she said you know i don't like the way i am. and then she cried. she cried out loud..."~martin sexton i'm not really sure where the mood is coming from, but everything about me is drying up like snakeskin and i'm itching to shed some of it; to leave it behind for someone to find and maybe keep in a box some place in the back of a closet after they've shown all of their friends. or maybe they can give it away to someone else. either way, it won't matter to me. it could all rot into the soft pine needles and forest dirt, for all i care these days. i breathed a sigh of relief the other day when his stuttering muppetish voice came over the line: "its nothing," he mumbled. "just a little inflamation." and i wanted to ask a million questions but for the situation. i had called from the middle of the office and it just didn't seem at all appropriate to ask what would cause it because we'd followed the instructions precisely. forty eight hours abstinence. everything. so what would cause such inflamation? and now i'm not supposed to worry a bit but to come back in in six months for another pap smear and just not worry, okay? because i'm telling you its alright....so i'm not sure why i don't feel exactly alright. and there was this girl exactly my age in our office tonight. we're doing this sensitive study about a new commercial with cancer patients and their caretakers...and the cancer patients are undergoing chemotherapy and, even though i'm not exactly familiar with what cancer treatment is like, i'm beginning to get a much clearer picture as the study goes on. the looks on their faces. the way they answer the questions. and the whole time i'm wondering what kind of cancer they have, but not really sure how to ask. and the whole time i'm just on edge of my seat wondering where the masses are and why this person and all of the other questions that go with cancer and, even though its a little overwhelming sometimes, its just a little more relevant right now. so anyway, there was this girl in the office tonight with her boyfriend, her caretaker. and they were both in their respective rooms. she, this pretty blonde girl, all stylish and gorgeous and just...the typical american dream girl. and her boyfriend is this amazingly patient good humored guy and so they're here, doing the study....and i'm asking him all the questions and eva is in the other room with the cute girl and he and i talk about what its like to be our age and have to deal with cancer and stuff, and i restrain that i've been dealing with my own biopsies and worries and nightmares. only, they told me yesterday that i'm okay. and here, staring me in the face, is the boy who takes care of his pretty girlfriend as she fights her cervical cancer and her breast cancer and her ovarian cancer. we are too young for this. we are just beginning to live. and that was just a little heavy for me, i think. but i sat in the cold of our office tonight, alone, when we came home and he was out smoking a cigarette or something. it was empty in here, anyway. and it was this balance of emptiness inside me and around me, even in the clutter of our messy catch-all office. and i was looking around vacantly at things that we put on the wall together those nights before stephen came. and we never did finish that little bit of wall behind the door. and i've got a roll of posters that we never hung up because...because why? and now, now that i really look at all the things i've kept for so long...the things that i've gripped tightly and handled with such care each time its come time to move...and i don't recognize a damned thing. the cut out pictures from the magazines. the comic posters. the movie stars. the drawings. the photos. the ten or twenty notebooks of things i've written. the books i've read once or twice or thrice, lined up on the bookshelf of my overly large desk. the things...boxes and boxes of things i have no need to keep unpacked before me, weighing in on me, filling me with doubt and this intensity...this breathless feeling of outgrowth and emersion and unfamiliarity at once. and my breath quickened and my head bowed because i don't know where all of it came from. and its like flirting on the edge of something really dangerous and swirling and misty and dizzy. its like being afraid to sleep because when i wake, i might not be sure who i am anymore and being scared as hell. its like i was saying in the car, i think: "i can't imagine what it would be like to not have you in my life but i don't even know how you got here." and those moments that gave me goosebumps and made me flush with the flutter...i don't remember the details...i only remember light and shadow and smoke and cigarette butts in an ashtray and a deck of cards. and its only been a year and a half...so...what's it gonna be in twenty? i just get to thinking some nights, when i sit in the cold, alone too long and allowed to think the thoughts that creep and crawl, that sometimes, i ought to shed some of it. and leave it behind, less baggage for the journey. maybe its time i started getting rid of some of this stuff. maybe its time to give some real thought to grown up tastes and picture frames...because its going to have to come, eventually, anyway. its just that...i think that...sometimes, i'm not sure where i'm going...and its no good to begin without an end in mind. time to get me some big carboard boxes, i think. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
||||||
|
||||||