wow...last night was an experience. Yesterday, I read The Virgin Suicides cover to cover. I was very impressed with the book, but the story is overwhelmingly depressing. I won't ruin the story at all by saying that it involves five beautiful sisters all committing suicide within the span of a year (the narrator says it in the first few pages). And, realizing it was only 10:30, I decided to go to blockbuster to rent the movie, which I had actually heard about before the book.
I popped the DVD into my computer, and at 11:00 I drank a bottle of Robotussin. I told my brother, who was up playing Final Fantasy 11 in the next room, that I was just begging for a bad trip. The combination of the depressing story and my first time to try a DXM trip without a friend to stand by and laugh at my altered state no less than begged for tears and sobs.
Anyway, alone in the darkness of my room, I watched the movie and gradually felt the DXM taking effect. I moved my head around, and my eyes seemed a full second behind. I watched the movie intently. Though of course, the whole time I was comparing and contrasting it to the book still fresh in my gently hallucinating mind. It was a good movie; the important parts were included, and the cuts were understandable and well executed.
As the credits began to roll, I weakly jumped to my feet and made a clumsy search for batteries. When I found them, it took me a minute to put them into my mini-tape recorder. The Virgin Suicides (both the book and the movie) has a very dark depiction of America's suburbs, and that's exactly where I'm staying right now. I walked the streets in a slow, cold winter drizzle and recorded the random thoughts that came to mind, most of which had a very mournful loneliness attached to the heavy breathing as I decided to run in strange spots.
I walked about a mile to the grocery store, and aside from two or three cars, I saw only a man with a blower tidying up the parking lot of a strip center near the grocery store. I went in to the 24-hour store and stumbled back to the restroom, trying to appear normal, but doubting that i did. I drank from the water fountain and looked at my dilated pupils in the darkened mirror (they turn the main bathroom lights off at 10, and only a dim backup bulb is lit.
On my way back home, I searched for the serene space of mental loneliness I found the first time I tried Robotussin. It was a place where I came to the stark realization that each of us is alone. For some reason, that overstated simple fact seemed so clear and so palpable then, and while it is sad beyond all hope, it's clarity also gave me some sort of twisted security. The fact that no one can ever completely understand me was something I ignored in high school -- a trite catch phrase used to excuse being caught drinking or having sex -- it was hollow then. Now it just seems like an inevitable discovery -- something we either find out before or after our friends and lovers and family leave us on our own, and we find our only hope in the hopeless security of a dead end job.
Maybe it was the DXM talking, but the suburbs are too sleepy for me. I came home and talked to my brother. He laughed at some of the things I played him from the tape, and I retreated to my room. In the dark, I watched the behind-the-scenes footage from the movie and drew pictures by the illuminating dimness of the computer screen. As I finally lied down with my cat beside me purring, I threw open the curtains and watched the slow, cold winter rain come down through the bare trees. In the convoluted purple of porch lights and night sky, the trees looked angry, and I mentally apologized for an intrusion that I could not define. Then I went to sleep.
I popped the DVD into my computer, and at 11:00 I drank a bottle of Robotussin. I told my brother, who was up playing Final Fantasy 11 in the next room, that I was just begging for a bad trip. The combination of the depressing story and my first time to try a DXM trip without a friend to stand by and laugh at my altered state no less than begged for tears and sobs.
Anyway, alone in the darkness of my room, I watched the movie and gradually felt the DXM taking effect. I moved my head around, and my eyes seemed a full second behind. I watched the movie intently. Though of course, the whole time I was comparing and contrasting it to the book still fresh in my gently hallucinating mind. It was a good movie; the important parts were included, and the cuts were understandable and well executed.
As the credits began to roll, I weakly jumped to my feet and made a clumsy search for batteries. When I found them, it took me a minute to put them into my mini-tape recorder. The Virgin Suicides (both the book and the movie) has a very dark depiction of America's suburbs, and that's exactly where I'm staying right now. I walked the streets in a slow, cold winter drizzle and recorded the random thoughts that came to mind, most of which had a very mournful loneliness attached to the heavy breathing as I decided to run in strange spots.
I walked about a mile to the grocery store, and aside from two or three cars, I saw only a man with a blower tidying up the parking lot of a strip center near the grocery store. I went in to the 24-hour store and stumbled back to the restroom, trying to appear normal, but doubting that i did. I drank from the water fountain and looked at my dilated pupils in the darkened mirror (they turn the main bathroom lights off at 10, and only a dim backup bulb is lit.
On my way back home, I searched for the serene space of mental loneliness I found the first time I tried Robotussin. It was a place where I came to the stark realization that each of us is alone. For some reason, that overstated simple fact seemed so clear and so palpable then, and while it is sad beyond all hope, it's clarity also gave me some sort of twisted security. The fact that no one can ever completely understand me was something I ignored in high school -- a trite catch phrase used to excuse being caught drinking or having sex -- it was hollow then. Now it just seems like an inevitable discovery -- something we either find out before or after our friends and lovers and family leave us on our own, and we find our only hope in the hopeless security of a dead end job.
Maybe it was the DXM talking, but the suburbs are too sleepy for me. I came home and talked to my brother. He laughed at some of the things I played him from the tape, and I retreated to my room. In the dark, I watched the behind-the-scenes footage from the movie and drew pictures by the illuminating dimness of the computer screen. As I finally lied down with my cat beside me purring, I threw open the curtains and watched the slow, cold winter rain come down through the bare trees. In the convoluted purple of porch lights and night sky, the trees looked angry, and I mentally apologized for an intrusion that I could not define. Then I went to sleep.