these bolts are not free.
you must pay for them. the bolts. they are 0.79 ea. plus tax. oh you have spent a lot of money here? the bolts are still 0.79 ea., but now especially 0.79 ea. welcome to the historically troubling system of capitalism. welcome. you are not new here or to this mode of exchange. neither am i. i am paid to sell these bolts, not give them away. i sell bolts for a wage. we buy bolts and i sell them to people who need them to attach things to other things. a small interface in a larger system of things i sell—recreational goods held together by bolts— these bolts are not free. not for you.
i must pause here for a moment. my neighbours are having rough and silent sex or there is a minor earthquake. maybe a tremor. of the groins. i don’t know, but it shakes the very small space i occupy.
bolts…
also of those i have had interactions with today: the man with the bike that is ten years old and works well enough and-isn’t-convinced-that-a-new-fancy-bike-like-the-kind-we-sell-that-pro-racer-types-ride-will-be-a-good-investment: it’s not. it’s not an investment. its a fucking bike, and if you’re not convinced, do us all a goddamn favour and don’t waste our time. we need that time to sell bolts. i know you need reassuring: i am sure your 10 year old bike will grow up one day into a majestic composite-based recreational good(s) held together by bolts.
two nights ago i dreamt my father’s voice. i heard it as i used to hear it when i was a baby when i was a boy when i was a young man. i am still a young man, but i heard his voice in my dream two nights ago and it woke me up. i don’t remember the dream, but i remember his voice; my father is not dead, he just has no voice that i would call his own. cancer took his voice. i can’t remember my father’s voice so well anymore. when the dream woke me, i didn’t know that’s what i was dreaming of. it wasn’t until much later, at work i remembered what woke me. i had to leave. i needed air. i was suffocating. i went into the alley and choked back that burn behind my eyes.
i told someone who used to be especially close to me about my dream via devices. i did not hear back from from her until this morning. i thought it was a boundary thing at first and did not expect a reply. it broke my emotional silence, the reply. maybe i had put up boundaries, maybe in the wrong place. i don’t mean to. it cracked my composure. the emotional attachment to this woman and to my father. oh darlin’ oh little bird, i choked back those tears, but they came and soaked my cheeks and my face swole. it hurt so bad to be alone and so unprepared for that lusty baptism of repressed guilt and shame and fear. sat on my bed in the morning heat my hands clenched red and raised to the ceiling, my little arms perched on my knees; i begged for mercy. i pleaded. i begged…
please.
please.
please.
please deliver me some relief. i cannot bare this kind of pain. i begged the morning heat for mercy from my own selfishness.
The sweetest woman in the world
Can be the meanest woman in the world
If you make her that way, you keep on hurting her
She keeps being quiet
She might be holding something inside
That really really hurt you one day
the persuaders, a thin line between love and hate played on the radio as it all happened.
my little body convulsed
the bolts are 0.79 ea. plus tax.
The depressive II
if you’ve ever known someone prone to melancholy you’ve probably noticed, if you’re observant by nature, the stare. the glassy-vacant-stare practiced by the depressive-type people. let me explain that stare as i see it, *ahem* or as I SEE IT. actually i just noticed that i’d been staring at a chair across the room as i considered how to explain what exactly the stare means. i am not contemplating the chair, exactly. i mean, i am, but more so what is happening as i stare unfocused at a chair that used to belong to a recent partner—even considering how to describe the other of this recently failed relationship is starting to trigger a painful kind of personal footnoting and citation system in between describing the stare and throwing a life preserver, an imaginary floating circle to the me who wants nothing more than to agonize over said relationship and the me who is attempting (rather poorly) to describe a simple (seemingly) idea is and is threatening to derail my entire line of thought so much so that i just want to sit against the wall and drink until i can’t remember a thought longer than a few seconds—propped in my tiny bachelor suite—the chair—is an act of trying to avoid the kind of corrosive self loathing line of inner dialogue that you’ve only just scanned a prelude to a prologue to a foreword of toxic and cyclical internal memo system. the stare, for me, is an attempt at a kind of meditation. something unthreatening. something to interrupt the corrosion at the terminal point.
relationships and phone bills are both hot and sweaty muscae volitantes of distraction. for better or worse. it’s really a writhing viper’s den of self loathing that prevents me from opening up those thoughts and debunking my own personal myths; i am good enough, i am pretty, i am worthing something, i smell good blah blah blah who cares right? well you should for one (meaning, i should). no one else will care about your minutia except you. that’s yours. you can keep that. frankly, i need mine, so fuck off! the big things, they come and go in fucking seconds. the grad speech. the “i do’s” the look at this moroccan sunset; google it if you want to see it again. the minutia though, scrooge mcduck that shit. i have no idea how many cups of coffee i’ve had so far this year, but i can tell you this with certainty, i value that ritual far more than that insite I may have had, or that alledgedly sublime cliché i probably wandered into. don’t get it twisted though, i’d love to see a moroccan sunset. but as a creature of habit, i place deadly fucking amount of sanity-making on the minutia.
The depressive
I’ve not said much to many people about my own condition. Mostly out of response to how people react, or don’t. I much rather prefer when people don’t react. Some close to me are very familiar with how depression affects me, polarizes my moods, cripples my ability to have a conversation without the endless qualifiers, preface and post-script—more than typical for the pedantic tendencies I display—but most see me as being moody, irritated, cold, indifferent… it’s true, these are outer facades that tend to come out during more difficult depressive tendencies; I should also want to explain that I loathe the term Depression. It’s used too casually, like the word amazing, and doesn’t really explain or hold the weight and significance it should. Nor do I suffer from it. I live with it. Cancer patients suffer. People with chronic pain and debilitating afflictions suffer. I co-exist with depression. I don’t mean to sell myself short, or trivialize what I go through, but it’s a functional affliction.
I was first diagnosed with “clinical depression” in 2002. I had initially taken meds, but wasn’t mature enough to follow through, or willing to understand the chemical side of things until two years ago when at the behest of one of my teachers at art school and now a very close personal friend pulled me aside and confronted me about my mood(s) out of concern for my own safety. He has also struggled with depression and recognized what I was going through. Since then, I have switched meds four or five times. Still unable to find one that doesn’t polarize or numb or feel insane. In the tradition of irony, I am not taking the one that was initially prescribed to be ten years ago.
I’ve quietly whispered to myself a litany of hurtful truths and hateful sentiments, but I know and understand that only some of what I tell myself is true and only some of it is false, but regardless, in the moment it can be the most insane cruelty. gilted hallow laughter at pettiness and perfunctory interactions. Defensive posturing and needling in order to vindicate minutia are mere formalities.
vacant staring.
Choosing certainty; living uncertainty.
Melancholia by Steve Womack
Gorgeous film. Reading about Von Trier’s comments and experience with depression definitely resonate with my own. especially WRT remaining calm in stressful or chaotic situations, but also the inability to remain calm or logical in seemingly banal and routine situations. Polarizing experiences.
