Diary entry, 1994

Erica calls me a couple of days after Thanksgiving.  We talk for a while about work and debts and boyfriends.  I thought I knew everything but now I realize I know almost as close to nothing as you can get without having fallen here on accident from another planet.

Searching

Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

― Friedrich Nietzsche

Diary entry, April 21, 2014

She has a memory.  One beautiful memory.  Carefully held in the palm of her hands, so that no one else might find it and steal it.  She must leave it nowhere.  It must always remain with her.  The memory of that one summer morning, while they still slept.  The pavement of the driveway cool on her bare feet as she stepped into the shadow cast by the huge Mountain Ash in the front yard, the sun burning golden at the edges.  No one must have this moment.  This moment must never be touched.

Because she must hold it so close and so carefully, she cannot hold onto any others.  She lets the pictures framed in broken glass fall through her fingers.  There must only be one world.  One world, underneath the tree, where no one else exists.  Let the others sleep.  Let them all sleep.  She is a girl standing in the shadow of a golden halo.  She must never step out.  She must live here forever.

if you must hear a story here is one for you if you must hear a story i know one or two if i tell you a story i will only laugh if i tell you a story it will surely be quite daft once upon a time in a room without a view there was a little girl or maybe one or two he was strange he was weird he was a big buffoon he had dandruff in his hair he liked to play the spoons there was a connection you see between the first group and the last there was a line between the trees when he was at last invited back bring the little girl see if this time she will learn bring the little brat after all it is her turn but the little girl was bad and ugly through and through at last they all gave up and tossed her in this room you cannot come back they whispered into her ear you belong to us but we don’t want you here so now she skips off into a night without a gentle end she looks behind for the plagues that they might send i am one of them whether i am here or there i am one of them my life you cannot spare la la la la you cannot break the wall la la la la it’s a hundred feet tall guarded all around by a thousand beastly men their axes and their spikes pointed square at her neck la la la la here it is I smile la la la la we knew this all the while humdumdedum together we will go humdumpudum ours is not to know

The view from inside

January's Relapse

Most remained here with me

I gave some to the wind                       the wind that separated my toes

but something stayed crept poked inside

mocking me with icicle whispers to

never mind the frost outside

inside is just as cold

whatever stole into my pillowcase

left me silenced

crystallized the dripping ceiling

buckled the paneled walls

I could never begin to wonder how

it came to happen

how I whimpered for it to go away     

yet still forgetting to scrape off the scent

that yesterday is a dangerous thing

this something has left my cheekbones bruised

this something has cut into my knuckles

why God has given me these fingernails                      I do not know

but maybe forgiveness hides in the mattress

maybe in the frozen droplets trapped

on the branch’s edge...

Most remains here with me

Unfinished

The Man Who Could, But Didn't (Pt. 1)

Joe lived in the mountains.   He thought they were the most beautiful mountains in the world.  Every evening when he watched the sky turn orange behind them, he felt like the luckiest person alive.

In the morning Joe would wake up happy, because he loved his job.  He worked at the bottom of tallest mountain, where he operated the ski lift.  As a child he used to watch the ski left ascending into the sky and the people disappear into the clouds like angels.  Nothing made him happier now than to be the one who helped the skiers fly up into the heavens.

And there were many, many skiers.  In Joe’s village everyone loved to ski—everyone, that is, but Joe.  He had never liked it.  His parents had tried to make him learn, but gave up in despair when he insisted on going down the bunny hill on his bum, no matter what they promised him.  He didn’t even care when his older brother Will made fun of him and called him a scaredy cat.  The moment he strapped skis on he felt cold and miserable.  Speed did not interest him.  He was content to appreciate the mountain from the bottom.

So Joe attached himself to the people who operated the ski lift and they taught him all about it.  By the time he was done with school he already had his dream job waiting for him.  Will, who had made the local ski team as an alternate, pretended he didn’t know who Joe was whenever he was in line for the lift.  Joe didn’t mind.  He didn’t much care for Will either.

One day Joe received a call from Jilly, the operator at the top of the ski lift.   She loved working at the top of the mountain as much as Joe loved working at the bottom.  “I don’t feel very well,” she told Joe.  “Do you think you could come up here and take over?”

