thoughts for 030114

[prismaticbleed]

 

 

I think I'm going to get an actual paper journal and start a daily log of sorts. It'll help with memory, for one-- it's very hard for me to keep track of things on my own, and I can't always get on this computer-- my current internet setup involves dragging my laptop into the kitchen (I don't have wifi and the only cable is in there), which then requires me to sit in an excruciatingly painful position at a corner desk until my battery dies. Needless to say I'm tired of it, so I might actually take a break from the internet entirely until April... we'll see.
In any case I need to start keeping more accurate records of our inner life. I love our System, even on its bad days, as you all know... and it's the little things, the details and the fragile moments, that we treasure the most.

Today, Javier let the cats in. He loves animals and randomly decided to come out for the first time in a while to greet them and let them in from the cold.

I forgot to tell you guys, on Thursday Knife actually tried singing a bit of this song (he loves SanteJazz) via channeling, the first time he'd ever attempted to do so, and it was one of the most uplifting things I've seen in a while. Also he hugged Infi at one point. And he wants a permanent Christmas tree somewhere in the new Underground (mostly above ground now!) because-- I don't know if I mentioned-- he spent weeks secretly making one for this past Christmas, as he loved the concept, and eventually didn't ever want to take it down. It's decorated in pink. I swear that man is too adorable for his own good.

I woke up suddenly at 7AM feeling utterly split in half. There was me-- Jay-- and then there was the girl, the cynical uncaring one, who lives in this body. We were both fronting completely, somehow, upon awakening, and I could barely keep my consciousness from slipping under the wheels of hers. I wanted to cry from the paralyzingly spiteful emptiness inside her mind, like old gray paint thrown onto the windowpanes, coloring our room like a storm hovering on the horizon. She felt like life had betrayed her, somehow, and she didn't want to wake up, and she didn't want to sleep, and she was miserable. I couldn't bear it; I couldn't stand the existential carelessness and the fact that it was making me forget who I was apart from it, that I was something apart from it.
All I remember is quietly crying for Infi, and holding hir in my arms as I tossed a robe over my eyes and tried desperately to fall back asleep.

Xennie came to church with me today, halfway through, as it was crowded and she couldn't find a place to sit next to me. Upon leaving she learned that she can't run about on her own when there are moving cars around-- she almost dashed into the path of one leaving the parking lot. I told her to hold my hand so she did, apologizing and shaken. I said it was okay, don't worry, just stay close to me and I'll make sure you're always safe. But it worried me, to see how she has this pent-up enthusiastic energy and wants to talk to me, and wants to run around and have fun with her other father for God's sake... but she only really sees me on Saturday evenings and that breaks my heart.
My biological father has been divorced for almost 7 years. I see him maybe 2, 3 times per month. And here, my baby girl is seeing me barely twice more at worst, and it wasn't until today that I saw how it was affecting her. Who the hell is raising her? I don't give a damn if my genetics aren't literally part of her, I really don't-- I've got a bloodline and if that's all I can see reflected in her then I will embrace that with all my heart because she STILL calls me her father and I will not, I will never deny her that, ever, ever again. But I'm not... I haven't been there for her. I want to be, God knows I want to me, but it is so difficult when I have to split realities to do so. It is so heartbreaking when I have to wear myself out in meditation for hours just to be with her in a way that doesn't subtract from the experience for either of us. And she's growing up, almost without guidance, thank heaven above that she has Laurie and all of headspace but I'm her FATHER, where the hell am I??
I'm sorry. That got unexpectedly emotional. But it's honest and I am leaving it there 100%.

I got a really bad burn on my left hand and arm yesterday after watching Donnie Darko and it was hilarious because I blanked out when I noticed it was burning, and that made it worse obviously. I was just glad at the time that I'm a champ at sensory dissociation so after the initial searing pain I managed to forget it was there for the next few hours despite the ignored signals making my brain feel all funny. Anyway my hand is fine now, but the arm burn is problematic to take care of because the skin is burnt off, and all I can do is wrap it with gauze really. Not sure why I'm telling you about this, maybe just because it's going to leave yet another scar on my arm. That arm is a mess by this point.

