A letter to *****, from September Eigth, 2004:
My dear, very dear *****,
Well! The onslaught of another sleepless night and my mind came to rest on you. Count yourself lucky, for we are all lucky to be born at all. Think of the billion trillions of possibilities that you could have become, and now think of how much they all suck.
BUT YOU, *****, YOU ROCK HARDCORE. Well, there are certainly other ways of saying that, but I thought that the rocking hardcore method would work the best.
Life has been completely unconventional lately. School, work, yes...trip to Denver. That was fun. Actually, it rates among the mediocre vacations, but it DID get extra bonus points because I got to see Gaelic Football and Hurling games...actually seeing them. These sports are NOT embraced by the nation, so its pretty lucky to get to see them at all. We didnt really even know correct procedure when we played our game.
But do YOU care? I dont think so. Sports isnt really part of the James-perception I sent to you. Hmmm...starting on a new play...Dracula...but I dont think that Im staying on. School takes much of my time.
My familys being blown apart, *****. Its so sad...Ive never really been this down before. I mean, youve caught me through a breakup, but this is pretty bad. I dont cry during a breakup, but it really, really makes me sad to see that what I had growing up is no more. Let me tell you a story...
When I was growing up it was Mom, me, and Daniel, my brother who is 3-4 years younger than I am. Sometimes we slept in one room, sometimes three, sometimes just the car. But it didnt matter, we were all we needed and we depended on each other and loved each other. But then, around 9th grade, Mom got married. To Michael, Daniels biological father...mostly so Dan could have a male figure in his life, and also so Mom wouldnt be so lonely. Now she bemoans that this is the most selfish decision of her life. Remembering life with Michael is like slicing my shins with switches. It sucks.
The drinking! And the insults! And the four-am stomping around the house yelling-fests! One time, I was coming home from work at eleven from checking out grocieries. I had worked a friends shift before that, and it had been an eleven-hour day. Talk about blowing chunks...can YOU smile for eleven hours? I commend you. Anyways, I was the only teenager in the house with a job (Mike has a son my age and a daughter a couple of years younger. Tims gotten better than this) and Id been saving up for a car, college, etc. Anyways, point is, Im fucking tired and not a happy camper. The babys in the back seat, crying, my feet feel like theyre going to bleed, and both my mother and I have dark circles under our eyes.
As we pulled up to the driveway, I saw two figures in hoodies precipitate from the shadows. Mikes daughters friends. Woo. I dont want to let them in, because Michael will be mad because some kids are in his house at eleven, and just as I was going to ask him, Jamie (Mikes daughter) lets the fuckers in, and they go up to the third floor and put on loud music and drinks and party woo-hoo-hoo Tim had a show whoopie. So I slam their door. Rank pissed. Im looking for a soothing CD to sleep to, then
WHAM! my door pops open. Its Michael, the blind bastard himself.
You slam that door?
sigh...yes.
You little CUNT. I dont want no arrogant little FUCKS like you in my house. Get your shit together.
So I got my shit together. A book bag full of physics and math and a change of clothes, and I set out in the midnight winter air, heading south towards Lees Summit, more than ten miles away.
This is what my little brother has been putting up with for the last few years. Im glad that I got half the time with my dad. And then I moved here to Bobs. Its heavenly. Unfortunately, my little brother is trying to move in with my Aunt.
So my familys gone. Not even to visit. Just gone completely. I was a sticky, sobbing mess for three hours when I realized this.
So theres all that. I dont feel like anything right now. Thats pretty cliche. Theres got to be a better way of saying this. But I dont WANT to feel empty, or full of sadness and pain. So I feel nothing. ARRrrgh! Fucking melodrama. I dont feel anything, but thats just what everyone fucking says. Im so mad at media, making what I feel commonplace. I wish it wasnt.
How about this: What I feel is too much for me to handle right now, so in order to cope with it I must push everything inside, all emotion, until I can heal.
I wish youd write me a letter. It would be wicked awesome to see your handwriting, and to smell where you come from. I know youre really busy and all, and you probably think that Im some sort of bitchy |\|00b, but you helped me cope with the loss of Emily quite a bit, and were kind enough to listen to me. You really made me feel wanted, not like scraps on the floor.
The following are three vignettes about my family and my mother. So here you go.
