Today is the first day of the rest of your series of other first days of your life. You always can be uncertain whether or not you have this particular day to begin again. You
always may be certain that you will always be uncertain. You start planning immediately; you have an unmeasured time allotted for this interpretation of the state of your fixation. You sit in
front of whatever clever type of technology or paper or sticky-note system which provides you with the encouragement to begin your plan. But after a few scribbles and a change in barometric
pressure, you decide that you have accomplished a decent amount of planning, just by the act of starting to think about planning. Then you walk into your backyard to see if there
is enough gas in the lawn mower to do a few rows, and your phone rings.
"Hello?"
The silence on the other end of your line is intolerable, so you utter a short sequence of charming un-thank yous and you realize that you have to call your friend in Chicago who is sick and
could be dying; meanwhile your guitar looks like it needs to be played. You can't figure out a chord, so you pick up the remote control, but nothing is on except your love's favorite show, which
you can't watch because this is the first day of the rest of your year, and so you think about ordering a pizza but your debit card is downstairs and the cat just puked and the
ice has already melted in your glass.
"Hellooooo?"
You walk around in circles until you decide it's not worth it, and maybe the tag phrase should be, "today is the last day of your life" but that seems psychologically unhealthy and you need to
sleep it off.
The challenges to which you shall open your sleepy eyes are self-imposed. For instance, you must own your own mind. You can't always control it, but you have got to own it. You have to obey or
disobey its compulsions, and you have to accept its troubles and randomizations. You can't organize it, but you can know the danger of its capacity to scramble and ramble. You can tell yourself
many things you want to believe, but unless you compromise with it, your intentions wont be articulated as obligations. You have to be consistent, impressionistic, reasonable, adjustable, and
playful. No one can think for oneself without wandering about some madness, and at times madness may be the purpose, the map, the ambiguity that makes all challenges the exact electricity which
makes your minds universe.
So! Before you retrace your steps, either find the nearest exit or forgive yourself for thinking that you are completely capable of withstanding any retrospection. We all have a certain level of
faith and love for ourselves, but we hesitate to remember (time after time) that our minds love is unrequited at times.
I found myself today. I found myself yesterday. Don't worry about how or where or why. You need to worry about yourself. I am in good standing with myself. I don't know how you see me, but I need
you to look at yourself instead of me. I am lost and found, and the circle will never be unbroken.
Ask yourself questions; but believe nothing you say is universal truth. Again, I don't know how you see me, I only see what I ask of you to see me as, and I ask you to see me without judgment,
without pity, without expectations; I will in turn see you just as I see myself. I will see a conjunction of suggestion, a highway overlooking the inexactness which I gander and gather, and I
will speak no evil, see no evil, nor hear no evil. I will tell myself to have an open mind, an unspoken heart, and a thousand broken souls unnerving me at every moment I let myself go. I will
obey and deceive while I coincide and conflict. I will not hurt you any more or less unless I am hurting. But, thats me. I will listen, confide, retreat, capture, release, stalk, haunt, freak,
steal, believe, deny, accuse, refuse, abuse, lose, win, practice, preach, reach, storm, mourn, shock, fall, get up, fall again, risk, gamble, promise, forget, relive, regret, write, ask, answer,
explain, walk away, run away, stumble back, call, hang up, create, criticize, speculate, spit it out, move, stay, fear, hope, play, work, tumble, crumble, relive, revive, listen, whisper, break,
shake, ache, take, fake, love, shove, test, quiz, examine, graduate, imitate, cringe, cry, die, believe, remind, reconsider, reconsider, reconsider, reconsider, prove, contend, mend, bend,
reason, rationalize, agonize, plead, please, smile, agree, follow, lead, rock, roll, and rest. I will be on my own side of my mind, the inside of whats truly only mine, and I will have to be
patient until you find me there: for you and I will celebrate your own story.
What are you going to do to make yourself feel real?
Then sometimes the stories tell themselves much faster than you can possibly imagine which is where the story begins. The story begins somewhere near the middle because something's got to be
happening in order for a story to come in context of the conversation; what I mean is that I think you must have some reason to tell a story - a tale - an anecdote, unless you just are plain
bored anyway, but my story starts because the time has come when I realized I had one to tell. Yeah, of course I have had many, just like we all have our stories, but this was one that made it
even worthwhile to write.
Fact is that I love to write but not much inspires me these days to do the actual deed, I write in my notebook and it never seems to get typed therefore it is never really out there, except in a
song or twenty, but any how, I would like to explain things in a way that aren't too abstract, so please stop if you get lost in my balderdash, if you can.
But you can't, so joke's on you, I s'pose.
