10:27 p.m. - 08/09/03
my heart is sick of being in chains.
I'm not planning to go too far into where I've been, as I'm fairly certain I'll end up returning to the place (more quickly) if I do. Sufficeth (for the moment) to say that Thursday I came to grip a parallel that's been circling me for weeks - between my eternally crumbling "home" and what happened (in leaving) my home at Rogers. Actually, I came to grip it a few days earlier, and by Thursday had lost my grip on everything else. E.g. sanity, self-care, and so forth. I scared my mom so badly (crying - a good sign considering the depression was so strong) she called the doctor, but she left a message not a paige, and he almost never returns messages. By the later evening, I was doing well enough that she believed me when I said she didn't need to bother tracking him down. It became and has stayed, for now at least, a matter of keeping the shit that is reality at bay. When I can't distract myself, I'm done. I suppose that's part of the reason recounting my days has not compelled me lately. I'm doing my best to walk through them blindfolded or asleep.
In other news, I'm enduring a time warp. Or rather, several simultaneous time warps. (After all, I don't believe in linear time.) I don't believe in linear time; I focus on seasons and patterns and consider the time between similar seasons, cycles, and patterns to be less than the time between, say, this season and the preceding one. Right now, I'm dealing with the implications of school, memories of what it was and the reality that, for the first time in my memory, I don't have to return. Also, there's an odd sense that I'm going through a similar ascension in language/ writing than the one I remember fumbling through from seventh grade until about my sophomore year: My main medium (now poetry, then novels) has suddenly become something I can't really write well - because it comes so naturally that anything I do within the medium is basically journaling, and I can't push at the edges for real art. I can't do any technical or intelligent work because (now) poetry has become so integrated into my speech, that I think in rhythm, and to some degree, in rhyme. I can improvise mediocre spoken-word pieces, but right now, I can't write poetry. And I'm reading people I love whose poetry is, in large part, nothing like my own. (Margaret Atwood, Marge Piercy.) This was also true when I first began writing poetry. Different people, same concept. Meanwhile, I'm able to continue playing and pushing at writing through a neutral genre (then plays, now stories) and thereby maintain *some* sanity. (Although at the moment, I must emphasize the some.) It's a weird process to go through with awareness; obviously, the first time, I saw no pattern in the progress. I was more curious with what would happen than captivated with what was. And I know there are a thousand other almost-too-near seasons that I'm too tired to describe. Like when I was young-womaning, when I was so seriously depressed, so forth, so on... Tonight on the way "home" from a hilarious visit with the two younger of my three brothers (which had turned positively nasty when we entered a store; the distraction disappeared, the need raged, nothing could meet the need, and nothing could stop the depression), I played "Little Earthquakes." I can't quite explain what that means to anyone who doesn't know. In my mood, I would have chosen "Under the Pink" but I think that tesseract might have proved fatal. "Little Earthquakes" passed through my tongue and teeth like the beads of a rosary through my grandmothers' hands; I sang it like ritual, like prayer. I sang it until I felt safe in my near-deadness (the link to old depression, the same time as this cd) and then until I felt alive.
I will love a thousand other artists and a thousand other albums, but no one and nothing will ever be Tori Amos and her Little Earthquakes. She and it are like Rogers in that way. No matter what comes after, you can't take away the importance of what came absolutely first. And even if you wish with everything that you will never need life pumped into you again, you remember always the source by which you were sustained/ transformed. I don't ever want to need another cd the way I needed that one (so that I started my day listening to it, spent my day waiting to listen to it, spent my afternoon and evening listening repeatedly, fell asleep and repeated the process) and I don't ever want to need a place as wholly as I needed Rogers, but damn it all I will not forget them.
I can remember where I come from.
This entry really refuses to expand to its intended scope, so I'm going to treat myself to sleep (up early this morning for a showing...spare a prayer or your equivalent, if you can) and try again tomorrow. Assuming, which I shouldn't, that tomorrow I will have energy aligned to journaling. At least I'm writing. A story, and perhaps one without a plot, but nonetheless with words.
And I didn't sit down with "What Are Big Girls Made Of?" and cry into her chest, which in some circles - considering all the people surrounding me when the notion first occurred - would be considered progress. Though I did make a total fool of myself attempting once again to play "Dance Dance Revolution" at an arcade, per my brother's orders. And in my circle disregard for public humiliation would be considered progress as well.
I'm still going to visit the poem. And if tears come, too, I'll redraw the circles and move on.
chord
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