My “other” Blog
What is a ghost?
A tragedy doomed to repeat itself time & again?
A moment of pain perhaps…
Something dead which still seems to be alive
An emotion suspended in time
Like a blurred photograph
Like an insect trapped in amber
A ghost
That’s what I have become….
The following piece was written 3 years and 5 days ago, it is the most darkest period of my life to date. Someone whom I’m sure is reading this mentioned that they believe I’m still bothered by it. They’re goddamn right I am… This is the reason I’ve been in a foul mood lately…and dark mood lately when will it ever end?
An open letter to someone that they will never read
Dearest Clarissa
I’ll never forget the first day I met you. How quickly the friendship formed. We both agreed if there truly was a thing called fate, our friendship was it. Even though it was against company policy, we even dated for a while. Though it didn’t work out, our friendship did strengthen, which is rather unheard of in some circles. I remember how we would have to stifle our laughter when someone at work would say things like “My God you two are just alike, you two should be together.” Then I met another and you as well, but the friendship never deterred. We were always there for one another. Remember what we agreed too? How if neither one of us was married by in five years, we would break down the fears, get married and live happily ever after. We would jokingly say we were two lost souls that should be with each another, but we are opting out for other options. I always loved you as a friend and sometimes I thought I was in love with you. Why even last Friday you called me, you stated you needed someone to be there with you, and I was. We watched Fahrenheit 9/11 while laughing at the lies that movie told. We made plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas in case we weren’t involved with others. That was before…the betrayal you have committed.
Now a little over 24 hours since I last saw you. I’m observing the destruction your actions have caused. You have shattered lives and seriously damaged others. I noticed the change in you and literally begged you to tell me what was bothering you. But my cries were silent in your ears…sometimes I felt like I was always falling down the same hill and my cries were like bamboo puncturing the skin and nothing comes bleeding out, just like the waterfall you were drowning in.
What you did is unfair to everyone. You were always stubborn and you had to have things your way. But, damn you this is ridiculous. Everyone is coming to me with questions, for which I have no answers. The haunting look I saw in your parents eyes this morning, has been burned in to my soul. Tomorrow I will have to deliver the news of your betrayal to people at work. Even though I love you at the same time I hate you. I hate you for the pain and horror you have caused. I hate you for giving me this cross to bear that leaves a void. How did your waterfall get so big? How did it get so strong? What you gave to me, a perfect ring of scars, you know I can still see the beautiful soul you are.
I realize this is just the beginning of the nightmare. I have always known you too be a little selfish, but I would have never dreamed this is the extent it went. You always said you wanted to leave a legacy. Is this what you wanted to leave? Is this how you wanted to be remembered? As a betrayer, a false prophet of hope and a coward rolled into one. I hope you find the peace you craved, I truly do. When I met you, I never would have believed that the last time I see you, will be this week. I’ll be in a suit of black; I’ll wear the tie you gave me. Your dad asked me to be a pallbearer in your funeral. He then asked me “What was going on in your mind when you decided to take a whole bottle of Ambien?” For that I have no answer. And for some reason I doubt that I ever will. I would have tried to dam the waterfall you were in, if you would have allowed me. Now I’m forever scared with the knowledge that most likely I was the last person to see you alive, and the last person to hug you good-bye. Damn you Clarissa, you selfish bitch. I don’t deserve this. NONE OF US DO!!! Nevertheless I’ll always remember you and the friendship we shared, but know this; the memories will be tainted…
It was too shallow.
It’s too soon.
The rain would arrive and it would show.
Curled, Cold, Dead.
It’s too small.
People are not people.
She said sorry.
It’s too hard.
My hands weren’t there to keep her warm.
Putrefied, informed, festering
hearts for this one life
is too small.
Yeah yeah I know, I’m late. I’m stressed to the point of an ulcer and I have writers block. But who cares? Not me…at least not much longer.
Give your heart to a stranger
Turn your back on a friend
Walk away, unafraid of the end
Hang the day on a promise
Breaking overhead
The pieces fall, they haven’t cut me yet
Dare me to watch your moon
Disappear into a trembling night
The end could feel allright
Through a window, open every door
No use holding on
Now you are a stranger
We’ll never talk again
But you’re everywhere, all we could’ve been
Whatever I hoped to find
The answer or the perfect lie
I let it pass me by
We share the pain, some rise again
Let me be
Released
When I look inside, I see nothing. I feel nothing but this empty void that is consuming me… Controlling me… Tearing me apart. When I try to feel something, there’s nothing to be felt. I try to know myself, but I can’t. My own existence is nothing but a shadow that runs away from me each time I try to pursue it. It slips from my hands each time I seize it, like a scared child that fights to be freed from the monsters of her nightmare.
