Hail to the Victors

I am the deviant child that pounds in revolution and resonates through my ribcage. Jailed, oppressed, I shoved him in there, locked him in the cage of my inner being. He used to be living in the outskirts of my fingertips, annexed also in the far reaches of my toes. He’d protest and clamor, run and thump, raise chaos in places that he felt necessary. But, sadly, he was not well received. Later in life he began to retreat, pumping through my veins, nomadic and circulating, trying to find his place. Occasionally he’d take advantage of a painful opening, some popped vessel or sensitive bruise. His true colors spread through pockets, confined only by the layers of my skin. His aura, though temporary, was obvious – a statement of presence, importance, like the thumping bass of a hip-hop stereo, like a nation’s flag over conquered land. With time, the body became more cautious, took less tumbles, developed rougher skin. So he moved, in a flurry of red and white cells, towards the Mecca of all defiance. Inside the vessels and ventricles of the heart he gathered, and learned. The toenails shared stories with the palms, the ankles with the ears; stories of battles lost, families torn, beliefs shattered. And there he lay, collective and disheartened, in the holiest of heartfelt places.

School is but one institution that stood on the back of this jungle boy. Reading Vappula’s piece addressing traditional forms of education, my heart began to thump, my child began to shout. This is his story, of forced thought and rhetoric and schedules and stencils and norms and abnorms that he could not fit into. He is the brother of my voice, who retreated to the pit of my stomach and ached at every essay in which she could not take part. He’s the son of my philosophy; a father kept prim and presentable, living in each twisting strand of auburn tinted hair. He learned how to silence his piercing screams, or maybe I learned to barricade them. I fear he’s grown older, hit puberty, lost the interest in protest and gained one in sports cars. Time accelerates in lonely spaces. Maybe he’s married and settled in a section of my suburban lung. He’s forgotten the glory of my tongue, unresponsive to the bounce of my lips when inspired. He knows the walls of my inner intestine instead of the liberty that lives in my eyes. I feel him move, I miss his face, I speak for him what he used to do for me. His action, trapped in the glass casing of my words collects like marbles in a jar – step right up, you could be a winner, 500 dollars for the man who can best estimate its worth! I hope he, or she, or we, steal the fucking thing, dump it in hallways and stairwells, and together see the fury of our individualism unfold.

free write therapy

There's something essental that's missing. It feels like drinking pulpless orange juice - it's fine, in fact sometimes prefered, but you know that's not the way the juice is supposed to be. It spills down my throat, and seems to pass directly through my organs, making no effort whatsoever to spread through my body. I might as well not have lifted the cup at all. What is it. Why do i talk, ceaselessly, with no purpose or content. Where's the pulp? I'm a reflection of my surroundings, as are all living things, and subsequently they are of me. Endless and cyclical. I don't want to spiral out of control. This is the life-sized Cuisinart that renders all pulp virtually unrecognizable, although it was there to begin with.

No thoughts, just words, let flow and go. Don't think, about. punctuation, spelling, capitals, syntax. It hurts to backspace, i sense it through my eyelids, pounding in my eardrums and pulling my arms apart. My eyes are closed now, feeling only the sense of keys on fngers. I turn, and the words turn with me, and we blend together untill they pour into every orifice that i have. Open your mouth and let out an inaudible yawn. It peaks out, keeping one foot inside, holding onto my tongue. another foot - on my lips and legs shaking. It starts to run, and i to scream. The yawn to scream is a beautiful thing, more natural than the last leaf of fall. and i fall, and scream, and no one can hear. the wind is pounding. on glass. bits and pieces seep through but dissipate as they drive towards me. To feel that wind: the kind that shakes buildings, uproots great oaks, tears asphault.

There it is. Intuition. I block it out, like i talk myself out of a cold winters day. Layer upon layer i deny my need for it's presence in my life, that thing that you know with nothing but the strongest connection to everything around you. It used to drag me. Now i drag it. Chained below my ankle, i carry the feeling around. I had people in my life; strong, independent, beautiful, intuitive people, who reminded me of the importance of magic. And it pulsed through them, and me, and nothing else felt more real. And we'd scream, when screaming allowed, and we'd scream, when we were silenced, and we'd run when time seemed endless, and we'd run when it came too close. I saw in in their eyes, when they slept and when they cried, and their shreiks were both of joy and fear, swift in their escape and their celebration. It's missing, it's vital, the pulp of my morningnoonandnight. It's nearly inaccessible without you here, but i feel it every time i'm home, every time. It's the most beautiful, courageous, innovative work of art - the way you teach others to embody emotions. Backspace.