Reluctantly Joe agreed.  He usually avoided riding the ski lift at all costs.  Jilly needed help, however, so Joe left his assistant Mark in charge, strapped on his skis, and felt himself transported up into the mists.

Notebook, 2013

If tomorrow is here then so be it

But don’t ask me to say amen because

I won’t believe it I won’t believe it I

won’t believe it.

The Veil

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
--1 Corinthians 13:12

Notebook, 1990

I have a secret words

will never find,

images I tucked

away.

I once heard a voice.

It beckoned me,

singing,

tell me your secrets,

your hopes and fears

and jealousies.

I whispered back in the

safest voice I could

reveal,

my dreams mean nothing

to you.

Diary entry, April 20, 2014

This is evil. 

You think you know.  You can never know.  You will never know anything other than a name that means nothing to you.  You are trapped in the network.  The hallway has no exit.  The bicycle has no wheels.  If you step outside of the red lines there is nothing to stand on.  You will fall.  You will fall, and you will not even remember how to scream, but it won’t matter.  Because no one would hear you even if you did.  You are a story I sold for a million howls of laughter.  For a million screams of pleasure.  You are nothing.  You were just one more born to serve a purpose, and now you are used up.  No wonder you question living.  You know there is no purpose left for you.  I tore you into tiny pieces and gave bits to any who asked.  I did this because you are useless.  No one cared then, and no one cares now.  You are a piece of lint to be flicked away, blown into nowhere.

Ghosts

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.
--The Tempest, Act. III. Sc. 2
Wm. Shakespeare

School essay, 1985

At one time or another, everyone feels a regret or hurt that they hold deep down inside until it nearly crushes them.  By the time it reaches the critical point, though, the person himself has to let it go.  They may never be totally forgiven for what they once did, but complete absolution is rare.  To release the pain, we first must realize that we are holding it inside.  Many people deny this until it hits them like a sudden storm.

Diary entry, February 1, 2015

Another year, the same question:  how much longer? 

How much longer indeed.

Lost

My witness is the empty sky.
--Jack Kerouac

The Dragon in the Elevator, Pt. 4

I am not well, I tell the dragon.

Still.

Yes.  I know.

My head hurts 

It feels strange 

I don’t know what normal is anymore but

I want to remember

I want to remember what it

felt like to hold my head in place

to not feel as if it was either going to

fly off

or pull me down to the

bottom of the ocean and

hold me there

an anchor I cannot escape

I am not allowed those memories anymore

I am not allowed any memories at all

Maybe if you asked.

I don’t want to ask

Then what do you expect?

I don’t know

Nothing

And that is the problem.

Art Therapy/Consequences, 2004

Letter to Ryan, December 17, 1989

I talked to my dad today and it was quite an ordeal.  He told me that he wanted me to visit while he was on vacation (the week of Christmas), which I said was impossible because I’m visiting a friend the 27^th-29^th.  So he said I should spend that weekend with him (including New Years’ Eve) to which I said, “No way, Jose” or something to that effect, anyway.  So I suggested that I spend some other weekend in January.  Well, Dad flipped out and said he wanted me to visit while he was home and not working.  I asked him where he’d be on the weekend if he wasn’t going to be at home, which greatly confused him.  He kept repeating how I had to visit him while he’d be at home, which leads me to wonder just exactly what does he do with his weekends...?   Does he have some island home in the Pacific that he visits from Friday through Sunday? 

By the time I hung up Dad could hardly spell my name.  He told me to write down my schedule for my entire break (as if I know what it’s going to be...oh, yeah, I’m psychic) so that he could mull it over and decide when I should visit.  (From 8:03 a.m. to 8:04 a.m. I will be brushing my teeth...)   I never knew a semester break could be so stressful!

So did the Vikings win today?  Did the Bears win?  Oh, please, send me all of the football scores and stats, will you, huh, huh, please?!

The Bride

Notebook, circa 1990s

I slipped inside of the

oily puddle today.

Even though I knew it

was there.

The twig you threw was good

enough to save

itself, barely.

Still, it was the strangest thing.

While I was waiting,

suddenly I had this tree.

Not much moves me,

but I had to move for the roots.

They were so big.

It burned inside, I know it.