Donnie Darko. Geez. I've wanted to see that movie since high school and I finally did. No regrets, but here are some thoughts because I want to write about this before I forget (spoiler warning!):
■ The attitudes of everyone in the movie were actually painful for me to watch. I still have a hard time imagining that some high schools are apparently like that? So I blanked out quite a bit during the movie which was upsetting.
■ FRANK THE RABBIT ACTUALLY SOUNDS A LOT LIKE INFI AND IT MADE ME VERY FLUSTERED AT FIRST. (It's obviously not exact, but the unusual soft tone and that slightly dissonant echo are really close)
■ "Destruction is a form of creation." Hello CZ. I do like Donnie's response though: "They just want to see what happens when they tear the world apart. They want to change things." It sounded almost contradictory to me at first, but then I thought about my own life, and realized it's very true. You cannot build something new upon old rotted ruins. The foundation will crumble. Sometimes, to change things, you really need to tear things down to the ground-- to get every last scrap out of the dirt, to "destroy" the old and allow for something new, something better, to bloom. Again, that whole thing keeps making me think of Chaos and who he's been to both me and the System since 2003... even if I don't 'remember' most of it, there's this vibe about him that is basically a hurricane and a summer rain at the same time. He's water. He's simultaneously a source of life, soft and receptive and flowing and deep, and this force of total destruction... powerful, wild, and crashing down with unstoppable force, washing away everything in its path. But then comes the rain, and in that place where previously nothing could grow, now in the upturned mud and ashes there are flowers beginning to sprout. It's so strange, how he is perfectly both, but there it is, and I love that about him. I'll likely write more about this once I re-read the script, because when it's in front of me all at once I can find threads and parallels and things, and I'm curious to revisit how this theme plays out in the film... it basically defines the entire time-travel phenomenon with the tangent universe. To ensure creation, something is destroyed. It's really fascinating.
■ Also, actually, if you get to the heart of it, the whole spectrum of human emotion really does narrow down to Fear vs Love. But it does take a lot of narrowing-down (and too many people think "love" means "romance" which isn't true) so Donnie wasn't entirely incorrect. Fear and Love manifest in tons of different ways, and those ways can become so convoluted and so distant from their source that, in many cases, it's near-impossible to tell which is which on the surface. And I didn't like how Kitty didn't explain anything about that, just assumed everything was that black-and-white. Fear and Love are the deepest motivations, but they aren't that cut-and-dry, and Fear is very good at masquerading if you aren't looking carefully. Even so, I really, really liked how the Fear/Love thing ended up subtly being another massive undercurrent of the movie, at least from my perspective.
■ Major props to Donnie for standing up to Kitty (and everyone else really); I can't stand seeing teachers close their own minds, and/or abuse their authority over their students for the sake of defending their own pride and/or comfortable beliefs about life. Although Karen was a little distressing for me for personal reasons, I liked the way she asked questions, pushed limits, and made the kids think. I wish I'd had more teachers like that, haha.
■ In any case Kitty's class made me very uncomfortable (and not just because of the 80s aesthetics), as did Kitty herself, but I can't truly dislike the woman because she's trying to be a genuinely good person, she's just so single-minded about the process that she can't see outside of it and I just feel bad that she's forbidding herself from that broader vision. But really she reminds me a lot of some psychologically abusive people in my life so I can't defend her that much. Let's just leave her as-is.
