Objects of Desire

I can't help but think that maybe I've done something wrong. My brain is reeling from God knows what. Caffeine? Could be... I don't drink, or smoke, or get high, none of the typical vices of an artist, of writers. Well, that isn't really so, now that I think about it, now that I commit it to ink, or pixels, as it were. I have women as my vice. I don't womanize, I don't cheat on my girlfriend, I don't go out of my way to seek out new lovers, or to break old bonds and destroy the solace that I've created, but... I don't know. Maybe I'm like Leonared Cohen... I'm waiting for the miracle to come. But I don't know what kind of miracle to expect, if it even comes at all. I mean, what is the cure for my vice? I don't cheat, I just love. I fall, and I fall hard. That's the reason for the manic state of my brain, the pitched battle between emotion and self-control that goes on in my head every second of every day, fighting off my inspiration, knowing what I need to sate it, knowing what it's going to take to kill the darkness, not wanting it to happen, not wanting the pain to go away, but at the same time not wanting to do something stupid. I don't want to hurt the people I love, but it's going to happen. It's inevitble. Like that sad, terrifying clip they show on television every now and then, where you can see the train, and you can see the woman, and the big, fierce column of steel bearing down on that delicate morsel of flesh and blood and bone, and you know, you just know that there is one less dreamer in the world, on less soul to make fly and one less person to love and protect. Of course, they never show you what happened to the woman, I mean, it's network television, but at the same time you just KNOW exactly what happened, and it makes you want to vomit, as much because of what happened as because of the fact that you were somehow compelled to watch the pitiful sight. Out of shame and sorrow for her, but mostly, I think, for yourself. There's that crucial moment when you can make the choice to turn it off, to walk away, but you just have to see it, and it sickens you, because it means that deep inside you really are the animal that evolution has been saying you are, that you really have that moribid curiosity that nobody with any moral standings at all wants to admit to, but that is there nonetheless. But still, you don't turn off the television, and still, I don't kill the pain. But I don't let it run wild, either.

So what does this all mean? What does it result in? Well, it could be any number of things, but I think the most likely thing, from my perspective, my experience, is that I manage to function fine in the real world, but every now and then every mistake, every misplaced passion and the face of every woman I've ever loved or ever thought I've loved all come crashing down out of the depths of my psyche and straight to the forefront where they scream my name and the disjointed, broken cacaphony of bittersweet voices threatens to destroy my already tenuous connection to the real world. And then I breathe. That's all that I can do, all that I dare do. I can't trust myself in these times. I don't let on to my friends, or my family, but I don't participate in anything anymore. I disappear for a while, until I can trust myself again, until I realize that my anger is not productive, that it can be channeled, or at least beaten back for a while. I swear to God that some days I feel as though I could punch through a brick wall with little effort, even though the pain would be exactly what you would expect. And that leads to maybe one of my little theories about productivity, and solving goals. To be honest, it's really similar to one of the bits on flying in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series. It goes something like this: the only way to accomplish a difficult goal is not to mind that doing so is going to hurt you very, very horribly. And so that's what my functional state is to me. In order to appear as though I am functioning normally, I sacrifice my emotional stability. And that means that occasionally I have to deal with some very powerful and descructive emotions when I am least prepared or equiped to do so. And I am here to tell you, that it is very very difficult to do that, I have come back from the brink more times than I can even begin to count, and I think, on a slightly different note, that it's time for another shot of caffeine. Just tap a vein, doctor, that's all I need to get me through the night.

That's another principle: physician, heal thyself. I am, first and foremost, a writer, and I know for a fact, from tales and from personal experience that many people look to writers and to fiction in order to escape, and to alleviate some of their own pain. How can I contribute to this if I can't even answer the issue of my own pain? Well, I can vent mine, which is the greatest resource any creative writer ever had. I can give people my pain to look at, make a spectacle of my most horrible and guilty secrets, and maybe for a while they can forget about their own.

And the feeling that you get when you write... it's like lovemaking on a higher level. I mean, when you're with your lover, and it's just the two of you, and you are lost in each other's bodies, not knowing where yours ends and hers begins, swimming in the glorious smell of her, oblivious to everything else, your entire world suddenly consisting of the surface of her body, loving the way her skin feels beneath your fingertips, and you taste her lips as if for the first time, that weak, anxious feeling in your stomach that lets you know that this is a real thing, that you have waited so long and it's worth it, when all you care about is her and when she tells you that she loves you and electricity and fire flow through your veins and everything is lost in the blinding white light of perfect and beautiful sensation. That, is merely where writing, good writing, begins. That is the point where we leap from the boundaries of our mortal vision and explore the worlds that our own lustful minds conceived, where the joy and the pain of birth can be experienced on a much more intimate, personal level. That is what it does for me, but at the same time it hurts so very, very much. I can feel my skin stretching and my sanity slipping as I try to wrap my brain around the philisophical implications of this kind of thought, the massive quantities of information that need to be digested in an instant, synapses firing like howitzers in the attempt to process it all, and yet it still somehow manages to be a simple thing for us to do.

