Wednesday, June 30, 2004
This damn computer system will not give a writer enough time to produce thoughtful prose. The heat is on: one damn hour. You can re-up for another, but when the two-minute warning comes at you, you sort of lose the vibe, the flow, the chi or whatever you wish to call it, and what you started an hour back is basically done. I really wish I had my own puter, with Internet access. Surf for six hours, write another six, or vice versa. Ritual elements perched at the side--mine, the omnipresent coffee, the notebook, the white-noise machine purring, the phone unplugged for as long as it takes me to contrive something that feels right, if only for that cursory scanning before it's launched to wherever I've decided that it is to go.
Now, if I could get to the uni/medical school library (which I cannot: bus service here stops at eight-thirty p.m., runs but once every daytime hour; and the walk to the university area is a dangerous one, traipsing through the yards of the faceless middle class, what with their territorial pets rushing from the void to scare the piss out of anyone who doesn't wish to walk the snaky, narrow, speed-tempting road), I'd have to shadow some young person in a white coat or scrubs and bulging backpack, roll up on them and stay there as they access the med school corridor with their user ID cards, and quietly take my place at a machine in the lab at the back, to eat mini-thins until I've killed all available circuitry and must contemplate how the fuck I'm gonna get back to my Little Ghetto in the middle of the antediluvian night. Okay, this writing sucks. I'm not trying to write gud at the momint. I"m simply blowing smoke out my ass. I am so extremely frustrated. If my disability were to come in with a couple months' back pay, I'd have enough to join the ranks of the Car People. Something I have shirked for years, first fearing that I hwould drink and drive, then considering the responsibility that would accompany owning and maintaining the thing--GAAAHHHH. Not me. But it must be. It simply must.
Minute ago, I had a nice thought: get money, go to Central America, buy ethnic shit and bring it all back here, to be sold at a less vulgar mark-up than is usually found in the States. Do that for a while, go through all the hieroglyphics of geting a business license and whatnot, and buy a space with my profits, and then start doing it again, going to Central America, and Haiti, and South America, and eventually Tibet and all those cool places, India, Africa, Jamaica, and back here. That might fit me well. Let me flip off the institutional roles that I might concievably play in a couple of years. I'm geting old, see: thirty eight. Do I wnt to work until I'm eighty?
I won't answer that question.
If you know of any writing circles o -line, please let me know, so I can check those out, maybe get something going there.
the Old Grey Mare
Worms
The meeting with the directors of the organisation putting me up for the moment went surprisingly well. I dressed crazy: Boy Georgish in a man's paisley PJ top, asymmetrical pink skirt, size L, that I found at the thrift store yesterday (in these parts, and in these days, you can't find too much good pickins in the thrifts), and knee-length black tights, visible against the asymmetry, and my beloved motorcycle boots, circa 1990. With a vintage rhinestone horseshoe pin, which I lost--I loved the thing, but it never brought me much luck, and a wristful of ethnic bracelets. Stopped just short of wrapping my hair up in a scarf whose tones would have made the ensemble look like something out of a John Hughes movie--too planful, too painful, something.
Anyhow, it went well. So sorry, and I really am, but I lied. Maybe I'll tell you, if you are out there, how it went down. All the world's a stage, man: but after not lying, about almost everything, for half a year, today's tale worked some muscles I'd completely forgotten I had.
I didn't betray the anger I have for the neighbor who told them about the six-pack. Didn't approach that subject. Last night, I was sitting outside my aprtment with the woman who had driven me back from downtown. I don't know if she wants to feel helpful--she's an RN, bipolar, borderline, all that good stuff--or if she wants a friend. I have a hugely difficult time accepting that anyone with half a mind would want to hang out and talk to me. If I see her tonight, I'll try to get her to talk about her shite. See what happens there. Anyhow, anyway, there we sat in her Cooper Mini, and here comes this monster white pickup, a heavy Ram by the looks of the thing, and it's headed right toward us, in front of Elmo's side of the duplex. (Elmo is the neighbor who told the powers that be that he saw me with a six-pack.) Elmo and the driver sat there for awhile, and when he got out, ol' Elmo did this thing where he made a point of not looking in my direction. This is a schizophrenic who used to leap at ppl he didn't actually know like some kind of psychotic Labrador retriever. No sense of boundaries at all. So, having ratted me out, he's not going to look at me either. How dumb is this guy? If he played 'Wheel of Fortune' with monkeys and rocks for opponents, he'd finish third, no doubt.
Keep the enemy close. Fake everything. I didn't like the guy from jump street--he thrust his pathology in my face, as in, "Hey man, I'm a schizophrenic, I take 600 mgs of Seroquel, and an anticonvulsant whose name I forget at the moment, and Celexa, and Abilify and this and that and electroconvulsive therapy (I am making that up) and was abused by my parents and I can't find a woman and I'm a drunk and I like--like, I said--to smoke three packs of those damn noxious Basics a day, and eat junk and grease and grow tires about my torso, and try to seduce strange women in a nasty, stinky, unclean house."
