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the big empty

Jett Superior laid this on you on || November 19, 2008 || 12:02 am

the big empty

Sometimes I think I am a catastrophe of otherwordly engineering. There are too many parts that seem incongruent, too many things groaning to quit while a handful of specific bits would grind themselves to dust from working so feverishly precise.

It seems that there is a good chunk of me always hurting, always holding its breath and waiting for the ensuing destruction. My heart. My heart a mere palm’s-worth of gravel I roll around in my mouth, trying to keep it in, but out of the way. God, how I fail so mightily. Containing my heart effectively zips my mouth, lest I show myself to be a clumsy-tongued, chindrooling mess of a person unable to effectively articulate a fucking thing I mean to.

I did something tonight I can only recall doing a couple of times in the whole of my life: I walked around wailing, from the very bottoms of my feet, in great pain and sadness, face an ugly sobbing grimace. For roughly twenty minutes, everything about me said I hurt unashamedly. The me that I usually am, the one that is terribly embarrassed to show weakness –much less tinged with grief and childishness–, got squashed down to a neat little compact thing that was pushed aside dismissively with hardly a glance.

These seem to you the rantings of an insane person, I am sure, but what they are, actually, are the admissions of a chronically tired person. I can’t decide if I was born old and chased after the exuberance of youth, or if I was born tender and forced to live ugly by forces I don’t quite understand. What I do know is that every day I struggle for better, for transcendence. What I also know is that each day I do this I rip meat and shred sinews. Complacency is supposed to be tedium, yeah? While I would not enjoy a coma of predictability and ‘normalcy’, what I would love is the rest those things might present. Maybe.

The harder I try, the more exhausted I get, and to accept the admonition of people (who, to a person, have my best interests at heart) to ‘Be Still’ feels like I am a sitting duck, waiting and waiting for Something to slam into me.

In all likelihood, that Something is merely my own fears and failings, for and by which I am infinitely sorry and mortified.

8 worked it out »

  1. Jettomatika 11.18.2008

    I think I’ma add ‘I bleed, you read’ to my little rotating-quotes thingy at the bottom of that there blog box.

    Been a while since we’ve had a new one.

     
  2. mongoliangirl 11.19.2008

    You already know I’m way diggin’ the fact that “infinitely” can be erased. Some day. If we like. Indeed.

    I’m not sure about the “I bleed, you read” idea. Because, so often, “You write, I laugh” and “You write, I think” and “You write, I ponder”.

     
  3. Carolyn...Online 11.19.2008

    Are you ok? I need to go reread that to see if I can figure out if this is literal or figurative or has some other hidden meaning. I am dumb today and can’t figure it out. But…are you alright?

     
  4. chris robinson 11.19.2008

    Samuel Beckett is the writer I am turning to most these days. He wrote in a simple pared down way to remind of the central fact of human existence: we are dying. Looking at it squarely evokes two very different responses. One, is the mourning and sense of rawness you describe. Two is elation over the miracle of being here, even for a short time. We need the both, Beckett says. Most of all, we need to stop fooling ourselves. You’ve stripped away the varnish here. The nerve is exposed and its really not happy about it. But it’s the rock bottom upon which real life can be lived and celebrated. In Beckett’s plays and stories, the transition from pain to life starts with a giggle.

     
  5. mongoliangirl 11.19.2008

    I love what Chris shared. So true.

     
  6. Seaweed 11.19.2008

    Chris is very wise. I think I have been where you are, and am a few years further down the road now and it doesn’t get easier. I keep getting more tired physically and mentally, but at the same time grow more joyous at every little normal thing. If I hadn’t just dropped a hundred bucks at Barnes & Noble tonight, I’d go right out and buy some Beckett, too.

     
  7. Jettomatika 11.20.2008

    I love every comment here, thank you all.

    Caro: As with most everything here that is self-professing, this is a healthy mix of literal and figurative. It’s the only way I’ve found thus far to sort of convey specific things that go on in my insides, and it is an imperfect expression at best. My wish is never for anyone to worry about me; I’m just saving on therapy bills here.

    I’m taking some nasty knocks lately; they are especially difficult because I am trying so hard to be a right and good person in the way I go about life in general. The whole whiny, “If this is what doing right gets me, then fuck it, I’m going back to being a selfish dick” mentality tried to jump on my back for a minute.

    Don’t let anyone lie to you: Honing yourself into a finer person fucking sucks and I would much prefer something more along the lines of eating cake and laughing all the damn time. >:o)

     
  8. redclay 11.20.2008

    yesterday night the bartendress played this. i must’ve had a funny look on my face.

    she said “WHAT?!”

    “I love you.”

     

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