got it through my thick skull

[fflo]

it's incredibly cold out there. tonight, literally. cold.

there's almost certainly nothing up any of those trees, but nonetheless, if it's the one you're barking up, it's the wrong one. whatever the hell it is you're trying to bark.

the u.s. postal service takes too long.

nothing means anything. life is hollow and meaningless. you might as well just go to bed.

it's freezing cold.

wham. that's 10, baby! (insert trash talk.) (references to dominoes.)

i've thought in the past that it being cold, out, all around, can make it feel as if just staying alive within it is a gut-level goal that will suffice, and even be grand, in its way. now i have apparently outlived that theory.

brrrr. stone cold sober, and stone cold, and sober. fuh. and i was just innocently watching the simpsons with cats, when --what's that? intruder alert? intruder alert?? intruder alert.... INTRUDER ALERT.

it's all inside my thick skull already. that's where it all comes from. but i'll stick with the subject line, cuz i want to remember. i want to remember with all the strength of the insulting tone of needing to get it through my thick skull. already.

and for Lent i'm giving up "anyway."

and for now i'm going to bed.

Comments

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

these days have a way of occluding the view of anything farther than the next day. sometimes even that far. it's exhausting.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

i don't know. i have a vision of days stretching ahead. that's part of the problem.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

stretching in the same gloomy way?

[fflo.livejournal.com]

you got it, sister.

not to rain on your possible parades. i speak only of my own vision. the dead in the elevator, and today's touch, notwithstanding.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

curious about the dead in the elevator and today's touch.

no parades scheduled yet.

perhaps i should have put it differently re: vision: that there is no memory of the pattern in which the weight lifts sometimes.

so that, in the best case scenario, it's not that you don't realize the vision is incorrect, but you see that its strength of conviction fluctuates, and you are not beholden to it as a vision of the outcome.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i am reading. have read the dance invite. am considering it, although i'm under the gun to finish the talk. must slow down a little with my social obligations, it feels like.

i do agree with the coordinated fight against the blues. i have been observing mine--hourly cycles by now--and the hideous condition of my skin (red patches and such) and thinking that this is pushing the limits of my biological capacities. i don't like to wake up in the dark.

i like to dance.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

tell about the intruder. and the touch. and the dead.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

intruder:

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

hm.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

me. i'm in there. it's a bell jar. it's a science thing. and sylvia plath's (i thought) well-worn metaphor.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

where i think that sylvia's well-worn metaphors and these gloomy days collide is that the days provide physical obstacles to the presence of others, so that rather than being observed by them, you have to provide your own framing devices and put on your own straitjacket.

when it's warm and bodies can collide more readily, the self-observation is less necessary because you get enough echoes from the real others.

but i am undaunted by the cold, although i am loathe to repeat my recitation about readiness to collide lest i should make my presence/offer feel oppressive.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

the dead just appeared as i came in. according to the rule of That Is The Dead Appearing. then the touch was someone waiting to get on when the doors opened at the top.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

did the dead leave then?

[fflo.livejournal.com]

don't know.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

have they been sitting on your chair? eating your lunch?

[fflo.livejournal.com]

i just half-assédly looked to see whether i'd written here about the dead on the elevator at work, so i could just link to that. but no such mention leaps out from subject lines for the months i clicked on. basically i have postulated that this weird thing that happens with the elevator here sometimes---not very often at all---is an indication that i'm being joined for the ride by the spirit of the MR dead. ("MR" is where i work.) which MR dead it is, i decide/feel in the moment. since we got another MR dead after i first postulated thus.

this is my spiritual game, so when it happens when i'm not expecting it, or even when i don't particularly want to be joined by some spirit (alive or dead), i feel a certain obligation by virtue of my very construction of the game/notion (or my very experience of this positing and its attendant bizness, to play along with its reality, as i like to do) to ask myself---if wearily---something like "alright, which one(s) of you... okay. what you got. what might you have for me on this day. yeah, yeah. okay."

(no question marks cuz i can't be bothered with that vaguely perky inflection, reflected in punctuation. cuzza the jar thing, see.)

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

did i ever mention the curious experience in greece, where semicolons perform the function of question marks; it took me a while to get it, but until i did, i always thought they must be really good at semicolons.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

you did not.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

now that cat's out of the bag too. i have no secrets. i am nekked.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

are you;

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

can't you see it;

[fflo.livejournal.com]

are those your collarbones;