Oooooo-kay. Elmo is gross. The beard he wears to conceal a receding chin is yellow with nicotine, as are his fingertips and nails. He has this tattoo. It is of a fairy with big breasts, kind of erupting from a greenish lily. It sits on one of his biceps, where it is not covered by the hair that otherwise runs riot as kudzu over his back, his puny chest, his cheesiform belly. Elmo has this dogmatic little sponsor (one's 'Big Brother' in any 12-step group) that rides a big bike, and parks the thing on the sidewalk, and probably advised Elmo's ass to rat me out. So it follows that I would like to (fill in the blanks, I can't say it right here, I've incurred enough grief with comments made in this sort of poseur jest designed to take the place of damage and fear, and
In the recent past, the Internet was a place where anonymous angry ppl could rant and rave until their drawers untwisted, or they found someone or something to start ranting at again. I used the medium in that fashion. My father is a computer scientist, and would keep telling me that my cyber-riffs might well come back hungry for a bite of my arse. To date, I don't know if that has happened. If I sue the school that denied me re-entry to the nursing program I almost finished, I imagine I'd find out if my anger was a known quantity, or if it was not. That's all history, now. I had a big hard-on for a specific person, but have finally wrapped my skull round the fact that there is very little--and possibly nothing--that I can do to change her opinion of me. All I can do is impress those others that would judge me if I do apply to a short-time BSN program at the local uni.
I get mad. I get very mad. I could say that this Elmo is a slimy tub of pigshit--and I just did. But now that my little performance earlier today seems to have stabilised things for me, I'll be asking the Man a lot of questions about how to let this go.AS if getting me kicked out of the last house on the block is gonna helpf my sobriety, which is tenuous right now. Italics, please, for I have been warned and hope to revisit this later.
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
A Perfume of Trouble
It's on the dark side of the sun--12:40 p.m. to be precise--and waiting for me, in the form of a hastily-called meeting of the directors of the social service agency that is basically putting me up, and my naive and dimwitted self. I smell it coming on--the sober recriminations of the parents, the realization that I will probably wind up in their basement, and take a McDouchejob suitable for the big stinking moron that I seem to be. See, there was this little business about booze. My roommate, my heart-attack of a next-door neighbor, and I are all on record with them as having drinking problems. We're not supposed to keep booze on the premises, let alone drink it. Well, I made this huge flucking mistake the other week, told my roommate's social worker that I'd seen the roomie's BF with booze, but only once, and he didn't seem to have drunk any when he was leaving (I made this part up: he didn't leave). I was jabbering out of sheer nerves; low Klonopin levels will do tht to me. Next-door septic tank was in the back seat, zoning out, or so it looked like, on one of his six schizophrenia meds. I didn't think he was paying any attention at all, although he became very angry when he made the mistake of 'thinking' that the social worker and I had dissed the recovery clubhouse he lives at when not meddling in other ppl's shit. (We had not--I'd just stated that I was not comfortable walking to/from that location alone and with a bag; ppl have twice tried to sell me crack while I was over there, and I didn't care to deal with that.)
In any case, he seems to have run with whatever meaning he was able to pick out, and automatically distort to fit his delusionary system, because he would later tell that social worker that he had seen me take alcohol into the house. More on that in a second, but to backtrack: When Gerda, the social worker, told my roommate V. what I'd said about her BF, she got pissed (she's bipolar and BP, and can go off at times, more lucidly than I could dream of) and told the woman that she'd seen me take a forty into my room. I didn't know that until yesterday, when she came to me wanting to put a story together that would save our asses if ever called into question. This was my story: yes, I took the forty into my room, and came out again in about ten minutes, clutching the sack by the neck. I went outside, was gone for a minute, and when she asked me about what I'd done, I replied that I'd bought beer, but had an attack of conscious and given it to one of the Mexican neighbor men, who sit around fixing cars all day and drinking beer. Made nice with the locals, I guess you could say.
V. told this Gerda woman this story, and per V., the social worker seemed to accept it. Here's the kicker, though, Gerda told V. that another of her clients had seen me with alcohol. That could be only Elmo the trash can, the toxic waste dump that passes for my next-door neighbor and fellow nut job Paulie.He does shit like hiding behind Venitian blinds and peering outside, apparently in search of an enemy of his own design. In the past four weeks, we'd had a spat about him chain-smoking his nasty Basics out front, on a night when the wind was blowing the stink into the A/C intake, and by extension, my went. He told everyone he could--V., and Gerda, and Lord knows, the directors too. Plus, with his own roommate gone for awhile, old Paulie from Lawn Guyland (f*** YES, I wish I was there right now, a trainride away from NYC), has been smoking indoors, a no-no. AND he keeps the place in quite the Belushian, circa 'Animal House', manner. Food and ash everywhere. Definitely no-nos, and he's gonna tell them that he saw me with alcohol. I suggested that V, if she goes out back today/tonight, try to get some information from him about how and where he "saw" me with beer. B/C he probably did. A mere six-pack of Bud Light to set the trazadone off at insomniac nights. Yes, I did that, but must count on ol' Paulie's diagnosis and demonstrated difficulties with anger management in order to flat-out deny this accusation. I dunno what he's TALKIN about (a comtemplative silence ensues). You know, although I do have some undeniably problematic personality glitches, I have my little ol' bachelor' AND have worked in the field, AND pretty much lost a best friend in college to schizophrenia, so I'm figuring that this "beer" I was carrying might be illusory, a bit of wishful thinking in the cardboard flesh.