Sobbing Stories in the Car
I sit, motionless, listening to Moms sticky sobbing voice as she bemoans once more the relationship she had with my father and how evil my stepmom was, and how they had secret plans to steal me away from her. Eventually her voice becomes an angry bee and flies from my attention. I consider myself: I am sitting, my shrimpy seven-year-old legs dont quite touch the floor, and the car is parked outside the McDonalds off Bannister Road. The dusty yellow lights of the quiet street become purple if I look away from them, their ghosts mocking us, knowing that once again Mom has made me her psychiatrist, her confidante.
I listen with silent horror to stories of miscarried fetuses, endless destitution, isolation, and teardrops running until they had nowhere to hide. I can smell the oil slicked uneaten fast food rotting slowly in the car. It pulsates with the sickness and death of processed animals. All I can see in my mind is a dull grey, because I dont want to see what shes saying.
I dont want to know her problems.
I look away again to the streetlights, and of course the ghosts are still there, mourning aimlessly about the quiet neighborhood in front of us, where in my mind the terrors of what happened to Mom play out behind bleeding walls. The sky tonight is a city kind of sky, with the lights shining into the clouds, polluting the sky to a murky orange, the color of dried blood.
Moms asking me a question. Do I love her? She chokes. Have THEY gotten to me? Silently, a slash rips across my chest, and I feel emotion and pain come rumbling out my chest, beating my heart with thousands of thirsty hooves. My spine is ripped out and placed in chilly waters.
But my face remains carefully still, my expression nonchalant and neutral, as I long ago learned to stuff my emotion to avoid further hysterics. The horses corral and return. And the truth is, regardless of her pain, her past, her fear, and all her terrible venom, I love my mother. I love her very much, and nothing ever really changed.
Moving Meditation
The Westport Allen center. Always smelled like incense. I once had Yoga class there with Gramma Carol, but now I came for a different reason. Sufi Dances. It was a summer-puddle day when the night filled your nose with rain like it was a bucket, inhaling the sweet dust trekking through the air. Ballet dancers twirled behind open doubled doors at the top of the stone steps. All around me people took off their shoes and Mom and I did the same. Daniel didnt dance because he thought he was too young, but he wasnt. Secretly he thought it was dumb.
There were about thirty of us crammed into the room, standing in a joyous circle. With my naked toes I can feel the skinny wooden slats, probing them with my toenail, cracking my toes like little peanuts. The room itself was then only lit by three warm candles and the purple liquid twilight sky that melts through the barred windows like it was Kool-Aid. The walls were creamy tawny yellow with the parabolic lights of candles brightening here and there. On one side there was a wall-length mirror, and I always tried not to look at myself while I was dancing, I didnt want to look vain. But I did.
Moms friend, Siddiq, said that my mom was a very strong woman and that I was an ether-walker. He had the longest hair I had ever seen on a man and the candles hid his kind eyes behind his glasses that night. Siddiq was always like a fresh breath of joy, a summer inhalation that was always warm and comforting. He taught me how to breathe.
Mom in the Key of West
Mary had played the cello until her thumb was broken by a falling mast. Now she played in the key of West.
She sat alone in her studio apartment, waiting for the hurricane to pass on by. Rain beat like fighting insects on the wavy tin roof. She sipped lemonade through a bottle glass cup, and her shining white hair and dark dark eye circles said she was forty instead of nineteen. The rain floods over the Key, as stormy as her life had been the past few years.
Dead mom. Drunk dad. Drunk stepmom. Artists were thrown out of the house. Mary was thrown out of the house. Shed been sixteen.
She let the power of the gale wash through her because she is stronger, because it only hates and hates and she can only love.
Gosh, thats draining.
On the good side of life, I may have met a girl (or two!) who may be interested in me. One is 28, and I dont know if thats too old. The other one is pregnant, but Ive had a huge crush on her since before puberty. Unfortunately, neither seem realistic or anything, and if anything, nothing will become of any of it. Ive got my expectations set on WAY LOW. But its something. The closest sexual encounter Ive had lately is downloading porn videos. RRrrr.
Ive been at it all for an 105 minutes now. I miss you, for what its worth. I hope you miss me.
Chao,
And yours for the keeping,
~xxxx
<mord says that omar says that we
are all unicorns
anyway)
TO DOWNLOAD (band names):
(rougher)
Arab on Radar
Teenage Jesus and the Jerks
Apoptygma Berzerk
The Contortionists
See Colin Slash
(soothlier)
Dune [the band, not the movie score]
Astral Projection
the Kronos Quartet
Laurie Anderson (Strange Angels album)
Annie Lennox (Diva album)
Old 97's
enjoy!
