I got all caught up in writing this
Life Slips Past
Suddenly he succumbed to self-doubt. He embodied everything that he thought was wrong. And he saw much that was wrong. He knew all of the half-truths, the concealed emotions, those sneaky tones. He took part in all of it, too, and this made him ashamed. A ringing formed in his ears and although the world stood firmly within its rotation and his vision stayed straight he felt like he was spinning. It became impossible for him to follow the simplest conversation on his TV. The most he could do was watch and name things he saw "Oh, a car crash. Policemen running. Dramatic music is playing. People making faces." Then, loud people talking with persuasiveness and cockiness, little jingles. These things were his preferred broadcasts when he was in such states. These things weren’t so presumptuous, so vain. They didn’t make one feel left out, out of the ordinary, or just dumb, like the longer ones. Those made him feel so alone. When a mother looked up from her bloody child and screamed, perfect white teeth, dramatic music again, he felt nothing for it. The fact that he should have feeling but didn’t agitated him. He was dizzy. He felt that it was possible that he was going to die right then, but that didn’t seem to be the thing that was so scary. The scary thing was hard for him to define. He probed his mind looking for help. Everything felt so vast. That was definitely one characteristic of the state he was in: vastness. He felt as if he were watching himself as well. Out of body in some subtle way. Watching himself from the back of his brain, separate from himself. What he saw forced upon him an emotion he’d rarely felt, in fact, it seemed as much a lack of emotion as it seemed an emotion. It was something though, it made him feel something even if it was the feeling of absence. And from the back of his head he saw himself sitting, watching TV, but that person sitting there was no different from the chair he was in, no more alive that the lamp by his side, no more involved in the TV images than the gray plastic that framed them. Fear, then, slowly descended upon him. He tried changing through the channels to distract himself, but he felt he had no part in the decision of when to flip and when to stop, it seemed like it was more up to rhythm or chance than reason. He felt the fear sinking deeper within himself. It splashed over his face and seemed to lodge in his throat. Or had he forced it to stop? Yes, perhaps he had. Maybe that was what was wrong. He had to stop fighting it. He tried to relax. He focused on the lump in his throat. He kept telling himself to relax, that it would be okay. But the thoughts only seemed to distract him from relaxing. He began to fidget and squirm like a child, hoping to dislodge some gas bubble or pop some joints that perhaps were putting stress on his spine. His sense of self-detachment might just be some minor physical condition upsetting his stomach. He had probably just eaten too much. He had eaten too much. He had experienced this sensation before and he had gotten through it alive each time hadn’t he? But he did feel like he had always gotten through it by avoiding it. He tried to relax again. He tried to fight through the fear again. He may not have faced any of his real fears in his life, but, he thought, if he could just face this one fear, this abstract fear, this sense that at once tried to overwhelm and dominate him as it suggested to liberate him, then all of his failures to do so before would be justified, forgiven. He leaned back in his chair in an effort to try it again, and although he felt fear at these times he also felt that somewhere beyond that fear was his salvation, his redeeming grace, the key to his potential. The fear began to wash over his entire body. He was still somewhat calm, breathing normally, he was still on guard, easing into it. He began to feel as if he were floating, the chair below him fading from existence. He could still see everything in the room, but it entered his brain all at once, with nothing gaining significance over anything else. The TV screen, the wallpaper, the entertainment center, all of the DVD stacks and tangled cords. They seemed to be a painting smeared on the surface of his eyes or like he was looking through one of those Mickey Mouse cameras that showed stills of Paris or Mount Rushmore. The screen on the TV bore the only movement; changing forms and colors, all confined to one small square in the picture of his life and none of it influenced comprehension in him. The feeling began to sink below the surface of his flesh invading into his bloodstream and tearing into his muscles. He felt a deep relaxation from his knees to his feet and from his elbows to his hands. His chest began to tighten. It felt like his heart was being clenched. But he knew he was the one clenching it. He wanted to let it go, to let it beat freely but he didn’t think he could, he was almost certain he would die if he did or at least faint. The feeling began to protrude into his bones, prodding his arms and legs to movement. He began to panic, he tightened his leg muscles and flexed his calves, ground his teeth together and contorted his facial muscles. He couldn’t let it in. He had to ward it off. It was a giant ball of energy and it would burst his heart if it pounded its way in all at once. He stood up. He didn’t feel much better but his thoughts had eased. They must have been diverted for the use of motor skills. His friend who was sitting on the couch next to him laughed at something on the TV along with audience. He