The petrol had to burn the

branches inside,

had to leave scars that

never turn white.

The explosion would have

horrified you,

had you waited to see.

Oil does that—

it explodes.

And then there is nothing left.

Nothing.

Not even a twig.

Reconstruction

I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

                                           --T.S. Eliot, The Journey of the Magi

The Hate List, 2007

42.  How you said I couldn’t have a dog, and if I did, I couldn’t have a little dog.

43.  How you said when the cats passed, I probably couldn’t have any more.

Diary entry, January 7, 1983

Dear Diary,

Today I got out of school at 10:30 am.  We were going to have a family conference with my mom’s doctor.  He talked soft, and I couldn’t hear him when he asked a question.  Finally Mom told him I have a slight hearing problem.  He talked louder to me after that.  I don’t know why they talked so quiet, though.  I guess I never will. That’s life!

Art Therapy/Dracula's Castle, 2005

1

Draft letter, 1992

1    I understand you might be worried about me, therefore I felt compelled to write to you.

.       I am dealing with very painful and serious issues.  I am not ready to talk to you about these issues—if and when I am, I will contact you—I don’t know when—meanwhile, I need from you to give me time and space.  Meaning do not call or write me, Ryan, or other family members.  No other family member knows anything.

I understand that this will be difficult for you and I encourage you to see a counsellor.

If there is an emergency or anything you need to know about me, you will hear about it.

I loved you more than snow on my birthdays in December.

Diary entry, January 3, 1990

I know what hate is, she said.  I know how to hate him and I know how to hate myself.

So they sent her to someone who could teach her how not to hate.  He had nothing to do with God or Christs nailed to crosses.

It took a long time.  But she learned how to not to hate.  Instead she learned how not to trust.  She could live with mistrust.  She could not live with hate.

Puzzle Pieces

Ghosts and scissors and all manner of things.

To Sleep

Tired but awake again

because wakefulness is waiting for

my answer

I am ready this time

ready to embrace the disbelief

to refuse the hand that

once could pull me to

my feet

Floating into ache once more

with no morning defense

when the sun broke me like

a cudgel to

the head

stole from me any

last moments for

dreaming

Memory waits still and near for me

I am endlessly choosing I am

at last losing what allowed me to

creep through the hole in the

floor

So tired of attempting

            to end this need for sleeping

Letter to Ryan, January 3, 1990

Hey, hey, hey, I wrote a story, but it’s not funny.  In fact, it’s not even happy.  Don’t worry.  I’ll spare you the agony of reading it.  I tried to write you a funny one, but it’s not going well.  Cindy read the part I have done, and she said it doesn’t sound like me.  I think I need a totally new idea.  I’m sure I’ll think of something.  I wrote a poem, too, but, oh well, nothing for you to read except this lame letter.

Actually, it’s been a highly stressful few days for numerous reasons that I need not complicate your life with.  I think that’s why I’ve had the nightmares.  I told you that I was a hyper person who worries excessively, didn’t I?!  These last days have been enough to shave ten years off of my life!  (It’s a good thing I don’t smoke – ha ha!)

Intrusion

The Dragon in the Elevator, Pt. 3

Welcome back

I am not back

do not speak to me

Tell me a story

There is no story

only tears that blur

the words

Tell me a story where

no one wins

I lost victory long ago

lost its taste, its smell

I lost the smoke and

the screams and

the burning

I lost the cool taste of

water on a hot day

I lost the quarry and the

lake

I lost what I believed myself

to be

I lost daydreams and goodbyes

and hellos and new chances

I lost imagination

You are not lost

Stop talking to me

I forgot the lyrics long ago

YOU FORGOT NOTHING

I will cross out words

I will make believe

I will stop everything

You know me

I was something I liked,

once

I think

I don’t know

I don’t know a damn thing

anymore

the fire has gone out and

I am cold

I am so fucking cold

The Dream

I mean, however and wherever we are,
we must live as if we will never die.
--On Living, by Nazim Hikmet

Diary entry, April 26, 2014

In the year (fill in) nothing happened.  There is a sad story to tell her that has no significance whatsoever.

Eventually we will all have the same problems.

