[Woah, I fell off the wagon hard. I was writing once a day there for a hot minute. I'll be around. Don't worry your pretty head about me. And if your head is ugly, you're not alone.]
You don't smell anything like me, or anyone else. You're distinctive. Intellectually, I know what makes a person's smell, but there's no poetry in salt and oil. I know there is romance in the smell of it; the memory of you walking by me far too close and tossing your hair. That brief intimacy is all I remember from the day we fell in love, but it's enough. I know, a deep bone-tied knowledge, the ache of that gasp of docks and pine and sea breeze you brought with you from the mountain's toes. It's not a fresh smell, not a clean one, but it's yours. For me, that's good enough.
Smell is so visceral. I wonder--when we're both dead and winter pushes the air out of the forest's lungs and the breath of the sea thrums through our cemetery--will my body shiver when the smell of you rushes over me? If anything can make my rotten corpse breathe again, it would be the smell of you.
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Saturday, December 12, 2015
12.12
The cardboard boxes have destroyed my hands. I have been folding and filling them for hours. I've run out of tape closing them up. I've been carefully stacking them and labeling the sides. I step back, now, and realize that postage will be monstrous. You'll have to do without.
I pull out my knife and cut into the first box. Its contents spill out on the floor, skittering across the tile, smashing against the grout and rolling, slowly, under the fridge. I tear the next box open with my hands, my ruined hands, and the contents softly plop onto the oozing remains of the first box's more delicate containers. I'm frantically slashing through boxes now, heaving the empty ones away into the living room. My heartbeat is wild and my breathing erratic. There, in the bottom of the last prison I open, I find it. The shoebox with all your letters to me. I crawl over the jumbled piles of past neatness and good memories into the kitchen. I set this most precious box on the stove and set alight the burner tik tik tik woosh.
I snatch the box.
I swear.
I bash the flames with an open palm, half fanning, half smothering, until the fire chokes. The letters are singed, but the shoebox is ruined.
I put the shoebox back on the shelf and walk back to the pile to pick up the mess I made for you.
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
12.9
The dog twitches so much when he sleeps that I don't think I could ever be comfortable next to him. His claws are like buzzsaws on the end of his flailing paws. I still lay down next to him and wait for him to calm, not because I need to, but because I think he needs it. He sighs so much. Maybe he's lonely.
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
12.7
[My previous post was spurred by this thought: What would I think if I were this man, receiving this question? I think his response was wrong. So does he.]
Full disclosure: there are a few curse words I quote.
I pray to Jesus, but I'm not a Mormon. I've eaten at Buffalo Wild Wings, but I'm still vegetarian. I live in a society that represses, but am I a racist? That's a really unbelievable thing to say--that "everyone is a little bit racist," (Schierbecker 2015) or that all people are sexists, or that everything is problematic in some way. There's a whole lot of troubling fallacy in that statement. If everything is problematic, every argument that disproves your position is also problematic and equally easy to discard. If every white man is racist and sexist(and no black person can possibly be), white men don't "deserve to be listened to." You can shout them down. Let me simplify: modern collectivism is unfalsifiable.
Mark Schierbecker cowers like a whipped dog. It's exactly what the questioners seem to want. You should watch his interview all the way through to find when people ask him why he's pressing charges against Melissa Click and somehow promoting white supremacist arguments. He tries so hard to support the movement he believes in, but the moment his personal motivations don't align with the group, he's targeted. Instead of being intellectually honest about his first amendment beliefs, he cowtows to the angry voices. He scrambles to say something that will make him likable again: "Fuck racists! . . . Fuck me too." His friend the publicist doesn't help him, and in fact left him in the lurch a few days later. Why did he say he was racist and go out of his way to acknowledge his white privilege? Why did she recant her support and actually accuse him of saying "indefensibly racist" things? I can tell you why: there are two main types of activists I can currently see. The first type are real humans who care about each other and are trying to fix the incredibly obvious social problems in the United States. The second type are members of a mob who don't allow themselves to see the humanity in the people they're lining up to crush. They've been given incredibly powerful weapons of guilt and shame and hate, and this poisonous second type of activist is so dedicated to the purity of their group that they're willing to destroy anyone who threatens its ideology.