mustered up some kind of sound too, for his friend. Some kind of grunt that could mean almost anything and could be taken almost any way and would prompt his friend to think, if anything at all, that he was slightly entertained at the moment by the TV show. Or that he was laughing a little at the friend sarcastically for laughing at the joke. It didn’t matter what the friend thought as long as the friend didn’t know what he had really been doing, been thinking and feeling. He found it remarkable that he could handle light communication with another being when in this panicked state. In a way, it made him feel worse. It seemed like he was able to do whatever he needed to if he felt like he needed to do it. This was why he felt he needed some fundamental change; not just alter his actions on their surface but alter how he felt about general situations subconsciously. He put on his sneakers and found his coat and black winter hat. His heart was still clenched but some of the pressure had been released. He left the room, entering the apartment public hallway. He felt inclined to walk extraordinarily slow. If he had been forced at gun-point to give a reason for walking as such at this time, he would have stumbled through something about double-checking all that he had learned, trouble-shooting his every action to find out where he went wrong, where he must have made a mistake, or missed a pivotal stage of development during his childhood, which looking back on seemed rushed, carefree, fearless. Fearless because he ignored or avoided anything that caused him fear. And so now he had better do a thorough check because who knows where he may have gone wrong, and when was the last time he concentrated so carefully on walking. But in doing so he raised his level of tension, for he was aware that he was, in fact, walking suspiciously slow, and so he must be on guard for any figure to round the corner or swing open a door at which time he would be forced to awkwardly adjust his gait and act aloof in order to emit some semblance of normalcy. As it happened he managed to arrive to, get lowered by, and exit the elevator on the ground floor without confronting another human being. He went outside. In a way he felt like he was in a movie as he pushed his way out the door of the apartment complex. It didn’t feel like reality. He kind of liked it. He lit up a cigarette. It was cold; cloudy but still bright. There was a crisp, clear smell to the air so that due to the contrast his cigarette smelled much more flavorful than normal. He turned at the first road he came to that he had never taken before and looked up at the city buildings. They weren’t tall skyscrapers or busy colorful restaurants. Actually he didn’t see anybody else on the streets. What he did see was many parked cars, tires pressed against the curb, buildings two or three stories high, faded yellow brick or chipped white wood siding. It was very peaceful and he felt like leaning against the wall of an old building in the alley and smoking his cigarette. Then something happened.
The sky turned black and an evil villain swooped by him on a flying skateboard dropping vegetable grenades and howling in delight as the young man we’ve been watching dove for cover behind a brick porch through smoke and exploding debris and quick as a current he shot off four whizzing bullets, two from each of his black pistols, busting some brick off the corner of the building that the villain disappeared behind.
He’d probably come back, crashing through the window across the street or from behind and above, he figured, as he flicked his cigarette into a puddle of rocks alongside the tiny brick porch he’d just imagined diving behind. Too bad he couldn’t write things down like he imagined them, he thought. Too bad he couldn’t record his dreams. For what was the purpose of writing? If it was just for entertaining then fuck that. He was finally positive that entertainment was not worth pursuing. It just contributed to an increase in avoidance of action just like all other addictive drugs. But if the purpose of writing could be to increase communication with other people, well, then, he hadn’t ruled that out of his future yet. He imagined that something he wrote might possibly help someone else. Or inspire them in a healthy way or ease their suffering or give them a sense of camaraderie. If he could explain to other people through writing, where they would feel that he wasn’t talking directly to them or challenging them, and they had time to consider the truth in what he said instead of just reacting to how they felt about what he said, then perhaps things could get somewhere, if he could show through example, not just that he was happy and free but how he had seen the world, how he had seen life before he found happiness, and if others could make connections with those things then maybe—another person approached him along the sidewalk. These were anxious moments for our young man. He felt that he had no right to continue on along his own vein of thoughts when someone he was unfamiliar with entered his presence. Although he would not expect anyone else to do this for him, he was to compelled to do so for them. In his mind though it was not for them but for him. He knew how dulled his sensations could be to others’ feelings when he was in his own thoughts, zoned-out. As a younger man he had noticed that he sometimes interacted with people automatically and he’d be done talking to them without ever realizing it consciously or knowing if he had said something wrong. This revelation had spawned a most horrifying possibility