Who would have thought that yogurt with prune would be so delicious?  Or banana Weetabix.  Well, actually that sounded pretty good from the start.  Weird, but good.

In the red straw network there is:

*no hope

*no telling

*no entrance

*no exit

*no talking

*no timeline

*no travelling

*no sharing

*no laughing

*no smoking

*no milk with cereal

Thank you for respecting the rules.  Carry on with your business.

But your legs get a little bit heavier.  And the strings get a little bit longer.  And the knots feel a little bit tighter.  And the joke gets a little bit harder.

A harsh beautiful place, this memory horizon.  If you squint your eyes you can see the moon.

There isn’t much I can see anymore. 

I am losing.  You don’t just suddenly stop losing.  You think about why you’re losing, you despair that you are losing, you blame the universe for losing, you write self-pitying poems about losing, you come up with reasons why losing is not really losing, you give yourself pep talks about losing, you brainstorm how to stop losing, you develop five-point plans to halt the losing, you wonder if we are all really losing, you become heavy and tired with losing, you think maybe if I get a haircut I won’t keep losing, and then you find that after all of this you are still losing.  And not only are you still losing, but you are now losing by so much that winning becomes unrealistic, so you start coming up with easier goals, like “accepting,” or “taking small steps” or “adapting.”  But in the end you will just be losing again.

This is when you stop and realize that you never actually believed.  Why?  Was it a man in a mask and bad makeup who took that away?  A woman with witchy hair and a purple mantle?  A balding man with a soft voice in a basement room?  Or was it just the old run-of-the-mill no one ever gave a crap about you or let you believe, so you never learned how to?  Did you have to come up with some fantastical story to make the humdrum, boring, heard-it-a-million-times annihilation of the self story more palatable?  Would that make losing better, somehow?  If someone breathed in your ear that you were born of the dirt and will blow into dust?  Does that make it more romantic, more tragic, more ACCEPTABLE?

I don’t think so.  It just makes you an even bigger loser, because you can’t even lose with your integrity intact.  Of course, if you had any integrity you probably wouldn’t be a loser.  If you had even the tiniest sense of self you might have whispered back, but I will fall from the sky and detonate like an atomic bomb right in front of you.

But we are not winners.  We are mantras.  We are encouraging words sent to each other in emails that we won’t really mean.  We are inspirational quotes on posters with rays of light piercing clouds while beautiful people look on.  We are the two-sentence explanation that solves what ails the protagonist.  We are the ones who know, not so deep down inside, that next year will be no different from the last.  We are the dozens of therapists who ran out of therapeutic techniques to lay siege against our fortress of failure.  We are winning at losing and you will never stop us.

Diary entry, July 2, 1998

Just around the corner,

you can be singing,

staring at the clouds forming,

or at the ants running.

            And then you will see nothing else.

            You will wonder why you never saw it

            coming.

Diary entry, March 25, 1988

I let my mom read some of my poems, and she didn’t really get them.  She said she could see talent, but she admits she likes those poems that are real obvious in meaning more than the abstract stuff, which I tend not to get into.  She didn’t like some of my word choices.  

The Hole in the Sky

Diary entry, 1993

“This is where Mommy and Auntie grew up,” Joan tells the kid.  He is obviously unimpressed, but he’s only 4 years old.

“Was this neighbourhood always so ugly?” I ask Joan.  “Wasn’t that hill bigger?”

Ryan laughs.  “It’s funny how much bigger and better everything seems in our memories.”

“They cut down all of the trees,” I inform him.  “And the siding is hideous.”

He nods.  After a while, Joan says, “We have to get back before 2:00 so that I can make the turkey in time.”

The trip back to the childhood home is over, but it has lasted long enough.  I would rather remember how cool the cement felt on my feet on early summer mornings than any of this. 