I wish I could make my lover aware of how deeply I feel things, of how they affect me. She would laugh, and call me silly, I know she wouldn't understand, because I have for too long played the stoic in my affairs with the real world, I have for too long been the rock that my people stand on in times of need, and now it is not possible for them to imagine me in any kind of need or peril outside the visible, the obvious, the mundane and the physical. I fear that this may, as they say, be my triumph, and my tragedy. I have made my bed, and now I must lie on it while I spout tired clichés which somehow don't seem quite so tired when you say them for the first time, even if it is 6:19 in the morning and you should have gone to sleep hours ago, but you just had to get this down, had to get it all out of your system before you exploded, before everything that you had locked up inside you blasted out like a nuclear bomb and killed everything you had worked for, everyone that you had tried to love and protect. How many people realize that they do this every day? Few, I've noticed. Almost none of us realize that the only person tearing down the things we have built is us. I have destroyed everything I have ever built to protect myself from my own success, because that may mean that the pain goes away, and that means that I won't get the painfully beautiful experience anymore. I won't get to write. The only thing that scares me more is me, because I'm the only one that truly knows what I'm capable of, the only one who realizes the terrible things I am willing to do to my fellow man in order to keep my pretty, ordered life moving along at its appointed speed on it's appointed track. I am the only one who knows how coldly and calculating I will be in destroying my enemies with atrocity after atrocity. I am the only one who knows how I would let my own body and soul be butchured to protect or avenge the people that I love. I am the only one who knows what truly goes on behind these eyes, and now you can see why me and Leonard are waiting for that miracle. We know what we are capable of without it.

It's times like these that I wish I smoke. I need something to do with my hands, something to counter the frenetic thoughts racing through my brain. I don't drink much either, but sometimes I look up at the half empty bottle of gin on my shelf and think about how easy it would be to get lost in it. Just me and you, baby, until the end of time. My father was a weekend alcoholic, from the time he was sixteen, until the year I was born. When he found out that he was going to have a child, he quit, just like that. He didn't even have to think about it. I wish I had that kind of self-control. Of all the things I got from my father, I wish he had given me that. But no, I couldn't get that towering force of will. I had to be the weak one. So now me and that bottle just stare at each other in the early mornings and the late nights, the times when all the guilt slips in when I'm not looking, the time when I just want to break down and cry for no reason what so ever. And I think that it would be all right if I were to do that, because it's not like I'm doing anything usefull. I could be telling you about something interesting that's happening. I could be telling you about the girl in art class that I want to photograph, about how she's so beautiful, and how she would take such a good picture. I don't want to love her, and I don't want her to love me. I just want her to look to the left, and keep a straight face while the camera goes click once, twice, maybe three times just to get it right. And then she could go. I'm not some sick old man who would ask her to take her clothes off, I don't want her phone number, I don't want her address. I just want her picture.

I realized today what a sad thing it is to be terrified of yourself, to walk around all day and all night and know that the only thing you really think could hurt you is you. It sounds conceited, stuck up, or just plain foolish, but it's not. It has nothing to do with who is strongest, or who would be the best in a fight. It comes down to who would take it the farthest, who would grab hold and not let go until the other one was just a stain on the sidewalk. I think about these things, and it makes me nervous. I've never hurt anyone, ever. I've stopped lots of fights, mediated so many arguments, but still, I just can't stop thinking about what it would be like to shove someone's head through a wall. What would it sound like? Would the skull bones pop, or would they make that sickly grinding sound, like a stiff rotator cuff? And what if the wall really did give way? The force required to pull that off is almost unimaginable for a human being. And I can't believe that I think about these things, can't believe that they have ever crossed my mind.

I told somebody today that there was a story hiding in here somewhere, and maybe there is, but I don't think that I've quite gotten to it yet. There's a story, though. I can feel it, now that it's been mentioned. Another tale of unrequited love, this time in the exotic form of silken brown hair and too tight jeans. Or maybe a war story, some visionary soldier lost behind enemy lines. I tried to write an autobiography once, but turn it into kind of a novel, like a How I Spent My Summer Vacation kind of a book, and it was going alright, but kind of slow since I'm not really suited for that kind of writing. I'm a beatnik, and we have to have the rythm going, we have to be fast. Pow pow pow. That's us, all finger-snapping and whispering about girls we laid in the backs of cars while all the time our buddies know that only half of it is true and the other half is self-pity. But it's all punctuated equilibrium, and that's all that matters, isn't it?