For the last two months or so, two "hallucinations" persist. One is sense: the frequent feeling that there is a stray hair that has fallen from my head clinging to my arm or breast plate. The hair is almost never there. The other aural: I find the sound of Liesel's hiss in almost any sound scape, that sound I have begun to associate with the shame of my own short fuse.
Being aware of these constants, I am beginning to see it happen with different sounds and sensations in the last few weeks. For example, I will, very briefly, catch the strains of exaggerated intercourse at school when there are several clusters of conversation going on at once from a short distance. I think this is because my upstairs neighbor often wakes me up with her porn yelps, and it's quite likely that these also work their way into my dreams if they occur while I am sleeping deeply.
Winding back from the grocery store this morning I had a combination of both aural and sensational hallucination.
I walked by an Afghan Hound on the sidewalk, restrained by a leash held by a man. I went out of my way not to let him sniff me, though he wanted to, as I was actually, at that moment, disturbed by his appearance. As I crossed the street, I heard a sound that I thought was the dogs gait, and a warm puff of air that I assumed came from his mouth right near my hand- I thought for a split second that the dog had gotten loose and was walking just behind me. He was, of course, not, and I don't know where such a targeted rush of air came from, though I think the trotting sound came somehow from my paper grocery bag.
In the past I chalked these sorts of hallucinations up to "imagination", but now I tend to think of them as some kind of neurological misfire, indicating that I am probably overstressed or lonely.
Speaking of, did you know loneliness registers as a specific psychologically chemical state, similar to depression.

Dear,
Lately I either feel so low that I can't think clearly, or I am laughing. I've taken long walks the last three days, trying to move slowly, but the stimulus of my surroundings while paying careful attention is emotionally overwhelming. Maybe this is why I walk fast naturally, but I don't think so. Today I saw an intact shipping box full of somebody's bands unopened albums, on the sidewalk next to a futon mattress that had a box of Delsyn on it. I wanted to cry/die/laugh (only two of those things happened.) If only you could advise.
-R
p.s.
You are my favorite place on the internet.

Dear,
Today while creating first thought absurd association pneumonics for an exam, I decided atoms were "The Tiniest Dancers" in all of life's processes.
But then that was too whimsical.
Instead, imagine they are drunken and frenzied dervishes, spinning in circles and getting progressively dizzier until they collide with somebody else on the dance floor and collapse, panting in a heap.
-R

Three years ago, almost exactly, a person who I had only seen cry once before woke me up appearing on the verge of tears. I knew something was wrong and my life has never been the same since.
Tonight I realized this anniversary mid way through a musical set performed by a friend.
I was glad to have a blue light in my field of vision as the reality settled.

It's magic.

With all of my father's terrible qualities, he has somehow managed to produce 3 sons who are exceptionally loyal, and palpably adoring to their partners.
I can't be sure how that happened, and to be honest, watching them all last night made me the kind of happy that is almost impossible to discern from sadness. And maybe it was sadness.
I am growing soft.

Moves through me in the following ways:
Saying "oh boy" with a sigh.
Shedding incessantly.
Walking briskly.
Carbonation addict.
Gasping at "nothing".
Taking the stairs two at a time.
Spelling words while you do it.
More will come.

I have something inside of me, but it's not a demon. It's just another person like me, but more maniacal than me, who pushes me hard, without provocation, and in the beginning some years back I'd look back at the person as if to say "why?", until eventually I began to understand the game. Now the person just pushes me and I look back and laugh even if I don't think it's funny, and even if I'm mad, I never push them back. This is because the person is not a maniac, but the person is unstable and can be cruel. I just keep moving forward with each push, but it's not me who's making me move. We might end up somewhere favorable, but I'm not sure.

Yesterday, cutting fruit, said to self:
"Scars are permanent."
Pause, respond, on 2nd thought:
"Until the flesh rots."

A tassel hanging from my piano bench, 8 feet away. I look up and wonder why it is swaying, the air is stagnant, no breeze anywhere. Then I noticed that it appeared to be shedding drops of water onto the ground, dripping.
Realizing neither could be possible, I sat very, very still and realized the swaying illusion was my own body, almost imperceptibly "vibrating". Sitting still and feeling like there is an electrical current causing the motion. The water went away, and I have no explanation for why it happened in the first place.

