The darkness on the other side of the locked door

Well. Here I am. There you are. And by You I mean Me. I'm really talking to myself with this thing, which is the most ridiculous and meaningless and possibly destructive waste of time. I guess there's something worth while in the venting. What the hell else am I going to do with my incessant internal dialogue... besides drown it out with loud music so that I can focus on the work I'm supposed to do... having to yank out my already broken headphones everytime the phone rings or one of the staff needs something.

I am trying not to indulge in the feelings that threaten to overwhelm me. I truly am. It's just I can't get rid of the nagging voice that says life should be better than this. Life should feel better than this. And my life has already been tainted with too many failures, shortcomings, and heartbreaks...

Bottom line - I don't really know what I am supposed to do here. I can't go back, which is what I want to do. My attempts to move forward are not successful, or perhaps they are, but each step in the right direction is intollerably slow, and saturated with the pain of wrenching myself from the past I want to be my now, not to mention that all manner of obstacles, more obstacles arise in my path... and somehow I'm supposed want to keep going? Oh yeah... lets find out what tragic calamities await me a couple years from now....

I mean... I guess I could be looking at this all wrong. I am not very good at maintaining the proper perspective on time and the existence of both good and bad. If it's good, than it's very very good, but if it's bad it's absolutely horrid, and I can't seem to remember how it felt when it was good. Maybe I am looking on the negative side, feeling a little defeatist... But it doesn't really matter. I could try to reset. and keep trying. But right now I just feel like a very small, very scared, and completely alone little child... safe for the time being, but locked in an empty room surrounded by darkness that wants to swallow me up. And I am trying to be brave, but I don't understand why I am here. It doesn't seem fair.

Anyway, enough of this nonsense. It doesn no good to put my feelings into words when there is no problem solving involved. I just don't have the strength to make any decisions. All I know is that something is very very wrong with the narrative of my life, and there is a vital piece... a vital person that has been torn from the pages... and there's nothing but a jagged bleeding hole where there was once hope, love, a future, a purpose, a friend.

Now I'm asking You... how do you experience what has happened in your life, the painful undeserved stuff, and accept it somehow and get past it? Say something giant and indespensable and critical to your being, essential for the meaning of your existence, has been completely demolished, and find some way to make sense of it, and redefine everything and move on without it, hopefully with some sliver of hope for happiness? I don't know how. If I wasn't so darn competitive and proud I would surely give up. I want to give up. I want to be reckless and give everything up. Instead I'm wasting my existence locked in a room surrounded by darkness. Should I wait? Will an answer come if I wait long enough? Will I get stronger and tear the whole freakin building down?

I don't know. I'm tired. Times like these I just have to wait out the night... just get through it.

Gallons

Gallons of water
28
4
1
Weak
ness of purpose
Diluted cravings
Waterlogged wishings
Morning chocolate in place of
Morning kisses
Impedence to my forward
Motion to my long view perspective
Little goals to my big goal
Some how I gotta stay afloat on the fast track
Faster and faster makes threats to derail
But I've got a conductor of conduct
To whisper propriety and truth in my ear
Love is near, love is here
In me.

Fridays

Oh.... it's friday again, on goes the fight - the internal struggle between my need for consistency and discipline in healthy endeavors and my reckless desire for crazy fun and to feel something new and be impetuous. I've made it to friday and I want something to celebrate, someone to celebrate with, and something to make me feel like it's a celebration.

Instead I will do what I do on every other night. Work out, eat dinner, read or play music, wish I had a clean apartment, go to bed at a reasonable hour. And really that feels good too, once I do it. Actually it just feels good to leave this buzzing caffeinated cacophony of fluorescent lights and unfinished work... and to know that tomorrow I will wake up without it hangin over my head - and to know that I get to decide how to spend my time over the next two days. Drunken giddiness and bad decisions not needed one little bit. Sigh. That's a relief. Fridays are good for many more reasons than late night partying and empty interactions (and calories). I have plenty of books to read and people to call and songs to write and thoughts to think and feelings to feel.