My dear, very dear *****,
Well! The onslaught of another sleepless night and my mind came to rest on you. Count yourself lucky, for we are all lucky to be born at all. Think of the billion trillions of possibilities that you could have become, and now think of how much they all suck.
BUT YOU, *****, YOU ROCK HARDCORE. Well, there are certainly other ways of saying that, but I thought that the rocking hardcore method would work the best.
Life has been completely unconventional lately. School, work, yes...trip to Denver. That was fun. Actually, it rates among the mediocre vacations, but it DID get extra bonus points because I got to see Gaelic Football and Hurling games...actually seeing them. These sports are NOT embraced by the nation, so its pretty lucky to get to see them at all. We didnt really even know correct procedure when we played our game.
But do YOU care? I dont think so. Sports isnt really part of the James-perception I sent to you. Hmmm...starting on a new play...Dracula...but I dont think that Im staying on. School takes much of my time.
My familys being blown apart, *****. Its so sad...Ive never really been this down before. I mean, youve caught me through a breakup, but this is pretty bad. I dont cry during a breakup, but it really, really makes me sad to see that what I had growing up is no more. Let me tell you a story...
When I was growing up it was Mom, me, and Daniel, my brother who is 3-4 years younger than I am. Sometimes we slept in one room, sometimes three, sometimes just the car. But it didnt matter, we were all we needed and we depended on each other and loved each other. But then, around 9th grade, Mom got married. To Michael, Daniels biological father...mostly so Dan could have a male figure in his life, and also so Mom wouldnt be so lonely. Now she bemoans that this is the most selfish decision of her life. Remembering life with Michael is like slicing my shins with switches. It sucks.
The drinking! And the insults! And the four-am stomping around the house yelling-fests! One time, I was coming home from work at eleven from checking out grocieries. I had worked a friends shift before that, and it had been an eleven-hour day. Talk about blowing chunks...can YOU smile for eleven hours? I commend you. Anyways, I was the only teenager in the house with a job (Mike has a son my age and a daughter a couple of years younger. Tims gotten better than this) and Id been saving up for a car, college, etc. Anyways, point is, Im fucking tired and not a happy camper. The babys in the back seat, crying, my feet feel like theyre going to bleed, and both my mother and I have dark circles under our eyes.
As we pulled up to the driveway, I saw two figures in hoodies precipitate from the shadows. Mikes daughters friends. Woo. I dont want to let them in, because Michael will be mad because some kids are in his house at eleven, and just as I was going to ask him, Jamie (Mikes daughter) lets the fuckers in, and they go up to the third floor and put on loud music and drinks and party woo-hoo-hoo Tim had a show whoopie. So I slam their door. Rank pissed. Im looking for a soothing CD to sleep to, then
WHAM! my door pops open. Its Michael, the blind bastard himself.
You slam that door?
sigh...yes.
You little CUNT. I dont want no arrogant little FUCKS like you in my house. Get your shit together.
So I got my shit together. A book bag full of physics and math and a change of clothes, and I set out in the midnight winter air, heading south towards Lees Summit, more than ten miles away.
This is what my little brother has been putting up with for the last few years. Im glad that I got half the time with my dad. And then I moved here to Bobs. Its heavenly. Unfortunately, my little brother is trying to move in with my Aunt.
So my familys gone. Not even to visit. Just gone completely. I was a sticky, sobbing mess for three hours when I realized this.
So theres all that. I dont feel like anything right now. Thats pretty cliche. Theres got to be a better way of saying this. But I dont WANT to feel empty, or full of sadness and pain. So I feel nothing. ARRrrgh! Fucking melodrama. I dont feel anything, but thats just what everyone fucking says. Im so mad at media, making what I feel commonplace. I wish it wasnt.
How about this: What I feel is too much for me to handle right now, so in order to cope with it I must push everything inside, all emotion, until I can heal.
I wish youd write me a letter. It would be wicked awesome to see your handwriting, and to smell where you come from. I know youre really busy and all, and you probably think that Im some sort of bitchy |\|00b, but you helped me cope with the loss of Emily quite a bit, and were kind enough to listen to me. You really made me feel wanted, not like scraps on the floor.
The following are three vignettes about my family and my mother. So here you go.