Must go re-up. Have been warned. I need to get this out of my system, so I'll be back with something better to talk about, I hope. Two-minute flag is donw.
old grey mare
Saturday, June 26, 2004
Refrigerator Deathmarch
Back in da Lex. The compulsive eating continues. I don't do it at my folks' house, for their proscription against the use of food as anything but cardboard-tasting bodyfuel is heavy and strong. I know that abusing food, as I am unable to stop doing right now, is a waste of time and resources, not a lot of fun, and a harbinger of serious grief (try walking a mile in my pants: by definition, you must first lie down on your bed, or whatever you sleep on, pull said garment as far up your legs as it will go, then bend your knees and lift your bottom, suck it in curse mutter say a prayer, and go for it, dragging the garment up over your rump and, one hopes, snapping it closed in front. At that juncture, and that one only, do you dare try the zipper. Pale bloat has been known to get caught in its teeth; since you are not wearing underwear because of the threat of panty lines/intolerance of store-bought wedgies, other things, like hair, might get caught there as well; and last but hardly least, the thing might just break, leaving you pretty much unable to use the pants at all unless you are really good at sewing or something like it). I can't imagine being much fatter than I am today. While not clinically obese, I am definitely overweight, and well aware that nobody wants to hear it, and social retardate that I am, unable to talk about very much else.
Because my roommate is celebrating her son's birthday (his father has custody of the boy, now 15) and having her extended family over, basically a bunch of ppl I've never laid eyes on, let alone "know" in any sort of useful way, I must stay out all day long. She was cooking all day yesterday, cookout food, beef and melted cheese and potato salad and deviled ("dressed", she calls them, a localism if ever I heard one) eggs, and has the foresight to tell me that there will be mounds of the stuff left over tonight when they are gone. So I dread returning to the apartment. I know--I don't have to open the refrigerator; I can go straight to the bedroom, down my trazadone and Neurontin, turn on the gibbering box and space out to the endless cop shows and such until I find myself getting sleepy, and THEN cut to black and cover myself against the omnipresent air conditioning, and pray the desire to stuff myself just goes away. I can't say I'll fail before I try this, but I have an extensive history of fucking up at this sort of thing.
Oh, I'm mystified all right as to why this habit has emerged, and how, and when. I used to blame monstrous increases in appetite on the trazadone, which is documented in causing a rise in carb cravings in some people. However, I'm down to two hundred from four--the bullshit involved in getting it from the Faith Pharmacy (sort of like God's Pantry, another service for po' folk) is pretty daunting--and I shouldn't be seeing what I'm seeing, doing what I'm doing. The activity is close to pure automatism. Back and forth and back again to the kitchenette, fistfuls of pre-shredded toxic yellow cheese and cheater's omelettes made in the microwave and briny coldcuts, all of this barely chewed and hastily swallowed, and later hustled along the digestive tract with three little Pepto-Bismol-colored pills to be squeezed out as gummy nasty poop the next day. Charmant, ain't it. (And the poop always sticks to the bottom of the toilet, which is slow to flush, and I must clean it with a fistful of toilet paper, so that nothing will smell like what is, gardammit, and my roommate will not be alarmed.)
Without any booze at all, I can take in about 2000kCals a night. Have been doing so for over a month, now; as I mentioned earlier, I don'tcan't do this when I am at my parents' residence. Which leads me to the realm of bizarre computations: five nights in da Lex is equal to 10,000 calories is equal to about four pounds of shit and an infinity of self-flagellation V. four days at the ranch equals 500 calories burned mucking the barn equals fun and games with small furry animals, my own dog and pony show, which equals incalculable misery at the hands of two old ppl who are both better off when I am not around to remind them of their perceived parental failure and insentient and ruthless critics of the DEEstructive kind. Also, the potential to lose three very real pounds, if only for a day. I can't do this. Some of the problem has to do with me feeling useless and logy and wholly aware that I must find structure in the form of a job or two, or design some structure for myself until it just happens along. I walked into town today, about two miles. Since I'd awakened at nine, I'd been thinking that I would tire myself out on purpose, stay out at the recovery club until twelve midnight, and go on home. I got some badass blisters in my neo-EarthShoes, though. So bad I've wrapped toilet tissue around them. Which will keep me from walking for a couple of days. Good thing--or not--I'm not in Viet Nam.