Yeah, so I'm all right. And here I go off into the weekend. Off to savor every minute of freedom, and look for every bit of goodness there is, and really, truly accept it.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm ever gonna make it home again
It's so far and out of sight.
I really need someone to talk to, and nobody else
Knows how to comfort me tonight.

Snow is cold, Rain is wet
Chills my soul right to the marrow
I won't be happy 'till I see you alone again
'Till I'm home again and feelin right.

- Carole King

October

I know it's coming up
I can smell it
right around the corner
reminders right and left
of when I missed the safety signs
and lept right off in
hope of love and freedom
a sky of tile and concrete
Hot and blue
stood on a hollow tower of faces
weak and heavy
swaying this and that way
And I was looking for you
October
right around the corner
reminders left and right
of what was there and isn't here
in the never ending night
a fever tick tick sounds all alone
and I'm-a getting dizzier
and everything is messier
and I wish there was some way back home

Lose and Try Again

I've gotta live all your troubles for you
I've gotta feel all your woes for you
I might seem weak You may not see
That there's still a lot of fight in me
All's wrong that's dead and gone
Don't change
The possibility for change
And there's one thing There's no sense in
fightin Change
Will always be and takes
Forgivenss and humility
To win the game
Lose and try again.

Я хочу убить меня

Immobilized

Stuck again...

It's funny the lengths I would go to to feel better. Better does not necessarily require good feelings or pleasure. All I want is some kind, any kind of drastic contrast to the utter discomfort I feel. This could consist of several hundred empty calories of sugar spike chocolate that I consume and simultaneously regret, or a shot or more of whisky or any other kind of obtainable alcohol in the middle of the day, or my own hand across my face to sting and wake me up, or any other bloody scarring act whether it be pleasure or pain to distract the inside anguish, to restore to me control of my own, as if this could embody my state and allow it a life and death of its own without me having to think it and feel it - so at least I could go back to pretending to be normal and productive like everyone else. Emotional Phagocytosis.

But then there is the reckoning - consequences leaving me to question everything and forcing me to work all the harder when my equilibrium comes back. And my rationale, my desire to be responsible, to be healthy, to be a normal, well adjusted, and intelligent adult... tells me you don't need to feel, what you feel is not necessarily reliable and does not need to have such an effect... And then the me that is so deep and soul-like pulsates and swells and begs me not to push away the child that is what is my individuality and my love and everything. And then I'm stuck in between in the not knowing what or how to think and feel or how I should best be me.

My friend says, don't think. Don't think just do. This actually works very well. Until the thoughts that won't be silenced obtrusively shout and moan and babble...And it's ok. Sort of. Because there is something beautiful about pain. According to Viktor Frankl there is always meaning to life, even when it is full of suffering. Only a part of me truly believes this. The other part merely wants to escape. And to throw myself into a world of rush and paperwork, phone calls and multitudinous menial tasks and devaluing duties I am paid to perform is not a welcome escape. Thus my weakness in fighting the upwelling...

Oh for a moment or two of quiet and respite from the past. Oh for a reasurring squeeze or a solid wall to lean on. Oh for a friend to sit with and ease the weight of where am I and why. Oh to forgive and be forgiven.

I guess sometimes you have to carry your own calm with you... keep a little bit of it safe and buried deep to temper the insanity when it bubbles up. And I suppose between the ups and downs, the valleys and peaks there's gotta be something. Like a gentle slope or maybe a meadow, a little breathing space. And even though I think I have to be doing things and getting somewhere amidst the noise of life, perhaps simply continuing to be and to seek is where meaning exists. Like Debussy said, music is the space between the notes.