Sobbing Stories in the Car
I sit, motionless, listening to Moms sticky sobbing voice as she bemoans once more the relationship she had with my father and how evil my stepmom was, and how they had secret plans to steal me away from her. Eventually her voice becomes an angry bee and flies from my attention. I consider myself: I am sitting, my shrimpy seven-year-old legs dont quite touch the floor, and the car is parked outside the McDonalds off Bannister Road. The dusty yellow lights of the quiet street become purple if I look away from them, their ghosts mocking us, knowing that once again Mom has made me her psychiatrist, her confidante.
I listen with silent horror to stories of miscarried fetuses, endless destitution, isolation, and teardrops running until they had nowhere to hide. I can smell the oil slicked uneaten fast food rotting slowly in the car. It pulsates with the sickness and death of processed animals. All I can see in my mind is a dull grey, because I dont want to see what shes saying.
I dont want to know her problems.
I look away again to the streetlights, and of course the ghosts are still there, mourning aimlessly about the quiet neighborhood in front of us, where in my mind the terrors of what happened to Mom play out behind bleeding walls. The sky tonight is a city kind of sky, with the lights shining into the clouds, polluting the sky to a murky orange, the color of dried blood.
Moms asking me a question. Do I love her? She chokes. Have THEY gotten to me? Silently, a slash rips across my chest, and I feel emotion and pain come rumbling out my chest, beating my heart with thousands of thirsty hooves. My spine is ripped out and placed in chilly waters.
But my face remains carefully still, my expression nonchalant and neutral, as I long ago learned to stuff my emotion to avoid further hysterics. The horses corral and return. And the truth is, regardless of her pain, her past, her fear, and all her terrible venom, I love my mother. I love her very much, and nothing ever really changed.
Moving Meditation
The Westport Allen center. Always smelled like incense. I once had Yoga class there with Gramma Carol, but now I came for a different reason. Sufi Dances. It was a summer-puddle day when the night filled your nose with rain like it was a bucket, inhaling the sweet dust trekking through the air. Ballet dancers twirled behind open doubled doors at the top of the stone steps. All around me people took off their shoes and Mom and I did the same. Daniel didnt dance because he thought he was too young, but he wasnt. Secretly he thought it was dumb.
There were about thirty of us crammed into the room, standing in a joyous circle. With my naked toes I can feel the skinny wooden slats, probing them with my toenail, cracking my toes like little peanuts. The room itself was then only lit by three warm candles and the purple liquid twilight sky that melts through the barred windows like it was Kool-Aid. The walls were creamy tawny yellow with the parabolic lights of candles brightening here and there. On one side there was a wall-length mirror, and I always tried not to look at myself while I was dancing, I didnt want to look vain. But I did.
Moms friend, Siddiq, said that my mom was a very strong woman and that I was an ether-walker. He had the longest hair I had ever seen on a man and the candles hid his kind eyes behind his glasses that night. Siddiq was always like a fresh breath of joy, a summer inhalation that was always warm and comforting. He taught me how to breathe.
Mom in the Key of West
Mary had played the cello until her thumb was broken by a falling mast. Now she played in the key of West.
She sat alone in her studio apartment, waiting for the hurricane to pass on by. Rain beat like fighting insects on the wavy tin roof. She sipped lemonade through a bottle glass cup, and her shining white hair and dark dark eye circles said she was forty instead of nineteen. The rain floods over the Key, as stormy as her life had been the past few years.
Dead mom. Drunk dad. Drunk stepmom. Artists were thrown out of the house. Mary was thrown out of the house. Shed been sixteen.
She let the power of the gale wash through her because she is stronger, because it only hates and hates and she can only love.
Gosh, thats draining.
On the good side of life, I may have met a girl (or two!) who may be interested in me. One is 28, and I dont know if thats too old. The other one is pregnant, but Ive had a huge crush on her since before puberty. Unfortunately, neither seem realistic or anything, and if anything, nothing will become of any of it. Ive got my expectations set on WAY LOW. But its something. The closest sexual encounter Ive had lately is downloading porn videos. RRrrr.
Ive been at it all for an 105 minutes now. I miss you, for what its worth. I hope you miss me.
Chao,
And yours for the keeping,
~xxxx
<mord says that omar says that we
are all unicorns
anyway)
TO DOWNLOAD (band names):
(rougher)
Arab on Radar
Teenage Jesus and the Jerks
Apoptygma Berzerk
The Contortionists
See Colin Slash
(soothlier)
Dune [the band, not the movie score]
Astral Projection
the Kronos Quartet
Laurie Anderson (Strange Angels album)
Annie Lennox (Diva album)
Old 97's
enjoy!