Shakespeare in my lap under my bluish lighted lamp, I was on Act Two of The Tempest, trying to not only just read Shakespeare, but trying to enjoy it. This was a ritual of mine - one of many - I
had these rituals that I practiced because I philosophized (being the philosopher who I was) that this was the delivery which would demand my sense of learning to enjoy the elements of existence
which would make me virtuouso, a sultan, a reason for all to see that I have an itinerary - most of all a method.
I have a ritual. I was three days a college graduate, after five and a half years of university life, two majors and two minors (balance is important to me), I am able to write in present tense,
say that I have been rigidly educated, and have my whole life ahead of me.
So, I write this as I say to you and the world, I am a philosopher. I make this decision because I strode off into the world just like that, the intentionally, and my screen door slammed shut, or
whacked itself hard and the cat meowed and I headed up toward the outside off near campus in my new Converse, staring down at the un-kept sidewalk, grateful that that type of maintenance didn't
bother me. I didn't look up and the sidewalk grooves moved beneath me at exceedingly faster lines of distance, which made me realize the physics of it all - but of course, as a philosopher, it
may have mattered more or less, but that made me clearly apathetic philosopher, one who hasn't determined their actual "category" or "trade" or whatever; all I knew is that I wanted to study
Ritual.
What in the hell does that mean?
I lifted my head as I approached Tennessee Street and some kids in a four door navy Taurus waved and yelled my name. I waved back, and couldn't figure out who they were. I am not foreshadowing
here so don't get any ideas. Let me do the thinking. I have been practicing.
The coffee shop steps had been freshly painted and I had to go in there
"Why you look so down?' peaches asked
"Not"
"No serious-like - you're always lookin' at the ground."
"I-" I looked at the ceiling and laughed at the irony of the situation "Look at the ceiling, Peaches, the disgust, the mold, the cigarette-"
She made an indistinct snort and said, "People are talking, you know, you just have to look at more than them nice converse and sidewalks and cats and stuff. It's a shame we never see your
eyes."
"Where's my coffee?" I knew I didn't order any.
"Do you just want some "grounds"", she laughed as she swayed away to some older chap, who looked like my Modern Lit professor.
"And what is a Ritual, anyway?"
The humming of the ceiling fans and the odor of the coffee and the ambience of the conversation found myself out the door and back up the hill, using my eyesight properly, staring ahead, then at
the cloudless sky.
This was it.
I knew that this had had had to be it.
I leaned towards the judge and wanted to listen.
The sounds were not the same in the sense that I couldn't hear them. I wondered if my ears had made a choice and told my head to shut the olfactory section
down..
I scuffled through the dusty gravel on the parkway and waited for someone's car to come pick me up, I was hoping they would call me and you would be there. They
caught me easily, and I said I was tired of running away. I was tired of the games and the catchphrase no one caught without a few doubts getting there. But you were happy to be there, weren't
you?
I made some people happy. Others didn't matter. I made you happy most of the time. You left and didn't come back -- just as well, as I was better than you, and you
were a sad sight thinking you were clever and confident.
I shuddered, the steel coat of your boisterousness looked cold and you were avoiding my eyes and my words were spent..I knew you were not allowed to be that person
to me, and you were aware too. It was far from you though -- I didn't mean you were sporting a personality or had a sense of humor or were attentive or were not smarter than I was -- I created a
monster, and maybe you would grow up and learn who you are.
I was waiting for you to catch on.
I was there for quite awhile.
I raised my hand in Algebra one afternoon because I had solved the problem and my hand knew it. I stared past the boy who belted out his solution, then I threw my
notebook out the classroom window.
Chances were that Sundays would be as much of a disappointment for me as they usually were.
Chances were that I would never break that doubt, not for lack of desire to mend a repetitious lifestyle of separation, but I wanted to quit being dichronous.
That's what The Smiths would say, anyway.
I didn't make a break for it until I saw you, and I couldn't get far enough away to ever live with myself for being in love with a robot.
2017
Dear Interested Reality Show Representative:
I am happy to hear from you - but what exactly is an "audition"? Is that when your doctor checks your hearing; estimates the frequency or levels, the results of 130 decibals every other night for
three hours or so and the effects on your long term hearing?
Or is it a synonym for the act of auditing... or the state of being audited? Or maybe the state of one's audacity?
But I digress so I will just act natural and digress further. Quit digressing me with your eyes.
Thank you for the note! I am pleased to please you! And pleased to meet you! (I am on vacation and as my occupational hazards deny me time to write to random cool people - I teach high school
English - who may fascinate me by some subjective means or another and make a long, shockingly introspective day just a bit better by being a part of it).
Anyway.
Please do buzz me so that I can figure out how to audition and/or captivate the uncaptivated...
Here are my stats:
Wendy Clark
email: tqmbmusic@gmail.com
www.wendyclark.net
(Don't you realize how much I could barrage you with my introspective torment with the audacity of that unsolicited query?)
