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How impaired am I? Suspect that I rained on some parades last night. Reluctant scene stealer. Tender my sincerest apologies for performance. The birthday boy is supposed to get all the attention whether they like it or not a-and I'm usually a master at keeping my mouth shut, tongue guarded and civil even under provocation, under the compassionate prying so inherent(so inimical) to love. But I stew, oh do I stew, pressure compounded by long and habitual emotional distance from family- distance aspatial, aseptic, squared by close physical proximity sandpaper awkwardness, being a half-person, being an iceberg and watching from beneath the waves. These real people, these real people, these real people, eyes brimming with that insistent belief in my goodness. These real people who beg for my intimacy, beg me to reveal myself, to show them what they've always sensed as an absence, something I kept from them as if hoarding a treasure. People who've become so inured to my prevarication, to my sardonic dismissal, to my obstinate irony that they keep pushing until
I finally look at them in that rare intensity that used to set art-school-girls off like Hirst-meets-Escher(and once got me slapped). Fake face slides off as I start speaking, drawing diagrams on the table, outlining my current dilemma in sparse detail, tracing the arc of my dissatisfaction from peer pressure to Oedipus to arrogance to spite to distrust to grim fascination to chaos magick to chess to determinism to Marx to joining the military to silent monasteries to endless fluorescent part-time jobs to grease lined pockets to shepherd to luxury cars to augury to lost things. To lost things. To forgotten languages. To having such... holes, such bottomless h-holes.
(All this among our bourgeois decadence, of course of course, I am over aware- sitting by the sea eating fresh lobster, fresh baked bread, drinking whiskey sours, playing with our little computers and planning dinner parties, please. I know, I know. It changes little, and maybe that says more about me than the entire rest of this journal.)
I am met with assertions of my aptitude, insistence of my ability, with the sure eyed certainty that everything-will-just work out, since, in case you forgot... I'm just that intelligent. I'm just that capable. Remember, snowflake? You can do anything!
Except, it seems, not have a fucking clue, that's just so over the possibility horizon it can't... Be. They ask almost every time- not always in words, unspoken requests can carry more weight, and this is why I so rarely answer close to the truth, why I've become no small talent at the cunning riposte and the deft deflection:
People who measure themselves by your success are loathe to accept your claims of destitution.
I'm sorry I wasn't more my-self, brother. It was your birthday, sort of, and I should have gotten you more than my exquisite pity parade. I never was a good sibling and
Remedies
never were
within
my reach
Maybe someday I'll sit down with you and try to show you where I'm from, what I've seen. What I mean when I say that the world is mad and everyone laughs and agrees and doesn't notice that I'm not laughing or agreeing. But you do, don't you brother. You notice, and maybe you've wondered why I so rarely join in the merriment, and maybe you've even asked me, why, what is this absent place? And I've brushed you off and made you laugh and we carry on, don't we, in our hard wired new englander obstinance to uncomfortable truths.
Someday, I think, we will sit- and I will try to show you the landscape that lives behind my eyes, the ones all your friends say look so intent or distant or unsettling. Someday.
But not on your birthday.
I finally look at them in that rare intensity that used to set art-school-girls off like Hirst-meets-Escher(and once got me slapped). Fake face slides off as I start speaking, drawing diagrams on the table, outlining my current dilemma in sparse detail, tracing the arc of my dissatisfaction from peer pressure to Oedipus to arrogance to spite to distrust to grim fascination to chaos magick to chess to determinism to Marx to joining the military to silent monasteries to endless fluorescent part-time jobs to grease lined pockets to shepherd to luxury cars to augury to lost things. To lost things. To forgotten languages. To having such... holes, such bottomless h-holes.
(All this among our bourgeois decadence, of course of course, I am over aware- sitting by the sea eating fresh lobster, fresh baked bread, drinking whiskey sours, playing with our little computers and planning dinner parties, please. I know, I know. It changes little, and maybe that says more about me than the entire rest of this journal.)
I am met with assertions of my aptitude, insistence of my ability, with the sure eyed certainty that everything-will-just work out, since, in case you forgot... I'm just that intelligent. I'm just that capable. Remember, snowflake? You can do anything!
Except, it seems, not have a fucking clue, that's just so over the possibility horizon it can't... Be. They ask almost every time- not always in words, unspoken requests can carry more weight, and this is why I so rarely answer close to the truth, why I've become no small talent at the cunning riposte and the deft deflection:
People who measure themselves by your success are loathe to accept your claims of destitution.
I'm sorry I wasn't more my-self, brother. It was your birthday, sort of, and I should have gotten you more than my exquisite pity parade. I never was a good sibling and
Remedies
never were
within
my reach
Maybe someday I'll sit down with you and try to show you where I'm from, what I've seen. What I mean when I say that the world is mad and everyone laughs and agrees and doesn't notice that I'm not laughing or agreeing. But you do, don't you brother. You notice, and maybe you've wondered why I so rarely join in the merriment, and maybe you've even asked me, why, what is this absent place? And I've brushed you off and made you laugh and we carry on, don't we, in our hard wired new englander obstinance to uncomfortable truths.
Someday, I think, we will sit- and I will try to show you the landscape that lives behind my eyes, the ones all your friends say look so intent or distant or unsettling. Someday.
But not on your birthday.