I never talk about real life on here.
I am going to be a 28 year old sophomore in college in 2 weeks.
I like school. I am lost now, on this break, without it.
I've gotten one tragic B (a high one, a FLUKE), and it crushed me. I cried. I moaned. If I don't let it happen again I will have a 3.98 in the Spring. It won't happen again.
I keep internally referring to what I've got as Lisa Simpson syndrome.
Starting the second week I will have a job at school, working in the writing center.
I feel fortunate to have it, it's year long, school credit, pays, and I am one of only 4 students.
I didn't apply. My writing teacher asked me to, and when the head of the writing department interviewed me over the phone, he asked me: "Why do you think you should."
I said: "Because Mrs. Engberg told me I should."
My writing teachers, over the course of my life, have always told me I should "write more", but I don't know what that means. I write all the time. I assume they think I should be writing fiction or something.
I googled my new boss. He's a published writer of filthy poetry.
In combination with Music Theory, (YOGA), and the last quarter of Mathematics for this year, I am looking very much forward to this quarter.
I am currently working on my break at the same place I worked almost 1 year ago. Today I reorganized my own reorganizing job and felt like the last year didn't even happen.
I miss 7 to 10 people very much, daily.
I am successfully able to pay my rent most months by hocking things I find and like on the internet. Learning hustling lessons along the way.
I am looking for some kind of "meditative" practice that works for my noisy brain. Lately I've tried sitting with my eyes closed and thinking about my mother's details. Remembering her, and realizing she is gone, is something that I am trying to work into my life in a way that doesn't shut me down. Sometimes it works. Other times I end up shutting down.
My health is mostly fine, but it's possible I'm losing my looks (inevitable).
I spend most of my time alone.
I do girly naturopathic shit like put honey and yogurt on my face.
I've been wearing this stocking cap I made pretty much all day for weeks, and every time I see myself in the mirror I feel like a REAL man.
I've kept my room kind of clean for a month.
I hadn't eaten out for weeks until last night when I engorged myself at a buffet (at least I wasn't alone).
I've learned to cook, kind of. At least I am feeding myself more nutritionally balanced mash ups. Everything I know about it I learned from watching Ryan. (The other day he said, after I admired the way he cut the vegetables "I noticed that you like it better when I cut them smaller....just like a little guy".)
I drink less, but I do really like to drink one beer while driving (not drunk driving, just drinking one drink while driving, at night). This is an action I do not take lightly, but I think it fulfills a similar thrill to people who like to fuck in public places.
Speaking of my sex drive is off the charts and I am back in high school mode of orgasming inconveniently. I came on my bike two days ago.
I've begun to shed like my mom. There is hair in all my food and in all crevices cracks and crannies.
I think I am probably depressed, and feel few highs, and few lows. I am just "here".
I've begun recording songs for kicks and play the piano a lot.
Music, the cats, sexual intercourse=
only joys.
I need to be watching more movies.
I will take what I can get.

Real Life, September edition.

At my tmp. job last week I put the salt shaker in the microwave and nobody will let me forget about it. This has little to do with what I'm about to say.
Last night I put my tea in the Mother mug, which has a superficial crack and it began to leak from somewhere into my hand. I had to quickly dump my tea into another one before the crack worsened.
Today I made Miso soup with very hot water from the coffee maker spigot. This caused the bottom of the glass bowl I was using to crack out, cleanly severed into a neat disc that did not shatter. Not only was it a mess and a meal robbery, but I was burned as well.
Retesting the Mother mug this evening as I washed it, I realized that I had actually hallucinated the leak from the previous night. There is no leak to speak of in that mug.
Was it a warning?

Take that away from me and U will die in my head 1,000 times. It was all I had you awful, wretched thing.

NEW RULES:

In the last two days I have imposed two rules on myself for the sake of "health".

1) No computer in the bedroom, with the exception of private purposes. I am trying to sleep more, and I think it's presence keeps me up later than I should be up. To remedy this I have set up a work station in the piano room.

2) I cannot get closer than a ruler's length to the mirror. There is no remedy for this other than mustering the self control that I lack.