■ In the director's cut, there's one bit when they're watching the Cunningham videotape and Donnie is getting distracted, but Frank says something along the lines of "watch closely; you might miss something important." I had to smile because that was just like what happens with me and headspace reminders. And I love the weird poem Donnie gives later, for the same reason... "A storm is coming, Frank says; a storm that will swallow the children, and I will deliver them from the kingdom of pain. I will deliver the children back to their doorsteps, and send the monsters back to the underground. I'll send them back to a place where no one else can see them, except for me... because I am Donnie Darko." I know it's relevant to the movie, but again, to me it was another massive reflection of headspace, and loudly so (just capitalize "Underground" for example). And I just treasure when things like that happen, both negative and positive, because the synchronicity speaks for all of us and it helps us grow, and being able to see reflections of us in everything else, despite all the self-doubt from past years, is really amazing.
■ The scene with Jim Cunningham also gave me a lot of mixed feelings. Again, I know what he was trying to say. But it was far, far too simplified, and I honestly doubt the man's understanding of love, what with what he was apparently doing behind the scenes. Regardless, his advice still had truth in it. "Violence is a product of fear; learn to truly love yourself." That is a truth I've had to learn the hard way, over many years, so believe me when I say that in this society it is MUCH easier said than done. Plus, we hear "love yourself" so often as a stock inspirational phrase-- one that has lost its actual meaning through repetition and incorrect context-- that I do not blame Donnie for getting pissed. He saw the practical side of things, which I commend him for bringing up, but he was also so pessimistic about the whole thing that he failed to see that Jim's advice, when looked at correctly, was still valid. It was just one half of the whole answer. But in the situation that was beyond his sight so again, I just thank the film for allowing the whole picture to still be visible there.
■ Also, some kid asks Jim "how do I figure out what I want to be when I grow up?" Again, Donnie is right in saying that no one knows that at their age, especially not all at once; it takes exploration and time... but in the director's cut, Jim replied to the kid first, and said something along the lines of, "find out what it is that makes you feel real unconditional love, and do that." And this light just went on in my head when he said that. Yeah, it's going to take time and trial and error, but honestly if your heart is singing to the tune of something then for heaven's sake, let it! It's damn scary sometimes, because maybe you don't know the words, or maybe you're too ashamed or frightened or proud or doubtful to join in, or maybe you've never been able to carry a tune before. All I can tell you is that if you trust that, even just a little, genuinely, and follow it... it will lead you in the right direction. Whatever it is. If Infi's taught me anything, it's that in surrendering to the music you become it, and that is such a transcendental feeling that once you actually touch it, even if only for a split second, you can't imagine ever turning your back on it again. And believe me, I've been there, and I've tried to run. I've gotten scared and I've tried to block my ears simply because I didn't believe I could sing at all, I didn't believe I had the right to hear this music, let alone become it. But my soul is made of sheet music and I always end up trying again. In fewer words, follow Jim's advice for this one, as well as Donnie's.
■ TIME TRAVEL. That whole bit was very interesting, but I didn't grasp it entirely the first time. I will have to review it again later if I feel inspired to. Even so I am fascinated by the entire causality scheme and the "Living Receiver" and all that, and I'm curious as to know how it works as a whole. I do like seeing other people's concepts and ideas about time and space and the like, especially in such creative formats.
■ Last reiterated thought for now. Even on a personally symbolic level, there was so much in this movie that paralleled headspace, or events that I've experienced as a result of it. So even if a lot of the movie was somewhat unsettling to me-- really I cannot handle violence or the way Donnie's classmates behaved and it was hard to watch at times-- it felt like another relevant thing, in this falling-back-together of things the System is experiencing now. Sorry I've fallen out of well-structured language with this rambling. Give me a moment.