And then, they come and try to steal these thoughts from me. My thoughts.
They try to make these thoughts vanish by saying our existence isn’t supposed to be discovered. We cannot think such things for they’re too dangerous for us. By saying they can lead us to folly. By saying they can lead us to death. And even though it scares me, I don’t care. I know they’re lying. I know they are scared that I might fly away from them and find my true essence. To be free from their mind-controlling grasp.
All I want is to find myself… Know myself… Love myself. To stop feeling this emptiness inside. For being empty is the worst thing one can be.
And I wonder if that will ever happen…
I don’t know… But I wanted it to… I wanted it so much… But I can’t do it alone. I need someone to help me to feel… The good and the bad. Love and hatred. Death and Life. Loyalty and betrayal. Salvation and damnation. I’ll discover who I am then…
Someone, please… Find me.
Sometimes people feel like a myth, feel like smoke passing me by.
Wisps of air blowing by my head in a hurry, leaving me behind in the shadows, my own eyes straining to catch sight of my fellow beings of life.
Only to feel left out, alone, forgotten.
But after all the years, I have grown use to these empty feelings, pulling them into my heart and sealing them away into my soul for further keeping.
They are my defense against humanity and its idiocy, against harsh words thrown my way, against tears spilling from my eyes as I hide in the darkness I dwell.
I bury myself in books, looking for safety, a haven from the madness, the hypocritizy of those around me, the hatred I feel for people, for every word spoken by people who in turn stab me in the back when I don’t have my eyes on them. Those who say they love me, yet see me in a dark light, sending me to find some place to hide…
Hiding in my den is all I have, its my haven from them, its all I can find when I need someone, it is my comfort away from people who ridicule me, kill me inside with each word they speak, glances thrown my way.
My books, my art, my internet connection, they are my people, my allies, all I will stay close to since humanity proves to be fowl and wretched to those who are uncommon.
Those who I do cling to, they are the humans I find worthy of my love, my insanity, they aren’t the smoke passing me, they are the carnations in my mental garden, I water them and watch as they grow, my own growth trying to follow thanks to what kind words they spare for me. The kindness passed onto me.
I always seem to make these carnations wilt with my grip, my own vines desperately looking for attention and love, sending those I need away, making them spite me, curse me.
Wish I was gone far away, wasn’t such a burden to them and their growth. Yet I cling, I cry, I seek love, which I cannot reach for.
It seems only my finger tips can brush across the feelings before it is ripped away leaving me in my cycle, leaving me in the darkness, leaving me with an empty feeling I seal away for when this happens again.
The emptiness seems to never end.
And I never expect it too…
Yo he estado aquí muchas veces antes y he regreso…
Y regreso aquí otra vez y comienzo…
I remember this like it was yesterday…it still haunts me to this day.
She moves her head along with the music, and maybe her feet too. It’s hard to tell since her image is filtered by smoke and the lighting is so dim. White light on white sheets over white skin. So fragile, like dirty children sleeping on benches, almost worth saving. Lying around her on the bed there are some objects I can distinguish: cd cases, book, ashtray. Ashes, like she needed any more in her life, any more consumption. An ashtray and a plastic bag full of weed. Of course she’s stoned, that’s nothing new. It’s been some time since I’ve last seen her this peaceful though, maybe it’s because she doesn’t know I’m here. The first time I watched her get high she told me she used to feel waves that once were noise. “Not anymore” she then said looking at her hands, and that was the first time I felt like hugging a grown up. She cried that night, and the following ones. Eventually I understood that it’s just something she does, the same way I feel the need to wash my hands every ten minutes. Not without motives, though. She’s all about motives.
She’s wearing the same white extra-large t-shirt she always wears to bed. It almost looks like a nightgown, like the saddest, most tortured nightgown. When I dream of her she’s always wearing the white t-shirt, without the stains. Sometimes she takes it off and the stains are on her body, and she tells me they are souvenirs of her childhood. When that happens I decide to wake up. I hate fiction, and she would never admit that anything about her is a direct product of her infancy. Not the stains, not the liquid hate that sometimes spills out of her mouth. She has spent entire nights telling me about her childhood, and she always talked about it as if she had seen it in a movie. In spite, I imagine it as a story Bukowski or Miller could have writen. Her mother is cooking dinner and she’s trying to be helpful, earn her love. She soaks the porcelain in the water, a huge smile on her face, but for a reason she doesn’t understand her mother is crying. For a moment, it’s all about dishes, detergent and tears. The story will end when she accidentally breaks a dish or a cup and her consumed mother hits her, blood coming out of her little nose. The little girl is lying on the floor, still in shock. She’s only six years old. Or twenty, and lying on the bed, emotions assorted. There’s blood coming out of her nose, consequence of all the cocaine. And her mother is dead.