So many holes in the floor where there used to be warm standing bodies to lay my head on. Full Alone.
I. I. I. I. I.
Full Alone means this, and it only means this if you've felt what I've felt. Which happens now. You'll curl up fetal and feral for so long that your civilized locket grows into your chest plate and your hair over all of it. You become a scary story that fathers tell their daughters.

After realizing how efficient some people are at compartmentalizing emotion, I am beginning to understand that I am totally terrible at it. Everything, Everywhere.

Human Problems: How can I be expected to show my belly to something that I must simultaneously protect myself from.

There is tingling in my trachea this week, and it is Real, not Imagined. Like soda water in my blood.

I spoke as a friend to a teacher who once intimidated today. Over the course of a meandering hour long conversation, held from our own separate round table islands, she told me, among other things, that her husband had one of his testicles removed yesterday. I offered no vitally personal information, but I did allow myself to realize that she had very beautiful skin that has weathered the storm of her concerned facial rest pose nicely. Promising for me, though I always tend to think money matters in terms of bodily preservation. Which she has.
I was home for a half hour during the daylight hours. It was spent entirely shoving crackers into my mouth and looking for Wee Bay, who had disappeared though I knew I had said good bye to him 4 hours prior, and there are no wrinkles in time or rabbit holes in my home (known to me). On a hunch I checked the communal apartment basement, where I found him with almost no effort. But he ran, covered in cobwebs and dust bunnies, seemingly terrified of me. His fleeing elicited an overwhelming, fleeting desperation, "No you can't ever stop loving me!". It is moments like these that make you realize how much you need it.
I concluded, incidentally, that Wee Bay somehow opened the kitchen door which leads into the basement. Every star is different: Wee Bay may not shine the brightest, but he is unusually talented at turning knobs.
And then I worked for 6 hours on my feet at a convention center, siphoning high end ladies athletic clothes from the dressing room, where women were discarding them in garbage bag quantities, into the bins from which they came. Not unlike Wee Bay, I may not be the brightest star, but I am actually well suited to this kind of monotonous labor. I suppose it's even mentally stimulating in a backwards fashion. Synapse pistons firing and I just try to take note.
After the sale had ended, they told us to look at the clothing ourselves to see if we liked anything for our own selves. I selected two bras and entered the dressing room, which was communal, and I was immediately confronted with the naked bodies of the women who I had been laboring alongside.
I took the bras and bailed.
Then, I sang karaoke.
I could say more, but I think I've effectively illustrated that today felt strange.

I have been getting spam e-mails from my mom's account lately. "kris jensen", lower case like when they came from her.
Against my better judgment I clicked a few of the links on a wild, faint hope that it was a cryptic message from another dimension. Perhaps she'd learned how to manipulate electromagnetic waves.
But after a few dead links it just gets you down.
I didn't want to report it as spam, but after four installments of three, I did. She wasn't spam.

-

I never was afraid of spiders, but I was afraid to kill them.
The last and perhaps first time I killed a spider was on a summer day in the parking lot of the Karcher Mall. I estimate myself to be 8 or 9, but it's based on how high I hovered above the spider before I stomped on it, which is a recklessly relative gauge.
Anyhow, I lived in the desert (It was summer and very hot), and when I ended this spider, whose backside was engorged, it exploded in hot white slime all over the bottom of my sandal.
I think I almost cried, but it wasn't over realizing via animal gore that this spider had previously been alive, it was only because something about the melted marshmallow texture of the goo, the way it burst, was deeply unsettling to me.
I went on to prove my abject callousness to the life of spiders. I learned to avoid the unpleasantness of smashing by containing my attic bedroom intruders under cups until they starved to death. It was at times a highly populated spider cemetery, and the thoughtlessly cruel child who tended to it vacuumed up the white corpses with a hand held Dirt Devil. She didn't think twice about it.
This is what I thought about a moment ago when I saw a spider and felt fondly towards it, before I watched Wee Bay kill it.

I decided to just do what I want next quarter:

Creative Writing (Non-Fiction)
Astronomy
Ballet
Power Yoga
Intro to Abnormal Psych.

Not all totally impractical.