Gone Off and Lonesome

I have been pining for you, old friend

I have been searching my organs for

clues of your existence

I have been listening to the buzz of

the lamps, my friend

I have been understanding that we

are all without evidence

Because you are the intervening cause

you are where I buried my investments

I have been searching the heat registers for you

only to find cotton balls that missed the garbage

can

I have stood on my toes and screamed

through my stomach

I have flown off the linoleum by the force

of my breath

I plead to the cobwebs for you to listen

I wake up with charlie horses at 3 am

When I lost my travel book centuries ago

burned the ancient forest where

you were my favorite tree

You are the reality I cannot close in on

what flew through my hair that I

mistook for permanency

I would like a chance to hold you, old friend

I would like to touch your materialness

But I beat against the kitchen table instead

keeping time with rhythmic

loneliness

1994

The pen bothered me. So I asked him about it.  “Where’d you get this pen again?”  It was fat and full of multi-colored ink cartridges.

The strange animal character on the screen jumped over a crumpled brick wall with an appropriate bo-ing sound.  “I found it,” he answered.

“Oh.  Okay.”  I walked into the hallway.  But I wanted to know more, so I asked, “Where?”

 “School, I think,” he shouted from the other room.

“Okay.”  But I still didn’t remember.  I knew I remembered at one time—and that was the worst part.

Blasphemy, early 1990s

Diary entry, 2012

WHERE IS THE FORGIVENESS

God took it away

Whatever you think you’re going

to hear

is exactly what I am not

going to say

Letter to Carrie, October 1, 1989

Oh, I guess I have some good news, but I want to complain first, okay?  Okay.

My dad calls me at 9:00 a.m. and says, “Hi, are you mad at me?”  Then he bitches at me for about fifteen minutes since I, the horrible daughter straight from Hell, haven’t written him in a week.  I told him I was busy studying, etc., but he was still pissed off.  Then he says, “Has your mother said something to you to make you hate me?” or something equally retarded, to which I reply, “No!”  Finally I convince him that I am not angry with him, Mom hasn’t persuaded me to hate him, etc.  Then he asks me how I’m doing.  Oh, just SWELL!  You just made my day!  Then he says how he’s buying all sorts of food for me, but I have to see him to get it.  (No, I thought that I’d eat it through a psychic channel.)  Guess that means I shouldn’t be expecting a box in the mail.  Ah, the joys of having divorced parents.  It never ends.  Luckily, I had a class to go to.  Thank god for small miracles.

Empty

And yet with so many stories to tell.
photo by C. Hornby

Diary entry, May 22, 2014

Nothing nothing nothing.  I know there is something.  I just don’t know what.  Either that or I am just one huge massive loser looking for something to blame my huge massive loser-dom on.  The more I think about it, the more I realize I have always been deadly lazy.  Sort of.  Not in an obvious way.  It’s hard to explain.

I re-read Jekyll & Hyde and some of RLS’s other short stories.  I also started re-reading The Turn of the Screw.  Gothic ghost stories and Victorian weirdness.  I think I might be hysterical, just like a 19^th century character.  Or maybe I’m reading these books because this house seems so Victorian, even if it’s actually Edwardian.  From the outside it looks pretty imposing.  A nutty house.  I’ll never be able to have many lights on or the electric bill will be massive.

I think I am tired.  I don’t even want to listen to myself anymore. 

I’m going off banana Weetabix.  What does this mean???

I keep finding bits of journals I forgot I kept.

Dream big, girl.  Dream big.

The Funny Farm, Pt. 2

The Unknowing

I was one fear closer to here

lost in a night too dark for sleeping

was it me on the ledge        or was it you

whispering

                                                               

                                                                 

                       do not give up too soon

do not give up

too soon               

                                                                                                                                                                               

when I am breaking           

I am a fool

where do I stand

I am a piece of stone mixed in

with all this sand

                                                               

yet full of proof

of what died         with you

                               

                why did you bring me here to my cyclone second

when rage engulfs this bridge from earth to heaven                    

cinder through and through              

                                                                                                                                                                               

you ask too much                               you do

                                                               

                                               

for one whisper like the hint of water splashed on embers

for one storybook of dreams with its message tethered 

to the fading metal moon

               

the sun  it can  be cruel

now that I gave too much       too soon                                                                                               

                                                                               

                                                Is this your plan  

               

is this your one    

your great             

your smoky last demand  

or

my intention

my blue-flame doom

because

burned across my heart your forgotten message

the language lost in time with the words rewritten

resuscitate the girl she is out of breathing

collapsed under the hope she could not believe in

the soot was in her eyes she could only cry

was this my one great truth

did I give up

                too soon?