I owe you guys a text wall like that about His Dark Materials but I'd need to either buy a copy, or take it back out of the library first, as I marked all the pages that had ideas or lines I wanted to revisit. Either way, I won't forget to write, if only for one reason.... I finished the last 100 pages around 1AM in my room, but it took a while to finish specifically because Chaos kept seeing parallels that I was missing and really he made some very significant insights about our situation especially... honestly I have a lot of emotions surrounding him specifically in light of the trilogy's ending, and an equal amount surrounding Infi in light of the dæmons (a concept he's now very fond of). I just adore that trilogy now, I really do, and I owe it it's own entry. You'll get one.

This evening, we finally figured out what the unknown voice in this entry was trying to say about The Destroyer's bizarre ED habits (the only part I admittedly read; I'll have to read the rest of the entry tomorrow). It hit me in a sudden burst of realization when I snapped into awareness for one moment today, as some seaweed-haired girl was curled up with her hands down her throat, dripping and choking like the ocean ruptured and not an ounce of malice in it.
That's when it hit me. The purgation was a positive coping mechanism, risen up after the loss of all other ablutions. And it was damn effective.
I don't know how I never noticed before. They only ever do that with heavy foods. They spend all our money on heavy, poisonous food, the kind of stuff Spice and Emmett scream and protest over, the sort of substances that feel and look and taste like the Tar used to. They buy things that we know we cannot eat without excruciating pain, without emotional meltdowns, without finding ourselves literally holding back our hands from the knife drawer... and then they destroy it. They destroy it. They feign the act of eating, for long enough to be sick and filthy and humiliated and crushed by self-loathing, feeling like an animal, biting into things that bleed and stain their throats. They shred these heavy things, feeling obligated to eat them but refusing to choke it down, boiling with rage and hatred and fury and the desperate need to get rid of it, to utterly annihilate this awful thing that they are forcing into their own body, against their will and yet without fighting back... until eventually, hours later, they've won. They've held out long enough. This awful lethal weight has worn itself down into an inedible mess, into something so profoundly disgusting, so blackened and mangled and wrecked, that its only fate is oblivion. That it deserves oblivion.
And then they throw it out.
And then they throw it up.
But I had no idea of the relief, the total grateful liberation the brackish-green girl lived for until I suddenly found myself in her position, if only for a moment. I had no idea that they only reason they put themselves through hell in the first place was so that they could experience the utter deliverance from it.
They are actively, willingly acting out the fulfillment of a desperate need we never had met. They are forcibly, tearfully, angrily taking in all the heaviness-- the lies, the blood, the nightmares, the panic, the shock, the shame, the things we tried to bury alive-- they are reliving that horrific consumption, in every sense of the word, and then they are doing what we are still struggling to accomplish as a whole... they are spitting it out. They are forcing it back out into the abyss it came from. They are forbidding that sludge from rotting our insides. For them, it is worth repeating the entire symbolic process just for the few excruciating minutes where they can control the outcome, where they can CHANGE the way things played out, where they can stop the pain before it digs in its claws. They are trying to destroy what was destroying us. And that is the root of this disorder.


Lastly, the two big nights of February (the 13th and the 26th) are getting their own entry. I can't remember much of them data-wise, but what I do is still relevant. I guess that's to be expected when the heart is doing most of the experiencing, and not the mind, therefore things don't get stored or perceived the same way. But... the 26th was one of the absolute loveliest evenings I've had in months, on many levels. It gave us all a lot of hope, and it marked some massive progress for us, although there are still things that need to be worked out (as therapy the next day showed us clearly). Nevertheless, as I will say countless times, there is so much love and support and determination in this System that I have total, unwavering faith in our ability as a community to get through this, in the best possible way for all of us. I just have this total faith in the universe really, in that force of love and light that I used to call God and still do in a different way. And that's in us, odd as it may seem to some. Macrocosms and microcosms. It's lovely really, and I love everyone I've been blessed enough to share this life with, despite the bloody circumstances that allowed for it. Nights like this I'm just... reduced to silence from the awe of it. There's so much. There's always so much I just want to express from the heartbreaking joy of it but it doesn't translate into words.

I'm getting close to poet mode on an emotional level so I'm going to close this up and get to sleep... it is really late and boss is probably wondering where I am, to say the least!

 

See you soon.