Just To Give You The Bad Eye.
Note: the colours are off.
There's no real silence in the world, there's always a breath going on.
But my mind follows its course and leads me to this place where the quiet is pure radiant light and I am born again.
Highlights Kill Citylights. The National, November 12th.
It was Sarah's birthday so I saw her for an hour before going to the concert. I'd never been to l'Ancienne Belgique before; it was a big red room with balconies hanging from the second floor. Hayden was an okay first act. The National were real good. The show might've been more my thing at Dour but seeing them indoors is worth it. I was way up and could see perfectly. Matt Berninger duct taped his shoes and was tremendous. The music, impeccable. The guy in front of me danced as if he were epileptic.
Start a War.
Mistaken for Strangers.
Secret Meeting.
Brainy.
Baby, We'll Be Fine.
Slow Show.
Squalor Victoria.
Abel.
All the Wine.
Racing Like A Pro.
Ada.
The Geese of Beverly Road.
Apartment Story.
Daughters of the Soho Riots.
Fake Empire.
Green Gloves.
Mr. November.
You've Done it Again, Virginia.
About Today.
Bought a tee-shirt then fumbled to Bruxelles-Central, not knowing if there were any trains still running. Caught the midnight one; when I got here, it was too late for a correspondance to the nearby station so I had to walk home. And I got lost. It's past 2am and my legs are wrecked. Smoking pot, it's kind of raining. I walk through the city, quiet like a ghost town with cars as carcasses and daylight confusing itself with the streetlamps. There was no one I could ask directions to so I kept close to the buildings, trying to remember my way back. Spied hobos sleeping in lit entryways, ran across wide streets, hopped on curbs and got creeped out by a little blonde girl dressed in white, wailing after me. Thought about how mondays make no difference in my world anymore, how Evan was urging me to go faster and how I was hurrying home to you. A couple of young drunks told me to go down until I hit the fair and I smiled into my scarf.
Mass Corporation.
Lately, I've had financial issues that are only half-resolved, determined my current shrink is useless after realising she didn't believe a fuck I said, took an appointment with another in January, had to go to the doctor's several times, made phonecalls and got a cold that lasted over a week. (The latter has mostly to do with roaming about in the harsher hours, not believing in taking any medication but aspirin and the inability to stop smoking. I know.) Having to take care of myself stresses me to the point I'm on the brink of snapping, which leads to Sara smoothing the sharp corners so I've been side.walking all week and who knows what the hell is going on. I just want to be okay, I'm not sure how that became a guidebook to laziness in others' eyes. This odd laughter sometimes swells in my throat but it isn't the type that makes you go on -it just sounds like you've given up.
Fight or Flight.
Goddamn this city! I take showers so frequently, my towel never has the time to dry. I sponge myself with fungus and think of the aquatic life dripping down my body. New horizons always seem closer from my window. Listened to the new Radiohead when it came out then chased the dream with some late nite showing of Control. You and me, baby; good times. I sink in my covers, my bed like an ocean of sick purple flowers. Meet up twice with Jodie and suggest we go to Holland. We buy our weed then split a gram of silverhaze, chill in this coffeeshop on a boat. Round tables, tall stools, dim lights. The last time I went alone, there was fog on the city. The birds were flying up and out of sight to reappear again. It felt like my life, one high mist. Something's gotta give but when all you learn is devastation, it seems like you might be giving too much. Puppets on a string, ready to snap/my spine pulled back, my knees collapsed.
I feel like I'm going through cycles; one started after I finished high school and now that the difficult years of childhood have passed, I'm in the midst of adolescence again. Certain memories don't seem as innocent nor safe anymore and my brain is a swirling orbit; all this energy exploding so hard, I can taste blood. I feel the walls closing in on me: society, my family, my past and my sanity. Every lesson learned, not a source of pride but a jarring reminder of how inept I was. Always waging war against yourself -win some, lose every time. Oscillating between fighting back and turning the other cheek. Self-destruction to feed the death drive but Thanatos, I'm only striving to go back and fix things. My bones are heavy but my skin is light. Just trying to make sense out of the exquisite corpse I made of my life.
Abrasive Polish.
It's hard to say what I've been up to, really. I could be laying in bed, pondering the give and takes of the universe. Watch movies and paint a little, listen to a lot of music. Crawl into your warmth, with trouble like tiny red footprints in the snow of my mind -the fever burning it all down. "Strange how you're not with me." I smoke and light incense for good luck, reminded of how my mother would barge into my room on her bad days and tell me it reeked, although she merely associated the two smells and I couldn't even smell a thing! the fumes wrapping around my head, heavy like the stench of a funerarium and there I was, stranded on my deathbed with my mother bitching at my ghost.
I thought she was trying to poison me back then and would make her (reluctantly) taste my food first but I never told her why. Nowadays, I have to convince myself no one is breaking in while I'm asleep. I really can't bear my mind at times. I look up and see flashes of blue sky when it's past midnite, things disappear or move places, blurry vision, Time warps, shadows and goblins, those spasms and being startled into sitting up like a scene from The Exorcist. I'm told it's "anxiety" and when I ask how to calm the fuck down, the doctor replies: smoke a joint. My Others won't stop arguing but Evan has strangely slid his sword back to the hilt. "Now, ghosts they have their secrets and they'll tell them to a few. So you could never pay attention when they're whispering to you." Well, I check my pulse when my heart feels dead, in case I forgot to breathe, yknow.
Yesterday, the morning in fresh grey with the kind of cold that almost makes you gasp. An epic calm shrouding the streets. Hadn't slept in well over thirty hours and my mind kept reaching for light and lighter, strands of energy entwined into a new sun. Went to bed feeling bittersweet and thankful, wondering why we always resign ourselves to the (reality of) bad but never trust the good. "It’s hard to keep track of you, falling through the sky." I eat peanuts to amuse the angry elephants and put songs on repeat, watch the smoke curl in the air like beckoning fingers. I've been so in tune with myself, it seems I don't know who I am.
Blind Tomorrows.
11.11 and it's Jonestown tonite. People are fighting in the street, a couple shoots a man down. Where is she? It starts with an F. The boy protects her but she's found in Antarctica, the red lines trace her way along the world and I'm suddenly sitting besides her in a café, smiling at her disguise of heavy glasses and fake beard. The walls are warm. She carefully draws maps while I stroke the fur of my favourite teddy bear. Days pass and it's dark rooftops, art and thefts, tents on hills, people from the past, diaries and cocaine.
I used to dream a lot.
I guess life just came up.
But there are wheels and wings and landscapes, cheap filthy rooms. Your body smoothing the folds out of the bedsheets and that little frosty heart of mine just tears at the heat, fuck! All the envelopes I'd cover with my handwriting and the tar-like coffee I'd down to rival the colour of what we scrape from underneath our fingernails, the skin of our rapists 'cause we're gonna dna their ass into prison and send them oranges filled with the blood of children they'll never touch.