Dress your eggs now, y'all
hoss
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
What I think is arthritis is acting up. The air is dense-packed with sweat and storms are on the way, like in New Orleans, predictably every afternoon. Put some Ben-Gay on it, and an elastic support thing for my right knee. Too bad it cuts off the circulation to my foot, though.
Anyhow, the mother has a project for me--routine ranch-house cleaning, although it must be done her way, with her present AAT, for she cannot TRUST me. I screw up everything. I know zip zero zilch. To wit: she saw her GP this a.m. to review some bloodwork and a mammogram. Her lipids are within normal limits and the mammogram shows not a thing, possibly because there is nothing there to show. But her B-12 levels are pretty skimpy. She and Angry Dad eat very little red meat, not much pork either, and I imagine that this is the reason, for the rest of the bloodwork is Average Joe fine.
"Joe" is my father's name.
Anyway, so The Mother declares that she is going to buy some B-12 tablets and start taking them. I know from experience (I was a vegan at one time) that this does not work--much of processed B-12 will remain unavailable to the body and a useless expense if one pinches one's pennies like The Mother does. And I told her this, without looking to science to grab my back. Told her that the best way to get one's B-12 is to eat beef or pork at least once a week. And she blew me off. I will stay in that place until I can produce up-to-the minute info on how to get enough B-12--but she won't let me use the printer.
Angry Dad: I must make him an object, being around him hurts me that much. Gah-DA*N, I don't do drugs any more, and that I did is hardly testament to some vague parental failure. I was too sensitive, is all, and in the late sixties-- a bad time to be a toddler in mainstream, midstream America. Him allways sneering and hissing. I could write papers on why he does this. I have prayed volumes on the how and why of it as well, and since his behavior is automatic to the point of unconscious, I guess it's on me to accept it.
But I can't right now. I regret it like hell. I disgust him. So that's who I am: disgusting. (Let it pass, it is said, let it go you are a being not a doing where you are is where God wants you is where you're supposed to be to the point of soulmurderous madness.) Looks as though I am going to have to harness my will and stay in the Lex until one of the two of us gets over this. Add italics as needed, if you have the time.
Went to muck out the dirt-floor barn about an hour ago. All of the miniatures were inside. I stank of liniment, and only one of the little horses wanted to be around me--the others went out, into the hot wet air. This hurt my feelings. The one horse, Patch, was enamored of my liniment and wanted to lick it off. I let him, a little, but figured liniment was not good for little horses' insides. Not a major food group. So I left him, grudgingly. He's a good little guy, an App, tri-colored with spots on the rump and pink rings around his eyes. I know he won't betray me.
But I can't see him if I'm in the Lex. Herein lies my problem of the day. I love the horses, the dogs, the cats, even the baby bird, but I'm not sure if I love my parents enough to take their shite. All of us have shite to spare, and as hard as I read the Buddhists these days--there is wisdom there, God led me to it, I like to think--I can't shine their attitudes on. Nor can I identify, let alone adjust, the wrong-headed behaviors on my part. Recently read something about borderlines tending to project their self-hate onto others around them--why borderlines are often disliked by almost everyone they encounter. Hard as this is to accept, it bears investigation. I wonder if my self-loathing--as much as I try to 'block' it or otherwise shine it onward--registers like sewage on-line.
Been told to get off, so I will
c h
Ah. Whatever was wrong with the log-in process is right again. One good thing in a mess of bad things, the latter the the thoughts I have been trying to 'block': these have massed together to spill over into sleep and rear up in my waking hours as impulses it would harm me further to try to fulfill. Weird parental shit; me trying to figure them out. Like, the TV is gibbering away through the door to my mother's bedroom and I'm wondering if it's personal, and dead certain that if I asked my father to turn the thing down, he would huff and puff and bark at me like a dog. (He is watching repeats of that wretch Bob Saget's 'America's Funniest Videos'. As opposed to 'Fear Factor', that show where the contestants must eat the snouts of cattle without vomiting, and lie down in caskets filled with bugs. I was sort of watching 'Fear Factor'. Both our thinking apparatuses must surely suffer. Evidence this: I miss my basic cable service, with its syndicated NY cop shows and Fox 56 and old old movies that I almost never look at.
Also, 'Animal Planet'. I do miss that, save for the Crocodile Moron--you know, the guy that leaps around in the slop and mud he shares with hungry reptiles that could swallow him in one piece. Speaking of animals, my mother has rescued a baby bird of some kind. It looks like an enraged old woman, what with its stringy throat and rapacious little eyes. The thing is always cheeping. Looks like it isn't going to die after all. She digs up earthworms (what about their rights, I have to ask) and chatters to it as she drops them into its beak that is always open. It knows her, she says, and well okay then. Let's see her teach it to fly.