in his head. What if, against his conscious will and without his awareness or intent, he would, accidentally, do something so wrong and offensive to another person to a degree beyond the possibility of excuse and therefore allow his inattentiveness to become his bane or least be the reason for someone to punch in his face. And with this thought had come the notion that he must not hold others in very high esteem if he does not see it fit to give them any attention, in his natural state of mind, and although he could not change the fact that he felt them unimportant he should at least, for the love of God, act like it. If just to save his own ass. So he’d walked along the sidewalk since then, just like now, as a man who doesn’t exist, nodding to each passerby with such a conciliatory attitude of appeasement that it smacked of patronization and no encounter could ever become an important one. Then, he realized that he could never meet someone interesting because for some reason he never gave them the chance. These thoughts started up within himself another battle with self-doubt at his right to exist and for the first time he noticed what he was doing to himself. Almost back to his apartment (to go sit down, prop up his feet and watch TV he supposed) he turned around and wondered how he could ever get himself to change. He had the frightening yet hopeful realization that he should talk to the next person that came by, but immediately he defeated himself. He nodded in assurance to himself that most people wouldn’t want to chat. What he needed to do was just be friendlier. He knew how to act friendlier. He’d seen many friendly people. But he didn’t know how to be friendlier. Once again, he figured that he needed to change something fundamental within himself first, and that would take time and patience and a lot of hard work, but then he would finally be able to be interested in and friendlier to other people. But this all seemed like too much of a bother and he felt an overwhelming urge to just store up all of the thoughts and let them settle down, in lieu of physical experience and just go back inside and watch TV until supper. Then, he would cook a pizza, crack a beer and find a good hockey game to watch and he would forget all about how he was lonely. And the temptation was so great that he went back to his room without finishing his train of thought. For the moment he wouldn’t realize that it wasn’t that he thought other people uninteresting, but what held him from being himself amongst others was mostly that he was so scared that it might turn out the other way around
Suddenly he succumbed to self-doubt. He embodied everything that he thought was wrong. And he saw much that was wrong. He knew all of the half-truths, the concealed emotions, those sneaky tones. He took part in all of it, too, and this made him ashamed. A ringing formed in his ears and although the world stood firmly within its rotation and his vision stayed straight he felt like he was spinning. It became impossible for him to follow the simplest conversation on his TV. The most he could do was watch and name things he saw "Oh, a car crash. Policemen running. Dramatic music is playing. People making faces." Then, loud people talking with persuasiveness and cockiness, little jingles. These things were his preferred broadcasts when he was in such states. These things weren’t so presumptuous, so vain. They didn’t make one feel left out, out of the ordinary, or just dumb, like the longer ones. Those made him feel so alone. When a mother looked up from her bloody child and screamed, perfect white teeth, dramatic music again, he felt nothing for it. The fact that he should have feeling but didn’t agitated him. He was dizzy. He felt that it was possible that he was going to die right then, but that didn’t seem to be the thing that was so scary. The scary thing was hard for him to define. He probed his mind looking for help. Everything felt so vast. That was definitely one characteristic of the state he was in: vastness. He felt as if he were watching himself as well. Out of body in some subtle way. Watching himself from the back of his brain, separate from himself. What he saw forced upon him an emotion he’d rarely felt, in fact, it seemed as much a lack of emotion as it seemed an emotion. It was something though, it made him feel something even if it was the feeling of absence. And from the back of his head he saw himself sitting, watching TV, but that person sitting there was no different from the chair he was in, no more alive that the lamp by his side, no more involved in the TV images than the gray plastic that framed them. Fear, then, slowly descended upon him. He tried changing through the channels to distract himself, but he felt he had no part in the decision of when to flip and when to stop, it seemed like it was more up to rhythm or chance than reason. He felt the fear sinking deeper within himself. It splashed over his face and seemed to lodge in his throat. Or had he forced it to stop? Yes, perhaps he had. Maybe that was what was wrong. He had to stop fighting it. He tried to relax. He focused on the lump in his throat. He kept telling himself to relax, that it would be okay. But the thoughts only seemed to distract him from relaxing. He began to fidget and squirm like a child, hoping to dislodge some gas bubble or pop some joints that perhaps were putting stress on his spine. His sense of self-detachment might just be some minor physical condition upsetting his stomach. He had probably just eaten too much. He had eaten too much. He had experienced this sensation