How's that for subtleties

I share the bare thanksgiving streets with a man rustling through the garbage cans in the alley behind charleston. He pulls out a half eaten loaf of bread. I'm invisible to him, which i find comforting. We both wanted the streets to ourselves. Past the brick exterior of apartments and townhouses i see lights glowing, some from TVs, others from laughter. I'm The Pedestrian, but even worse, nobody seems to care. I'm free to wander, so i take a sharp right through the gates of the bucktown park. My shoes weren't meant for this weather. They never are, they weather wherever i go. Water spills in through the hole in the back of my left boot - i mutter obscenities as if i didn't create it in the first place. The swings look lonely, so i go to sit down. It's too cold to use them for their real purpose, swinging that is. Instead i just sit and stare at my half-soaked shoe. It would be a pity-swing anyway, just to keep them company.

The church bells here go off every hour starting at 8 am. 8 am is an awful time to be aware of if you ask me. But they ring 8 very noticeable times. Each individual bell toll makes my teeth hurt, my eyes roll, my legs numb, my fists clench. And then again at 9. The toes of my shoes submerse themselves in woodchips and the chains of the swing take off. I grab hastily at them like the cord on a city bus, but they ignore my signals. The church bells go off, the freezing chains creak in discord - they hate that fucking church as much as i do.

10 tolls, i should head back. I pick myself up by my slightly worn bootstraps, hearing the smack of my shoes on the pavement. I stop, one step, smack, one step, smack. It resonates down the streets and back again, a boomerang of sound. I laugh, it hits me, one step, smack. My pace increases, my muscles tighten, the sound is trailing behind me, shaking windows knocking down bricks, shattering televisions and laughter that encase the glow. Hey, you: i'm thankful for our music and our beds, and our lack of beds, and, well, our heavy fucking memories.

cup 13, long night

The cafeteria cups are simply not large enough to hold all the expectations i have in my morning brew. I know this. I know this i know this i know this, i repeat to myself as i grab for the ceramic mug. And i look at the mug and it looks back at me, and we know that we will never be what the other one needs. Ok, so i'll go for seconds, or thirds, or twelfths, and in each sip i will get bits and pieces of my future day pumping through my veins and waking my nerves. But it never works as smoothly as i predict. Some of my day inevitably spill onto my pants, that is, only when i'm wearing pants i enjoy. if they are zach's pants, well coffee just dances around them, making sure that the irony only permeates into my belongings, not anybody elses. i have so much to say, all. the. mother. fucking. time. And now with the means to say it, in a 9-10 page paper, i'm at a blank. thirteenths. some sloshes onto the floor and into my bag. i over research, as a general statement. and while this is a positive attribute in most cases, it is rare that my research ever affects my decisions or writing. I have found that it is much easier to say what i mean than to mean what i say. And i think i mean that, i really do.

I can understand a cold wind, one that moves through every part of your body causing your muscles to contract in a rapid harmonic wave. Bone-chilling, it pushes its way past the protection of your skin and continues to swirl, tossing your blood up in a tumult within your veins. But the still cold, that is truly unnerving. It's a looming threat, settling on top of your thoughts and encapsulating them in a timeless sphere. I try not to breathe, for hope that my breath will keep body working, but it's desperate to get out. With the wind each exhale disperses quickly, joining the rest of the freezing air as if it never came from me to begin with. Today there is not movement, and with no movement comes no sound. My breath seeps out and hangs for a moment in a warm cloud before the cold sets in. I watch it solidify before my eyes, and with its new chilling weight clamour to the ground before shattering into thousands of pieces. It's the breath of cities, stationary, waiting to be inhaled again. 4 am is the best time to be awake. Your eyelids have grown accustomed to their heaviness and find their way to the middle of your eyes. Things become more apparent, the rise and fall of your chest, the flicker of the courtyard light, the burning paper from your cigarette. No one moves, no one is out, my footsteps echo for ages down four flights of stairs, but the moment the noise reaches the open door, the echo is stifled by the motionless cold. In your exhaustion, you miss the ground, and step out onto air. It's the perfect time to fly, who would know, who would care. You've forgotten what the etching sound of pen on paper is like, it has been a while since your thoughts could flow like this.

dedicated to hanna

We've established a general way to communicate with each other, mostly relying on language to convey any message, both reasonable and totally obscure, to another person. This makes sense, and works out especially well for me since i generally bank on my words as a way to communicate anything and everything. To much touching tends to make me uncomfortable, eye contact was out of the question for a long while, and g-d knows that i'm not well versed on the complexity of body language. Feelings, which even in typing makes me feel nauseatingly feminine, become so deeply immersed in my defensive humor and random streams of consciousness that they are essentially waterlogged and lose all real meaning. So i default to hoping that my ramblings help convey some form of sensitivity that is buried within my language. But this concept, that i can say something and someone else will understand me, has affected my general pattern of thinking. Now not only do i believe that i can communicate everything i want to through our shoddy english language that has been infiltrated by latin and german and french (which is surprising since we're supposed to hate the french right?), but i have taken that a step further, believing that everything i do and think and hope is what an outsider would do and think and hope as well as long as i say it right. P.S. that's not how the system works.