The first activist is the kind of person I strive to be. I fail a lot, but it's not due to a belief system that holds "my type of people" as better than another. It's just simple human selfishness. It's because I think I'm better than everyone. Before you think you can disprove me, remember that you're not inside my head, and that I have no respect for when people think they know what other people's beliefs or emotions are. So you won't win that one. Regardless, when I fail to love other people in the same way God loves them, I am disappointed in myself. I recalibrate, and I try again. Today, I got so mad I yelled at a student because I'm awful. I will do better tomorrow.
The second kind of activist is the kind of person who wears pink on Wednesdays. I'm still trying to figure out how to sort these bilious mouth-breathers from the forward-thinking human-lovers they mix with. These are people who belong to a clique. Their social activism excludes others on purpose and often as a tactic for keeping the clique pure and the message dominant. White guilt is a really stupid side-effect of othering by activists. But the most disagreeable thing is that these sort of feel-good crusading activists tend to target their own supporters. A blog that tears apart conservative cartoons gets the treatment sometimes. So do people making beautiful comics about the cultures in which they live. So does Emma Watson. So does an autistic photojournalist trying to give an extremely difficult answer in front of people who hate him because he thinks they have a right to be heard. Schierbecker is me. He's you. He's every one of us who says anything problematic, which is, remember, anything. This isn't about being right. Not one of us has the whole truth. This is about not being the most spiteful, vitriolic, exclusive, victimizing, parasitic, selfish people on the planet. Mark Schierbecker, I stand with you. I don't care if that gets me in trouble. From what I've seen, it's a safe stance.
Full disclosure: there are a few curse words I quote.
I pray to Jesus, but I'm not a Mormon. I've eaten at Buffalo Wild Wings, but I'm still vegetarian. I live in a society that represses, but am I a racist? That's a really unbelievable thing to say--that "everyone is a little bit racist," (Schierbecker 2015) or that all people are sexists, or that everything is problematic in some way. There's a whole lot of troubling fallacy in that statement. If everything is problematic, every argument that disproves your position is also problematic and equally easy to discard. If every white man is racist and sexist(and no black person can possibly be), white men don't "deserve to be listened to." You can shout them down. Let me simplify: modern collectivism is unfalsifiable.
Mark Schierbecker cowers like a whipped dog. It's exactly what the questioners seem to want. You should watch his interview all the way through to find when people ask him why he's pressing charges against Melissa Click and somehow promoting white supremacist arguments. He tries so hard to support the movement he believes in, but the moment his personal motivations don't align with the group, he's targeted. Instead of being intellectually honest about his first amendment beliefs, he cowtows to the angry voices. He scrambles to say something that will make him likable again: "Fuck racists! . . . Fuck me too." His friend the publicist doesn't help him, and in fact left him in the lurch a few days later. Why did he say he was racist and go out of his way to acknowledge his white privilege? Why did she recant her support and actually accuse him of saying "indefensibly racist" things? I can tell you why: there are two main types of activists I can currently see. The first type are real humans who care about each other and are trying to fix the incredibly obvious social problems in the United States. The second type are members of a mob who don't allow themselves to see the humanity in the people they're lining up to crush. They've been given incredibly powerful weapons of guilt and shame and hate, and this poisonous second type of activist is so dedicated to the purity of their group that they're willing to destroy anyone who threatens its ideology.
The first activist is the kind of person I strive to be. I fail a lot, but it's not due to a belief system that holds "my type of people" as better than another. It's just simple human selfishness. It's because I think I'm better than everyone. Before you think you can disprove me, remember that you're not inside my head, and that I have no respect for when people think they know what other people's beliefs or emotions are. So you won't win that one. Regardless, when I fail to love other people in the same way God loves them, I am disappointed in myself. I recalibrate, and I try again. Today, I got so mad I yelled at a student because I'm awful. I will do better tomorrow.