The old black Lab Beulah had a misdiagnosed tumor (as opposed to sebaceous cyst) removed from her neck a few days back. Per the mother, the dog was pretty well snowed on morphine and something else for one day; the next, the day she came to get me this last Friday, she was walking as though a massive weight had been removed from her horny and crumbling spine. Glassy eyes gone bean-bright again, suture line clean-enough until Sunday, yesterday. One of the parents noticed frank blood on the linoleum, and traced it to its source--the incision had dehisced, come open at one point, gaping like a tiny fishmouth. Mother bandaged it, and when we removed it today to check it out, I noticed an outpouching of fluid gathered there, loose and hot to the touch, swaying beneath Beulah's neck skin. The dressing was soggy with serum, so I figured the wound had become infected.
It had not. The veterinarian said so. The dog is old, especially for a Lab, about twelve or thirteen, and she seems covered with polyps that look like mushrooms and feel worse, so I would have bet all the money to my name, if I had any. It seems as though I wanted very badly to know something. In this house, that imperative is denied me. The mother is always saying crap at me, launching it like some kind of blunt object. Stuff I memorised at age six and never forgot, horse information, the kind of data that is basic to me and almost innate any more. The science I purchased with other ppl's money to the tune of 32K and have not yet been able to use. In this house I am always a child, and a dull one. The dad can tinker, the old lady cook and clean and fool with the miniature horses. "MAH animals " is what she calls them; I do a lot of their care now, and she has no clue how that phrase twists my knickers and messes up my gut.
I use the animals for therapy. They are dear to me, and I can tolerate the baby bird, even though it has that aspect of a demented ancient nursing home patient and makes almost as much noise. When the mother feeds the creature, I feel my innards straining toward some version of "touched and bemused", and I wince, not quite sure where my empathy has gone, unsure if I ever had enough to qualify as any kind of human.
("Stop being so hard on yourself," the voices demand.
"But it's like wired into me, it's like thought itself," is all I can say back.)
This thing got lost and has a lot of typos and deranged sentence structures. Maybe I will edit it when I get back to the Lex. God were it I were returning to Philadelphia, even though it's summer, with 5K to get set up with and a sense of hope that is pretty much, at this moment, dead and gone.
horse, teaching the babies to lead
Ah. Whatever was wrong with the log-in process is right again. One good thing in a mess of bad things, the latter the the thoughts I have been trying to 'block': these have massed together to spill over into sleep and rear up in my waking hours as impulses it would harm me further to try to fulfill. Weird parental shit; me trying to figure them out. Like, the TV is gibbering away through the door to my mother's bedroom and I'm wondering if it's personal, and dead certain that if I asked my father to turn the thing down, he would huff and puff and bark at me like a dog. (He is watching repeats of that wretch Bob Saget's 'America's Funniest Videos'. As opposed to 'Fear Factor', that show where the contestants must eat the snouts of cattle without vomiting, and lie down in caskets filled with bugs. I was sort of watching 'Fear Factor'. Both our thinking apparatuses must surely suffer. Evidence this: I miss my basic cable service, with its syndicated NY cop shows and Fox 56 and old old movies that I almost never look at.
Also, 'Animal Planet'. I do miss that, save for the Crocodile Moron--you know, the guy that leaps around in the slop and mud he shares with hungry reptiles that could swallow him in one piece. Speaking of animals, my mother has rescued a baby bird of some kind. It looks like an enraged old woman, what with its stringy throat and rapacious little eyes. The thing is always cheeping. Looks like it isn't going to die after all. She digs up earthworms (what about their rights, I have to ask) and chatters to it as she drops them into its beak that is always open. It knows her, she says, and well okay then. Let's see her teach it to fly.
The old black Lab Beulah had a misdiagnosed tumor (as opposed to sebaceous cyst) removed from her neck a few days back. Per the mother, the dog was pretty well snowed on morphine and something else for one day; the next, the day she came to get me this last Friday, she was walking as though a massive weight had been removed from her horny and crumbling spine. Glassy eyes gone bean-bright again, suture line clean-enough until Sunday, yesterday. One of the parents noticed frank blood on the linoleum, and traced it to its source--the incision had dehisced, come open at one point, gaping like a tiny fishmouth. Mother bandaged it, and when we removed it today to check it out, I noticed an outpouching of fluid gathered there, loose and hot to the touch, swaying beneath Beulah's neck skin. The dressing was soggy with serum, so I figured the wound had become infected.
It had not. The veterinarian said so. The dog is old, especially for a Lab, about twelve or thirteen, and she seems covered with polyps that look like mushrooms and feel worse, so I would have bet all the money to my name, if I had any. It seems as though I wanted very badly to know something. In this house, that imperative is denied me. The mother is always saying crap at me, launching it like some kind of blunt object. Stuff I memorised at age six and never forgot, horse information, the kind of data that is basic to me and almost innate any more. The science I purchased with other ppl's money to the tune of 32K and have not yet been able to use. In this house I am always a child, and a dull one. The dad can tinker, the old lady cook and clean and fool with the miniature horses. "MAH animals " is what she calls them; I do a lot of their care now, and she has no clue how that phrase twists my knickers and messes up my gut.