She moves her head to the music, like minimalist slow-dancing. In a moment I will make myself noticed and she will become a different person. She will turn down the music and off the lights, and she will tell me she loves me. She will use the exact same tone she used to let her father know how much she loved him, in those rare times of soberty and calm. “I love you”, and the “Please don’t leave me” will hang in the air, unspoken.
Now, more than ever, the white light makes her skin look sad.
I feel love is…
A warm glowing thrill which suffuses your entire being, a quickening of the pulse and a giddy lightheaded sense of well being. A fierce pride and humbled belief all at once. From the warmth and maternal love in a mothers hug, instilling complete unconventional love and family. To the good-natured, fun and companionship, shared with a father delighting in the world about and finding you two are more the same than you know. Lastly to the lovers embrace, the security and protection, above all understanding and deep affection of a soul-mate. Also a loyalty and wonderful enjoyment of the world about, which has kept you alive, to the customs which make you uniquely you. To go without any of these once they are known is a dreadfully soul wrenching sense of loss. A yearning desperate feeling that starts in the very base of your stomach only to quiver up your spine and loop a noose about your throat and squeeze tighter with every memory.
I feel depression is…
An all encompassing, shroud of negative, cast over the unfortunate, by their own hand or another’s. Depending on the person it is easy or difficult to wipe away this pall of malcontent. It is a smothering feeling which turns the limbs to lead and saps all energy and will from the host. Bleeding him or her dry of all their hope and resilience, any resolution or will crumbling under the defeatist mood. Recognizing or realizing your depression can lead to feelings of weakness, frustration and utmost self loathing. To view it in this manner will only strengthen the bonds tying you to the ball and chain dragging you down…ever down… Perhaps an act of nature or a kindly friend can give you a nudge in the right direction to set you back upon the path again, to look through all the minuses and see a plus no matter how small it might be…and multiply on that.
I feel spirituality is…
The soul component of your being, a belief and attunement with the person (or whatever) you are. Spirituality closely linking with your mood and personality, the level and intensity of your belief tempered by the environment about you and your upbringings Spirituality is not necessarily a religious attribute or relating to it at all, in some sense it is the level of care you show for yourself and the love you hold for what you are. It is a quiet seeping contentment, not so much a rush as love. Spirituality is held in high esteem amongst the creative and prideful. It can be as simple as feeling at one with the natural world again to knowing that you belong and your existence is worthwhile.
I feel that work is… a torture device for all ages.
Ever have a day where your perception of the world completely lacks coherence? When all the people, all their hustle and bustle sound like the over-amped volume of someone else’s walk man on the bus?
Everyone and everything melds in and out of clarity, like someone turned off the normal flux of reality… or switched life to one of the snowy channels? Even when someone you know interrupts your aimless journey through the faceless, diluted massed, you only recognize them as though some distant, recurring dream? Like a memory half-formed, which you respond to in a voice not your own, when the auto-play button is switched on inside your head? Your head…detached, yet anchored despite itself to the rest of you, inevitably, but drifting further away from your shore of consciousness than it’s ever been… It’s an orange buoy, a dot on a foggy horizon of slow, uneven waters… tussled in the lazy automatisms of reality’s fuzzy wavelengths. Everything is faded, pointless, yet ongoing, like a carnival ride of no passengers… and you just know that it should all stop, because it’s not going anywhere. A running engine without a frame or purpose, a clock without the occurrence of time, such things just shouldn’t be, and the staggering realization of it instead makes you stop, to contemplate it in its glorious uselessness. But it doesn’t bother you. Somehow, it’s supposed to be that way, and you feel nor sadness or confusion at the diffusion of logic surrounding you… And in fact, you feel nothing at all really, except what might be felt by a faulty bolt, whose bicycle has kept cycling on without it, after it has fallen to the ground. And like the bolt, though you’ve never felt so alone and useless, you don’t feel sad, because all at once, you’ve never felt so free, either. Though now, you’ve no one who could possibly understand that, to share your sentiments with.
You try to really revel in the taste of that unprecedented liberation from something you could not pinpoint in the first place, something you alone found between the waves of pointlessness and the constant, aimless, motions of life. Before that though, the realization that your own frequency is clear and untainted, above the heads of the swirling, noisy masses below you, is stupefying, because you finally see that without the bustle, you never could have escaped from it in the first place. And you see that really, being so different from everyone else is not only almost impossible a state to maintain, but it’s also something that is dependent on the very same homogeneous surroundings and actions you desired being free from. It defeats the purpose of having waded through the muddle to begin with, because now that you’ve attained your new view, it’s lonely at the top.