The second kind of activist is the kind of person who wears pink on Wednesdays. I'm still trying to figure out how to sort these bilious mouth-breathers from the forward-thinking human-lovers they mix with. These are people who belong to a clique. Their social activism excludes others on purpose and often as a tactic for keeping the clique pure and the message dominant. White guilt is a really stupid side-effect of othering by activists. But the most disagreeable thing is that these sort of feel-good crusading activists tend to target their own supporters. A blog that tears apart conservative cartoons gets the treatment sometimes. So do people making beautiful comics about the cultures in which they live. So does Emma Watson. So does an autistic photojournalist trying to give an extremely difficult answer in front of people who hate him because he thinks they have a right to be heard. Schierbecker is me. He's you. He's every one of us who says anything problematic, which is, remember, anything. This isn't about being right. Not one of us has the whole truth. This is about not being the most spiteful, vitriolic, exclusive, victimizing, parasitic, selfish people on the planet. Mark Schierbecker, I stand with you. I don't care if that gets me in trouble. From what I've seen, it's a safe stance.
Sunday, December 6, 2015
12.6
"Let me start by saying 'I am not a racist.'" Somewhere in the hall, a gasp. "Of course, I can't start by saying 'I am not a racist," because somewhere along the line the ability to label prejudice was taken from the individual and given to the collective. That's fine. I don't cry about that; no one has ever been able to control the labels other people ascribe to them. Billions of people live and die without being able to break from the mold others pour them into." The building is stuffy with people, the dense choke of breath recycled wafts its way up to me and slithers around my nose. The young woman who asked the question is livid, and I can see her emotion shake off her in waves, the crowd around her pulsing slightly with it, resonating her outrage.
"What I can say is that I can't comprehend racists." The mere mention of the word from a mouth--my mouth--of privilege strikes a note of discord in the gasps that filter to my pedestal high above the mob. Indiscretion! How dare he say such a thing! That word is ours; he can't know it like we do. "For my entire life, I have valued the viewpoints of others. I have worked to read and internalize the values and challenges of disenfranchised people. I seek the voices of race, of class, of disability, of youth, age, sexuality, and gender. I try to understand their viewpoints. I do my best, but I can only read so much. Every story is unique and can only add its melody to the hymn of humanity building in my heart. I have to try. But I'm limited to one slice of personal familiarity. I'm such a small thread in the tapestry of life that I only touch a very slim section." I can hear the creaking of their old ideologies now, trembling under the ponderous weight of my accusation: can A White Man be right? Can he get through a thought, a sentence, a word, without some twistable sentiment that can be turned and driven straight back, as a knife, into his gut? "How am I to understand the struggles and consequences of trans, gay, old, young, disabled, poor, or black? I am a white, cis straight man. And you know the awful truth? I don't even understand what it means to be that--how could I? Because some of us are racist. And I don't get it." Damn him, the packed humanity whispers. Damn him, not for what he's said, but for who he is. Racism is only practicable by the powerful against the weak. He'll understand what racism looks like when we're done with him. I knew I hadn't said anything wrong, but
"What I can say is that I can't comprehend racists." The mere mention of the word from a mouth--my mouth--of privilege strikes a note of discord in the gasps that filter to my pedestal high above the mob. Indiscretion! How dare he say such a thing! That word is ours; he can't know it like we do. "For my entire life, I have valued the viewpoints of others. I have worked to read and internalize the values and challenges of disenfranchised people. I seek the voices of race, of class, of disability, of youth, age, sexuality, and gender. I try to understand their viewpoints. I do my best, but I can only read so much. Every story is unique and can only add its melody to the hymn of humanity building in my heart. I have to try. But I'm limited to one slice of personal familiarity. I'm such a small thread in the tapestry of life that I only touch a very slim section." I can hear the creaking of their old ideologies now, trembling under the ponderous weight of my accusation: can A White Man be right? Can he get through a thought, a sentence, a word, without some twistable sentiment that can be turned and driven straight back, as a knife, into his gut? "How am I to understand the struggles and consequences of trans, gay, old, young, disabled, poor, or black? I am a white, cis straight man. And you know the awful truth? I don't even understand what it means to be that--how could I? Because some of us are racist. And I don't get it." Damn him, the packed humanity whispers. Damn him, not for what he's said, but for who he is. Racism is only practicable by the powerful against the weak. He'll understand what racism looks like when we're done with him. I knew I hadn't said anything wrong, but
Friday, December 4, 2015
12.4
She just walked past me and asked if it's three yet. I almost, reflexively, looked at my watch, which I do when people ask me what day of the month it is, or how long until dinner, or why I'm waiting for something, or when my birthday is. Instead, I just smiled and said "Yup! You can go home." We both laughed. There was an extreme bitterness in the laughter, since we shared this unspeakable resolve common in teachers, that no matter the monstrous thoughts we have between seven and three, we will retain our dignity just as long as we survive. We can then push through the shroud-doors and out of this voluntary mausoleum and return to a nearly human life outside. We can take again the mantle of humanity, living again outside these walls where we constrain children's minds to the exact pattern of their forbears.