I use the animals for therapy. They are dear to me, and I can tolerate the baby bird, even though it has that aspect of a demented ancient nursing home patient and makes almost as much noise. When the mother feeds the creature, I feel my innards straining toward some version of "touched and bemused", and I wince, not quite sure where my empathy has gone, unsure if I ever had enough to qualify as any kind of human.
("Stop being so hard on yourself," the voices demand.
"But it's like wired into me, it's like thought itself," is all I can say back.)
This thing got lost and has a lot of typos and deranged sentence structures. Maybe I will edit it when I get back to the Lex. God were it I were returning to Philadelphia, even though it's summer, with 5K to get set up with and a sense of hope that is pretty much, at this moment, dead and gone.
horse, teaching the babies to lead
Ah. Whatever was wrong with the log-in process is right again. One good thing in a mess of bad things, the latter the the thoughts I have been trying to 'block': these have massed together to spill over into sleep and rear up in my waking hours as impulses it would harm me further to try to fulfill. Weird parental shit; me trying to figure them out. Like, the TV is gibbering away through the door to my mother's bedroom and I'm wondering if it's personal, and dead certain that if I asked my father to turn the thing down, he would huff and puff and bark at me like a dog. (He is watching repeats of that wretch Bob Saget's 'America's Funniest Videos'. As opposed to 'Fear Factor', that show where the contestants must eat the snouts of cattle without vomiting, and lie down in caskets filled with bugs. I was sort of watching 'Fear Factor'. Both our thinking apparatuses must surely suffer. Evidence this: I miss my basic cable service, with its syndicated NY cop shows and Fox 56 and old old movies that I almost never look at.
Also, 'Animal Planet'. I do miss that, save for the Crocodile Moron--you know, the guy that leaps around in the slop and mud he shares with hungry reptiles that could swallow him in one piece. Speaking of animals, my mother has rescued a baby bird of some kind. It looks like an enraged old woman, what with its stringy throat and rapacious little eyes. The thing is always cheeping. Looks like it isn't going to die after all. She digs up earthworms (what about their rights, I have to ask) and chatters to it as she drops them into its beak that is always open. It knows her, she says, and well okay then. Let's see her teach it to fly.
The old black Lab Beulah had a misdiagnosed tumor (as opposed to sebaceous cyst) removed from her neck a few days back. Per the mother, the dog was pretty well snowed on morphine and something else for one day; the next, the day she came to get me this last Friday, she was walking as though a massive weight had been removed from her horny and crumbling spine. Glassy eyes gone bean-bright again, suture line clean-enough until Sunday, yesterday. One of the parents noticed frank blood on the linoleum, and traced it to its source--the incision had dehisced, come open at one point, gaping like a tiny fishmouth. Mother bandaged it, and when we removed it today to check it out, I noticed an outpouching of fluid gathered there, loose and hot to the touch, swaying beneath Beulah's neck skin. The dressing was soggy with serum, so I figured the wound had become infected.
It had not. The veterinarian said so. The dog is old, especially for a Lab, about twelve or thirteen, and she seems covered with polyps that look like mushrooms and feel worse, so I would have bet all the money to my name, if I had any. It seems as though I wanted very badly to know something. In this house, that imperative is denied me. The mother is always saying crap at me, launching it like some kind of blunt object. Stuff I memorised at age six and never forgot, horse information, the kind of data that is basic to me and almost innate any more. The science I purchased with other ppl's money to the tune of 32K and have not yet been able to use. In this house I am always a child, and a dull one. The dad can tinker, the old lady cook and clean and fool with the miniature horses. "MAH animals " is what she calls them; I do a lot of their care now, and she has no clue how that phrase twists my knickers and messes up my gut.
I use the animals for therapy. They are dear to me, and I can tolerate the baby bird, even though it has that aspect of a demented ancient nursing home patient and makes almost as much noise. When the mother feeds the creature, I feel my innards straining toward some version of "touched and bemused", and I wince, not quite sure where my empathy has gone, unsure if I ever had enough to qualify as any kind of human.
("Stop being so hard on yourself," the voices demand.
"But it's like wired into me, it's like thought itself," is all I can say back.)
This thing got lost and has a lot of typos and deranged sentence structures. Maybe I will edit it when I get back to the Lex. God were it I were returning to Philadelphia, even though it's summer, with 5K to get set up with and a sense of hope that is pretty much, at this moment, dead and gone.
horse, teaching the babies to lead
Thursday, June 17, 2004
Born, born, born...born to be alive.