before and he had gotten through it alive each time hadn’t he? But he did feel like he had always gotten through it by avoiding it. He tried to relax again. He tried to fight through the fear again. He may not have faced any of his real fears in his life, but, he thought, if he could just face this one fear, this abstract fear, this sense that at once tried to overwhelm and dominate him as it suggested to liberate him, then all of his failures to do so before would be justified, forgiven. He leaned back in his chair in an effort to try it again, and although he felt fear at these times he also felt that somewhere beyond that fear was his salvation, his redeeming grace, the key to his potential. The fear began to wash over his entire body. He was still somewhat calm, breathing normally, he was still on guard, easing into it. He began to feel as if he were floating, the chair below him fading from existence. He could still see everything in the room, but it entered his brain all at once, with nothing gaining significance over anything else. The TV screen, the wallpaper, the entertainment center, all of the DVD stacks and tangled cords. They seemed to be a painting smeared on the surface of his eyes or like he was looking through one of those Mickey Mouse cameras that showed stills of Paris or Mount Rushmore. The screen on the TV bore the only movement; changing forms and colors, all confined to one small square in the picture of his life and none of it influenced comprehension in him. The feeling began to sink below the surface of his flesh invading into his bloodstream and tearing into his muscles. He felt a deep relaxation from his knees to his feet and from his elbows to his hands. His chest began to tighten. It felt like his heart was being clenched. But he knew he was the one clenching it. He wanted to let it go, to let it beat freely but he didn’t think he could, he was almost certain he would die if he did or at least faint. The feeling began to protrude into his bones, prodding his arms and legs to movement. He began to panic, he tightened his leg muscles and flexed his calves, ground his teeth together and contorted his facial muscles. He couldn’t let it in. He had to ward it off. It was a giant ball of energy and it would burst his heart if it pounded its way in all at once. He stood up. He didn’t feel much better but his thoughts had eased. They must have been diverted for the use of motor skills. His friend who was sitting on the couch next to him laughed at something on the TV along with audience. He mustered up some kind of sound too, for his friend. Some kind of grunt that could mean almost anything and could be taken almost any way and would prompt his friend to think, if anything at all, that he was slightly entertained at the moment by the TV show. Or that he was laughing a little at the friend sarcastically for laughing at the joke. It didn’t matter what the friend thought as long as the friend didn’t know what he had really been doing, been thinking and feeling. He found it remarkable that he could handle light communication with another being when in this panicked state. In a way, it made him feel worse. It seemed like he was able to do whatever he needed to if he felt like he needed to do it. This was why he felt he needed some fundamental change; not just alter his actions on their surface but alter how he felt about general situations subconsciously. He put on his sneakers and found his coat and black winter hat. His heart was still clenched but some of the pressure had been released. He left the room, entering the apartment public hallway. He felt inclined to walk extraordinarily slow. If he had been forced at gun-point to give a reason for walking as such at this time, he would have stumbled through something about double-checking all that he had learned, trouble-shooting his every action to find out where he went wrong, where he must have made a mistake, or missed a pivotal stage of development during his childhood, which looking back on seemed rushed, carefree, fearless. Fearless because he ignored or avoided anything that caused him fear. And so now he had better do a thorough check because who knows where he may have gone wrong, and when was the last time he concentrated so carefully on walking. But in doing so he raised his level of tension, for he was aware that he was, in fact, walking suspiciously slow, and so he must be on guard for any figure to round the corner or swing open a door at which time he would be forced to awkwardly adjust his gait and act aloof in order to emit some semblance of normalcy. As it happened he managed to arrive to, get lowered by, and exit the elevator on the ground floor without confronting another human being. He went outside. In a way he felt like he was in a movie as he pushed his way out the door of the apartment complex. It didn’t feel like reality. He kind of liked it. He lit up a cigarette. It was cold; cloudy but still bright. There was a crisp, clear smell to the air so that due to the contrast his cigarette smelled much more flavorful than normal. He turned at the first road he came to that he had never taken before and looked up at the city buildings. They weren’t tall skyscrapers or busy colorful restaurants. Actually he didn’t see anybody else on the streets. What he did see was many parked cars, tires pressed against the curb, buildings two or three stories high, faded yellow brick or chipped white wood siding. It was very peaceful and he felt like leaning against the wall of an old building in the alley and smoking his cigarette. Then something happened.