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
My Acolyte Journey: 2014.1
Habits
Tove Lo.
I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't use. I don't hook up. I'm not familiar with the particular vices of this song, but I love listening to it. It hurts more now, though. I may not love the words, but it's more painful to think that maybe she does.
This is Delight's favorite song from the Top 40. She listened to it on loop for days. She liked a couple other Tove Lo songs Of course, her favorite was the un-remixed version, but we're looking for the Hippie Sabotage remix that Stephen liked better. It's good. I'm done playing.
Tove Lo.
I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't use. I don't hook up. I'm not familiar with the particular vices of this song, but I love listening to it. It hurts more now, though. I may not love the words, but it's more painful to think that maybe she does.
This is Delight's favorite song from the Top 40. She listened to it on loop for days. She liked a couple other Tove Lo songs Of course, her favorite was the un-remixed version, but we're looking for the Hippie Sabotage remix that Stephen liked better. It's good. I'm done playing.
My Acolyte Journey: 2014.2
All Eyes Are on You Now
Deas Vail. Adolescence practically requires each person to see the world as a vast Truman Show, an endless multitude of people all constantly judging your every movement. Each and every person you meet sees every mistake you've ever made and has incisive knowledge of your inner foibles. When you've got a zit on your jawline, everyone can see it and thinks its disgusting. When you forget someone's name, they hold on to that moment for years. When you open your chips and they spill out on your lap, everyone's laughing internally, cataloging your idiocy to tell all their friends later around wine and cheese. "Do you remember in sixth grade when Hannah called the teacher 'Mom?' That was truly her lowest moment!"
All eyes are on you now.
Except that's not true. Nobody notices; you're background material. People aren't constantly searching for your hidden problems. They're all so focussed on themselves that they don't have time for you. And thank God for that, because this song is a horrorscape if it's true. Actually: nobody cares, and it's wonderful.
Why do we all think such awful things about ourselves? This is the stuff of nightmares! This is as terrifying as the implications of the Hymn of Acxiom, but broader and less modern. It's the omniscience of the priest, the gossip chain of the village ladies, the seeming judgement of the schoolchildren in the other desks--the oldest fear since society formed. This is what you wake up to at three am and worry about at quiet moments. It's not true, but that doesn't stop our phobia from building to an all-consuming emotional "Show us what you're made of/What you are afraid of/All eyes are on you now."
I like the song. It makes me feel bigger and lighter, even though it has such a heavy message. It makes me feel like shoving my hands deeper in my pockets and walking faster, getting where I'm going so I can win whatever I'm doing. I know the music doesn't match the words, now that I've read them. I don't think it matters. There are songs you listen to because the music blows you away, songs you listen to because the words move you like a bird on the wing, and songs that have both. This song is not both, I think. I wouldn't buy it, but we all know how useless I've made that metric. It just tells you if I want it, not if I enjoy it or find it worthwhile or think it deserves to be the penultimate song of a list of Stephen's best from 2014.
One more. Delight's song.
Deas Vail. Adolescence practically requires each person to see the world as a vast Truman Show, an endless multitude of people all constantly judging your every movement. Each and every person you meet sees every mistake you've ever made and has incisive knowledge of your inner foibles. When you've got a zit on your jawline, everyone can see it and thinks its disgusting. When you forget someone's name, they hold on to that moment for years. When you open your chips and they spill out on your lap, everyone's laughing internally, cataloging your idiocy to tell all their friends later around wine and cheese. "Do you remember in sixth grade when Hannah called the teacher 'Mom?' That was truly her lowest moment!"