Hmph! Too much damn toil and trouble. Extravagantly gorgeous day, got the Neurontin flowing after an unnecessary, beaurocracy-initiated 'holiday', my food is paid for with my EBT card--and I'm still in a bad head. The Nice Social Worker took me and my possibly paranoid next door neighbor P. the Donkey (he brays instead of speaking, and would resemble one too, except donkeys are better looking) and me to apply for Section 8 housing. The application is one requirement for the receipt of certain social services (these would be the maintenence and upkeep of my fat curd-like arse). The process reified that I do, indeed, look like a Profesional Mental Patient. Almost every person I encountered along this brief journey spoke to me sweetly and slowly and , if you will, paradoxically disgustedly. Gentle reader keep in mind that I am not trying to "write pretty" here--this is simply blow-by-blow stuff, about as objective as I am capable of putting together right now.
Okay, I'm a mess. Tall pudgy person with fried orange hair, greying white at the temple, in shorts and a t-shirt. At my damnable age, my major sore spot right now. I'm lugging a torn-up backpack and wearing beat-to-shit old black sneakers. I have plucked my chin hairs; my head hair is in my eyes, hiding my worry line for the moment. I need a haircut of some type, and a dye job. I have no money, so all that's out of the question.
The receptionist, white lady with a brown shag and red lips and Hebrew surname, eyes us--me, P. the D., and the Nice Social Worker--sideways. Tells me and P. to sign in. In minutes, a stocky, greying light brown lady of a certain age appears, invites us to follow her, and in a largeish room most certainly designated for group trainings and such, hands the two of us packages of forms, and proceeds to condescend, perhaps somewhat guiltily. (After all, she can't look at ppl and see what they USED to be like, or what they might have been capable of at one time aeons and many moons ago. She doesn't have my transcripts loading in her prefrontal cortex. It is very hard to remember these things about functionaries. My Inner Narcissist starts sniping before I can try to assess the situation for what it is.)
I advise the woman that I am adept at filling out forms. After all, that's what I've been doing--when I'm dry, that is--for the past year and a half. I tell her that a position for "application filler" should be created--for me, of course, for I do it fast and well.
Turns out there's not much to it. P. the D. scribbles, cuts out to smoke. This is a person who lives on Seroquel and two packs of really vile-smelling cigarettes a day. My eating problem being as bad as it currently is, I should try to visualise this guy's lungs every time I even consider bingeing.
Now, I don't purge: my teeth are going bad, and I fear being caught, even though the roommate is out of town; also, the bingeing contributes mightily to self-hatred, and I'm presently overloaded with that shit. (I practise 'thought-blocking', or shutting down unpleasant memories and their skeins of associations, as these arise; and I fear that all of these have fallen away to some cave-black compartment of my epi-reptile brain, and regroup to rise and haunt me in dream. I gotta do something about these dreams, or allow myself to start flagellating madly again. Sometimes I awaken sort of gutted, like I was fighting, and losing, bad.) Um....uh....anyhow, bingeing evokes visuals I probably will later address. Plus, the toilet must be cleaned when the binger is done puking, and the face must be washed, and the hands, and the whole spectre readied for bed.
I am overweight. The local rag here in the Lex is cracking down on obesity--Kentucky has the fourth highest rate of fat people in the fifty-one states. Per the charts that are printed daily, five-nine and 160-something is overweght. And whatever muscle mass I may have had has fallen to flab, so I guess I have to take the charts at their word. (And fook, I so do wish my disability would come, b/c I'd be at the fly-by-night weightloss clinic across town in a fockin minute.) I am twenty pounds too fat at the least; I could get down to 135 and still be found healthy, and the prospect of the anxiety and pain and every other mucked-up emotion I have about the process is dreadful.
I sit and pinch my cheesy thights, the bag of flab that passes for my stomach, even my calves; this hurts but a bit; they will not bruise. This says something for my liver, but I'm not caring about my liver at this moment. I do this in public. Always I am nervous in public, scratching my head, fidgeting, needing something in hand to focus on, or else, I feel, I just might fly off like an untied balloon. The Hindenburg flies again, I guess. My dreams are real now. In my dreams, I have sex with faceless men who comment on how oily my hair is; I party with them, and my LOC decreases, and they are saying, She's just a drunk, a fat whore, FUCK her. Like anyone might want to. This is why the big men's shirts, the baggy pants, the slumpy posture. This is why I don't do jack about my ragged hair. Fat ppl in makeup and expensive clothes are fat ppl nonetheless, fat being the focus of their perceived selves, and I find it simply silly to dress the rest of my lumpety ass up, to apply foundation to my blotchy face, to care as much as I obviously do. (I don't hate fat ppl, btw, or at least I'm not aware of that. They simply scare me, for I'm climbing the scales into their ranks as I speak.)
I have no more hipbones. My face is spare: I can still see my cheekbones, but the rest appears swollen, as though I ha ve mumps. And I would gladly continue in this vein, but I've received my first two-minute warning. I'll be booted if I don't log out, so over and out. Sorry I'm not amusing todya.
Born, born, born...born to be alive.