The sky turned black and an evil villain swooped by him on a flying skateboard dropping vegetable grenades and howling in delight as the young man we’ve been watching dove for cover behind a brick porch through smoke and exploding debris and quick as a current he shot off four whizzing bullets, two from each of his black pistols, busting some brick off the corner of the building that the villain disappeared behind.
He’d probably come back, crashing through the window across the street or from behind and above, he figured, as he flicked his cigarette into a puddle of rocks alongside the tiny brick porch he’d just imagined diving behind. Too bad he couldn’t write things down like he imagined them, he thought. Too bad he couldn’t record his dreams. For what was the purpose of writing? If it was just for entertaining then fuck that. He was finally positive that entertainment was not worth pursuing. It just contributed to an increase in avoidance of action just like all other addictive drugs. But if the purpose of writing could be to increase communication with other people, well, then, he hadn’t ruled that out of his future yet. He imagined that something he wrote might possibly help someone else. Or inspire them in a healthy way or ease their suffering or give them a sense of camaraderie. If he could explain to other people through writing, where they would feel that he wasn’t talking directly to them or challenging them, and they had time to consider the truth in what he said instead of just reacting to how they felt about what he said, then perhaps things could get somewhere, if he could show through example, not just that he was happy and free but how he had seen the world, how he had seen life before he found happiness, and if others could make connections with those things then maybe—another person approached him along the sidewalk. These were anxious moments for our young man. He felt that he had no right to continue on along his own vein of thoughts when someone he was unfamiliar with entered his presence. Although he would not expect anyone else to do this for him, he was to compelled to do so for them. In his mind though it was not for them but for him. He knew how dulled his sensations could be to others’ feelings when he was in his own thoughts, zoned-out. As a younger man he had noticed that he sometimes interacted with people automatically and he’d be done talking to them without ever realizing it consciously or knowing if he had said something wrong. This revelation had spawned a most horrifying possibility in his head. What if, against his conscious will and without his awareness or intent, he would, accidentally, do something so wrong and offensive to another person to a degree beyond the possibility of excuse and therefore allow his inattentiveness to become his bane or least be the reason for someone to punch in his face. And with this thought had come the notion that he must not hold others in very high esteem if he does not see it fit to give them any attention, in his natural state of mind, and although he could not change the fact that he felt them unimportant he should at least, for the love of God, act like it. If just to save his own ass. So he’d walked along the sidewalk since then, just like now, as a man who doesn’t exist, nodding to each passerby with such a conciliatory attitude of appeasement that it smacked of patronization and no encounter could ever become an important one. Then, he realized that he could never meet someone interesting because for some reason he never gave them the chance. These thoughts started up within himself another battle with self-doubt at his right to exist and for the first time he noticed what he was doing to himself. Almost back to his apartment (to go sit down, prop up his feet and watch TV he supposed) he turned around and wondered how he could ever get himself to change. He had the frightening yet hopeful realization that he should talk to the next person that came by, but immediately he defeated himself. He nodded in assurance to himself that most people wouldn’t want to chat. What he needed to do was just be friendlier. He knew how to act friendlier. He’d seen many friendly people. But he didn’t know how to be friendlier. Once again, he figured that he needed to change something fundamental within himself first, and that would take time and patience and a lot of hard work, but then he would finally be able to be interested in and friendlier to other people. But this all seemed like too much of a bother and he felt an overwhelming urge to just store up all of the thoughts and let them settle down, in lieu of physical experience and just go back inside and watch TV until supper. Then, he would cook a pizza, crack a beer and find a good hockey game to watch and he would forget all about how he was lonely. And the temptation was so great that he went back to his room without finishing his train of thought. For the moment he wouldn’t realize that it wasn’t that he thought other people uninteresting, but what held him from being himself amongst others was mostly that he was so scared that it might turn out the other way around
on a whim, chad was marco @ 5:06 PM
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