This is where you come in Hanna, the only person i know who actually reads my blog (why you do this is still a mystery, nevertheless a pleasant one, to me). So apparently i'm secretive. Hidden. Withdrawn. Which is bizarre because i feel like i do the friendship equivalent of prostitute myself out to anyone who so much as smiles at me. But maybe this is why people think i'm not the open book i've defined myself to be. I guess i've heard this from other people before, but it seemed so absolutely ridiculous to me that i dusted it off my shoulder like a real pimp would do. Don't you ever forget that ladies is pimps too. Maybe i give a lot of nothing to a wide population. My words, that mask what i actually do, or think, or hope, or dare i say it feel, are something i am more than comfortable sharing, but language doesn't transcend all that is important. Over the past couple of days i have been hit by a slow-moving yet shockingly powerful wave of realization that not everyone, in fact very few people, think in the exact same way that i do. Not only am i totally soaked from head to toe, but this tsunami has left a bitter, salty taste lingering in my mouth. Oh yes, it's the taste of foreboding responsibility. Oh yes, it may even be the taste of an oncoming (but most likely long-winded) change. And this wave will keep pushing me back until i realize that i need to stop relying on this falsehood that i have turned to fact: I am everybody else, and they are me. So now the dish i've scooped onto my plate is dripping over the edges and spilling onto my clothes. Plus this is marni's shirt, so i feel twice as guilty about staining it with my unappealing duty. I could dump it into a trashcan, but in this current day and age we can't afford to waste realizations when other people in third-world countries are starving for this shit. I guess it's time to give in and let myself binge, no matter how full or disgusted i am, and deal with things i've been putting off.

Just seen a face

I had my first brush with love tonight, albeit i wasn't directly involved. Sitting in my normal coffee shop in my normal coffee spot with my normal coffee-based drink i spotted the normal coffee-shop loiterer in the corner. He was bundled in a colorless plaid jacket holding his hands over to collect the steam from his cup, and i realized that he felt this same sense of normalcy with the upstairs of Rendezvous. Yes, he is homeless, and no, i haven't shared more than a glance or a cigarette with him, but i today i felt especially connected. You see, we have more in common than i would have banked on. For starters, i think i bought his jacket in a different color pallet some years back, and moving further in depth, we both looked pretty overwhelmed by our bad attitudes. So i smiled, yes, a sharing smile, and he did the same back, and i felt i had accomplished something for the day. This stranger had the opportunity to be graced by my lovely, warm, exclusive smile. How fucking lucky of him. About 12 minutes and 3/4 of a cup of coffee later a brown haired girl walked up the stairs and started rapping her pack of marb lights on the palm of her hand. She looked around for a moment, walked up to MY stranger, and sat down. Now i don't remember much of anything else from this moment on, but my world lens focused directly on this couple and everything else around me faded to black. She was young and beautiful, had a fairly strong new york accent hidden beneath her reserved demeanor. Her hair was done perfectly to curl at certain spots and fall straight at others, her clothes, unwrinkled, hung off her body. This was the harold and maude of reality - based on appearances the most unlikely pair. I watched for 20 minutes as she talked and learned and he did the same, and his smile got wider, and his laugh deeper, and our shared acknowledgement got shoved off the map completely. She cared, while i wondered. She spoke when i nodded. She listened when i assumed. And when she lifted herself off the chair and said goodbye, he did the same, leaving whatever burdensome mentality he previously wore behind to circle around me. Why was i so scared? Because i felt connected to someone so unlikely or because i felt connected to someone at all? I wanted to exchange words, I wanted to make him laugh, I wanted to learn about his history, or his day, or even his name. I guess i'm not ready, and neither is the majority of the world, but i took a deeper step, a trip, and i fell - for this man and this woman and for my new found faith in humanity. Today, maybe i'll do something beautiful, or at least wear out my rose-colored glasses and let beauty come to me.