Hmph! Too much damn toil and trouble. Extravagantly gorgeous day, got the Neurontin flowing after an unnecessary, beaurocracy-initiated 'holiday', my food is paid for with my EBT card--and I'm still in a bad head. The Nice Social Worker took me and my possibly paranoid next door neighbor P. the Donkey (he brays instead of speaking, and would resemble one too, except donkeys are better looking) and me to apply for Section 8 housing. The application is one requirement for the receipt of certain social services (these would be the maintenence and upkeep of my fat curd-like arse). The process reified that I do, indeed, look like a Profesional Mental Patient. Almost every person I encountered along this brief journey spoke to me sweetly and slowly and , if you will, paradoxically disgustedly. Gentle reader keep in mind that I am not trying to "write pretty" here--this is simply blow-by-blow stuff, about as objective as I am capable of putting together right now.
Okay, I'm a mess. Tall pudgy person with fried orange hair, greying white at the temple, in shorts and a t-shirt. At my damnable age, my major sore spot right now. I'm lugging a torn-up backpack and wearing beat-to-shit old black sneakers. I have plucked my chin hairs; my head hair is in my eyes, hiding my worry line for the moment. I need a haircut of some type, and a dye job. I have no money, so all that's out of the question.
The receptionist, white lady with a brown shag and red lips and Hebrew surname, eyes us--me, P. the D., and the Nice Social Worker--sideways. Tells me and P. to sign in. In minutes, a stocky, greying light brown lady of a certain age appears, invites us to follow her, and in a largeish room most certainly designated for group trainings and such, hands the two of us packages of forms, and proceeds to condescend, perhaps somewhat guiltily. (After all, she can't look at ppl and see what they USED to be like, or what they might have been capable of at one time aeons and many moons ago. She doesn't have my transcripts loading in her prefrontal cortex. It is very hard to remember these things about functionaries. My Inner Narcissist starts sniping before I can try to assess the situation for what it is.)
I advise the woman that I am adept at filling out forms. After all, that's what I've been doing--when I'm dry, that is--for the past year and a half. I tell her that a position for "application filler" should be created--for me, of course, for I do it fast and well.
Turns out there's not much to it. P. the D. scribbles, cuts out to smoke. This is a person who lives on Seroquel and two packs of really vile-smelling cigarettes a day. My eating problem being as bad as it currently is, I should try to visualise this guy's lungs every time I even consider bingeing.
Now, I don't purge: my teeth are going bad, and I fear being caught, even though the roommate is out of town; also, the bingeing contributes mightily to self-hatred, and I'm presently overloaded with that shit. (I practise 'thought-blocking', or shutting down unpleasant memories and their skeins of associations, as these arise; and I fear that all of these have fallen away to some cave-black compartment of my epi-reptile brain, and regroup to rise and haunt me in dream. I gotta do something about these dreams, or allow myself to start flagellating madly again. Sometimes I awaken sort of gutted, like I was fighting, and losing, bad.) Um....uh....anyhow, bingeing evokes visuals I probably will later address. Plus, the toilet must be cleaned when the binger is done puking, and the face must be washed, and the hands, and the whole spectre readied for bed.
I am overweight. The local rag here in the Lex is cracking down on obesity--Kentucky has the fourth highest rate of fat people in the fifty-one states. Per the charts that are printed daily, five-nine and 160-something is overweght. And whatever muscle mass I may have had has fallen to flab, so I guess I have to take the charts at their word. (And fook, I so do wish my disability would come, b/c I'd be at the fly-by-night weightloss clinic across town in a fockin minute.) I am twenty pounds too fat at the least; I could get down to 135 and still be found healthy, and the prospect of the anxiety and pain and every other mucked-up emotion I have about the process is dreadful.
I sit and pinch my cheesy thights, the bag of flab that passes for my stomach, even my calves; this hurts but a bit; they will not bruise. This says something for my liver, but I'm not caring about my liver at this moment. I do this in public. Always I am nervous in public, scratching my head, fidgeting, needing something in hand to focus on, or else, I feel, I just might fly off like an untied balloon. The Hindenburg flies again, I guess. My dreams are real now. In my dreams, I have sex with faceless men who comment on how oily my hair is; I party with them, and my LOC decreases, and they are saying, She's just a drunk, a fat whore, FUCK her. Like anyone might want to. This is why the big men's shirts, the baggy pants, the slumpy posture. This is why I don't do jack about my ragged hair. Fat ppl in makeup and expensive clothes are fat ppl nonetheless, fat being the focus of their perceived selves, and I find it simply silly to dress the rest of my lumpety ass up, to apply foundation to my blotchy face, to care as much as I obviously do. (I don't hate fat ppl, btw, or at least I'm not aware of that. They simply scare me, for I'm climbing the scales into their ranks as I speak.)
I have no more hipbones. My face is spare: I can still see my cheekbones, but the rest appears swollen, as though I ha ve mumps. And I would gladly continue in this vein, but I've received my first two-minute warning. I'll be booted if I don't log out, so over and out. Sorry I'm not amusing todya.
|
rant of career screw-up, social retardate and bad references walking, all grown old
|