It’s as though your beautiful solitude is too bright, too outstanding and demanding… and you awaken, again aware of your need to be a sleepy automaton in order to survive. You suddenly crave the structured nonsense of life’s uncertain paths, you crave the anonymity of the masses, though indifferent they are. You return to being a blood cell in the greater entity of life, and you hope and pray that no one noticed how far your head had strayed, how pompously high it had floated overhead. You’re ashamed of how rebellious you’d been, and the hive remains your only comfort.
So you start smiling again, your android shell recommencing its perpetual motions of greeting and interaction, and it laughs… it laughs… even though inside, the silence is deafening again. You’re waiting to be born again, you’re a fetus in your own mind. The walkman noises of life are what you hear, while the fuzzy, filtered mirage is the only thing your eyes can see, though for a split second, you had popped your head out to get a clearer view. Though for those few brief moments, you had poked outside yourself and groped at life with something beyond your senses, it proved too loud, too bright… too foreign and indescribable. All the sensual languages that make up your life proved too weak to really grasp it, or to even hold on long enough to really see.
So, you go back inside where it’s safe, and continue along your muffled, censored path, strewn with other senseless marionettes such as yourself, and you laugh…in the deafening silence.
So… have you ever had a day when everything made sense, and didn’t, all at once?
There are some so conscious, that every word that most uncannily popped out and hurt someone else can render deep guilt and regret. And their life, bleak, gray and full of pain.
There are others so blind to everything except themselves, that if you poured your heart out, they would only treat it like, art, distant, abstract, and very useful to plagiarize. Their life full of happy rainbows, funny people, bad people, and pain would never have a place.
I want none of the above. I want a life that opens my eyes to the pain, a pair of hands to reach out to the bare, merciless sky, a nose to deeply inhale the sandy dry air, and tears to melt them all. I want a smile that forgives all wrongdoings, eyes that recognized the beauty of life, and laughter that receives all joy, and drowns out the silent cries within, louder than the roll of unexpected thunder, harsher than the direct burns of the blazing sun.
I want no rainbows on the fields. Flowers meant to live for others.
I am a wildflower, temporarily resided in a bottle.
Waiting to breathe again.
I recently received some career advice from a friend I have never met, and began a correspondence with him that will long be fruitful and intellectually challenging. Below you will find his note to me followed by my response, as I thought you may be interested. I found his ideas on the texture of universe to be quite interesting.
The e-mail From Brian:
Dear friend,
A couple of years ago, I was pretty happy with my career. Then the bubble burst and my career path became very unstable. Now, I’m still relatively young and I have a long working life ahead of me. And, just like you, I want to be fairly compensated for my efforts. So, I became pretty frustrated when I didn’t have the degree I needed to make the job transition I wanted. And, I certainly didn’t have the time or money to go back to school for full-time ‘retraining.’ Then, I checked out this site. You can find out information on hundreds of programs. Its all free, with no obligation.
{link}
Check it out, it’s the best career move I ever made.
{another link}
Good luck,
Brian Ralph Johnson
My response:
I’m glad that you have finally found something that works for you, Brian, I know it has been a long road of disappointment and misery for you, and it was surely your time to do something that would give your life meaning. I find it bold and selfless that you would attempt to help even those you do not personally know to achieve your level of success in life. But you have not mentioned your personal life! Have you finally met a woman, Brian? The search for a soul-mate is one that requires a social flexibility that I fear you lack. Forever bombarding those around you with career advice is no way to attract a woman with the pizazz that you require, Brian. However, I would think that your new level of prosperity has drawn the women like flies to a tasty meal! Are there perhaps little Brian Ralph Johnsons on the way? I can imagine nothing better then to have your spirit of charity and good will mixed with common sense spread amongst the younger generation.
I myself am doing well, though I perused your career advancing programs diligently, I am sadly unable to read or write, which limits the scope of my climb up the corporate ladder. But, if he cannot write, nor read you puzzle, how is he composing this e-mail which I have printed out so that I can peruse at my leisure on my bearskin rug? Luckily I have in my possession a pair of slave typists that obey me when I need a written this or a spell-check on that. I saved their parents in the flood of ‘84 and to me they have pledged their loyalty.
Ah but I am rambling, and no doubt you have much to do to keep your empire afloat. Time is money, as they say, and if that is true, you should have all the time in the world! But I fear I only amuse myself with my jokes, and it’s poker night.
Have a pleasant day, you douche bag
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