All eyes are on you now.
Except that's not true. Nobody notices; you're background material. People aren't constantly searching for your hidden problems. They're all so focussed on themselves that they don't have time for you. And thank God for that, because this song is a horrorscape if it's true. Actually: nobody cares, and it's wonderful.
Why do we all think such awful things about ourselves? This is the stuff of nightmares! This is as terrifying as the implications of the Hymn of Acxiom, but broader and less modern. It's the omniscience of the priest, the gossip chain of the village ladies, the seeming judgement of the schoolchildren in the other desks--the oldest fear since society formed. This is what you wake up to at three am and worry about at quiet moments. It's not true, but that doesn't stop our phobia from building to an all-consuming emotional "Show us what you're made of/What you are afraid of/All eyes are on you now."
I like the song. It makes me feel bigger and lighter, even though it has such a heavy message. It makes me feel like shoving my hands deeper in my pockets and walking faster, getting where I'm going so I can win whatever I'm doing. I know the music doesn't match the words, now that I've read them. I don't think it matters. There are songs you listen to because the music blows you away, songs you listen to because the words move you like a bird on the wing, and songs that have both. This song is not both, I think. I wouldn't buy it, but we all know how useless I've made that metric. It just tells you if I want it, not if I enjoy it or find it worthwhile or think it deserves to be the penultimate song of a list of Stephen's best from 2014.
One more. Delight's song.
My Acolyte Journey: 2014.3
Marlboro Lights.
Natalia Kills.
The Internet at home is so slow I could walk to down and take a course on lockpicking to break into the library and look up the information I need before Google would load. That might be an exaggeration. Still, as long as I'm here . . .
For my use, this song would be called Fireball, and no mistake. I'm tempted to stop writing there and just let sleeping dogs lie, but that's not why I'm here. Marlboro Lights is about a relationship that's ending or has just ended and the narrator knows why, knows it won't be anything but over, but clutches the pain to her breast and quaffs it like medicine. Her lover is gone, but somehow, she gets better because of it: "And I lie here on the bedroom floor/Where your feet walked out and your daggers fall/And I, I get a little bit better." It's hard to death if "A rooftop ledge/Could just fix everything," but she's fixated and it's fixing her.
I don't know if I'm projecting myself on this song like the thin light from an overhead projector on a hot classroom wall, fading in sunlight and aching for the final bell to ring and the referee to just call the match. Maybe I'm not, and it's just resonant in me like shook foil, terrible and fragile, a connection so tenuous that it shatters my illusions with a single strike and lays waste to my imagination of "okay." Maybe it's exactly my story and maybe I'm playing human and pretending I'm important, but either way I'm not okay, and my thoughts of Fireball whiskey doesn't make me feel a little bit better.
Would not buy.
Done thinking.
Natalia Kills.
The Internet at home is so slow I could walk to down and take a course on lockpicking to break into the library and look up the information I need before Google would load. That might be an exaggeration. Still, as long as I'm here . . .
For my use, this song would be called Fireball, and no mistake. I'm tempted to stop writing there and just let sleeping dogs lie, but that's not why I'm here. Marlboro Lights is about a relationship that's ending or has just ended and the narrator knows why, knows it won't be anything but over, but clutches the pain to her breast and quaffs it like medicine. Her lover is gone, but somehow, she gets better because of it: "And I lie here on the bedroom floor/Where your feet walked out and your daggers fall/And I, I get a little bit better." It's hard to death if "A rooftop ledge/Could just fix everything," but she's fixated and it's fixing her.
I don't know if I'm projecting myself on this song like the thin light from an overhead projector on a hot classroom wall, fading in sunlight and aching for the final bell to ring and the referee to just call the match. Maybe I'm not, and it's just resonant in me like shook foil, terrible and fragile, a connection so tenuous that it shatters my illusions with a single strike and lays waste to my imagination of "okay." Maybe it's exactly my story and maybe I'm playing human and pretending I'm important, but either way I'm not okay, and my thoughts of Fireball whiskey doesn't make me feel a little bit better.
Would not buy.
Done thinking.
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