Take care, now. you hear?
you here?
After blinking involuntarily for the creeping recognition of the totally obvious, the most simplistic answers begin to noticeably affect our effect. This was the same lack of coping skills I
was taught to overthink.
Fall: (noun) to pass from one condition to another.
“Tempting,” I said.
Sadly, the most unimportant events usually crept into my prominent speculations when ever my current situations(s) demanded my excruciating attention. Important events called for one's absolute
focus, and fortunately, I enjoyed a scale of mental substance consisting of various intense predicaments as well as an grounded awareness of my presence and depth of my semi-chaotic habitat.
Things were starting to be looking up, that is, when they weren't looking down.
The consequences of asking a blank sheet of paper to write itself.....
"Why do you ask so many rhetorical questions?"
Probably the same reason I write rhetorical emails.
The drive home from anyplace you go is going to be an unnerving string of fragmented images, sounds, smells, etcetera, but all you can do is drive, you have to get to your next destination;
we all have to get somewhere, eh?
I wrote you a little song and the melody goes a little something like this... A one! A TWO! A ONE TWO THREE FOUR!
The object of the game is to outwit everyone else, or maybe to out-think them, surpass them in the good looks or "I know how to dress" or something or other, after all, you HAVE to be good at
something. If not, you aren't really much fun to be around, are you?
The more you stay, the farther you go away, and love looks you in the eyes and you don't wait for the words you want to hear these days; you're friends find misery and become a bore, of
course, you ponder if this boredom is really just a manifestation of your own loneliness.
Ah, looking back, we had dreams, big huge quivering coolness in our attitudes; smarter, luckier, more destined for greatness than all those random bodies rolling over the earth, heads down,
miserable because they were blending in with the entire puzzle, those pieces of people.
"Deal me in," I say before I think about the consequences. I am currently existing on good luck anyway.
What you see is who you are.
What you see is who you are and that should set you free.
What you see is what you know.
What you are is what you know.
What you know is you know what.
This rare evening I invite you to forget that what you see is who you are
and invite you to distinguish your sight and be blind for the sake
of
just
me
inviting you
for kicks
because I am trying to find the harm in forgetting
that what you see is what you get
and I want to quit believing that seeing is believing
and closing your eyes
doesn't mean I am closing what I see
and what I mean isn't who I may be
man, it is such a trip
that if you say to yourself
and forget to think about yourself
and remember why to laugh at yourself
like a complicated boob
You may start to believe that clarity
And see how many ways you can believe to see
I have to continue, because it is necessary:
What you see is who you are.
And it's better to know what is causing the drama than to wonder.
It is that simple. It is that complicated.
I tried to blend in more than I had ever tried to not be uneasy in the bloody jaws of uneasiness when Ellen, Stephanie, JE, Tara and some other stupid first grader first pointed out that I was
not invited to step up in the tight circle and smile and brag about my new sundress. One of the lovely popular tall betches stooped down and said with a gag, "What do think YOU are doing
here?"
I imagine I moved as fast as I could imagine so that they would forget that I ever existed. I still see myself there, though. What you see is who you are unless what you see is not.
So how do you finish an anecdote? How do you say instead, "I wish you could see me like I see you," and let yourself be invited to see whatever you want and be who the hell you are, and teach
yourself to see.
This is not an exit.
Riddle me this.
Riddle me that.
We all swaggered toward the massive megachurch in hopes of salvation of the purist of soul, body, mind, and hearts... among the many pure organs which we cherished and we denied would someday
perish.... so we saw the parish or the cathederal (sp?) and we clutched our laptops, bibles, pocket tetris (tm); we marched forward and my friend Erik marched backwards - just to prove that
marching forward in the wrong direction still was going forward - even though he was backward; he was always directionally persuasive in his own wayward ways; we moved to the gigantic complex and
I really felt the urge to kneel down and scream but I was moved by another urgent reason to redeem myself.
Salvation.
The megachurch beckoned superstars like me and my eccentric friends. The whispering willows and the firecrackers and the corresponding angles were a bigger part of the grand scheme of the whole -
we graduated from college under the umbrella of comprehension of all things must be the oil in the engine of the machine which is the circle of life and the cosmic solidarity of all which may or
may not exist.
#$*&^!!@#% to hell with salvation.
Anyone from Detroit? No? Utica? Let's see... Clinton Township? Yeah. I went to Cedar Pointe every year. Rode the Gemini all day. Drinking age in Canada was only 19 and I had a fake ID at
seventeen so you can only imagine the consequences. Yeah, my liver is okay. No, my brain didn't take to well a liking to that particular "compound". It's okay. I went to middle school at Liggett.
I am experienced.
Often these times drive me crazy.
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