Cecilia

Monday evening, as I sat on my balcony after dinner having a glass of wine and writing in my journal I noticed a startlingly large spider moving in above my balcony. By large I mean it was much bigger than any spider to which I am accustomed seeing... larger than a nickel. It was large enough so that the thought of killing it was too violent for me, and I began to question my initial impulse to kill it, or destroy it's web and try and make it take up residence elsewhere. It was busy building its web. It only had the beginnings of a web, and it so expertly dangled from the few strands of silk it had so far I was impressed and full of admiration for it's undertaking and curious to see what it would create. I decided to watch it for a couple of days.

As the days have gone by I have looked up the symbolism of spiders, tried to identify what type mine is, and monitered the progress the spider is making on the web. It gets bigger and more ornate every day. I was home for lunch one day and the spider was lunching as well... sucking nourishment out of the carcass of a fly. When it finished it gracefully flicked the bug out and off the balcony like a cigarette butt. That was endearing to me for some reason. I have become very attached and amazed by her. I decided to name her and have been looking for a name... Spiders symbolize the outsider. They stand for feminine sexuality, power and independence, protection agains self destruction. Their web spinning symbolizes creativity and rewards for hard work. Also, suposedly killing a spider is bad luck. Now I don't superstitiously believe in all this stuff, but I do like the idea of my little spider showing up as a good omen, as my excuse to believe and continue to try and work hard and be strong on my own, letting myself create and apply myself to my hopes and aspirations, to love myself as I would love a child and continue to eradicate negative aspects of my life and self destructive behavior . As I have been studying Britten's beautiful piece for the patron saint of music, St. Cecilia, I have decided to name my spider Cecilia. Today her web is magnificent. It's huge and engineered beautifully and expertly, anchored by two strong silk lines that lead up to a lovely shinging symmetrical orb. Last night I took a picture - the silk reflects the light of the flash like it's made of diamonds. I'm glad she's there. There's nothing scary or ugly about spiders. Unless they bite you or are poisonous.

For Cecilia the Spider:

Must I must I?
Again and again,
A nickel spider
Hanging over my head

Abstract obstruction
I’ll smoke you drowsy
But what have you done to me?
People places things
Pain and tension headaches cured with a pension
I see nothing
I am nothing
But a spider full of eggs
Trying to weave some sort of web
In the hurricane

Beginning

I am beginning a blog. This is exciting. Now my thoughts and analysis and mind music shall be pushed out into the world instead of sitting lonely and stagnant in my journal. I need to study music for this upcoming Millenium Consort concert, and I have already been here 45 minutes... piddling away the time, facebook, email, cyberspace voyeurism... So moving on to the music. One of the pieces is Benjamin Britten's Hymn to St. Cecilia. She is the patron saint of music. Becuase he had trouble finding Latin words for the music, he initiated a collaboration with the poet W H Auden. The poetry is beautiful and insightful and magnetic and I love it.

From Britten's Hymn to St. Cecilia:

II.
I cannot grow;
I have no shadow
To run away from,
I only play.
I cannot err;
There is no creature
Whom I belong to,
Whom I could wrong.
I am defeat
When it knows it
Can now do nothing
By suffering.
All you lived through,
Dancing because you
No longer need it
For any deed.
I shall never be Different. Love me.

III.
O ear whose creatures cannot wish to fall,
O calm of spaces unafraid of weight,
Where Sorrow is herself, forgettng all
The gaucheness of her adolescent state,
Where Hope within the altogether strange
From every outworn image is released,
And Dread born whole and normal like a beast
Into a world of truths that never change:
Restore our fallen day; O re-arrange.
O dear white children casual as birds,
Playing among the ruined languages,
So small beside their large confusing words,
So gay against the greater silences
Of dreadful things you did: O hang the head,
Impetuous child with the tremendous brain,
O weep, child, weep, O weep away the stain,
Lost innocence who wished your lover dead,
Weep for the lives your wishes never led.
O cry created as the bow of sin Is drawn across our trembling violin.
O weep, child, weep, O weep away the stain.
O law drummed out by hearts against the still
Long winter of our intellectual will.
That was has been may never be again.
O flute that throbs with the thanksgiving breath
Of convalescents on the shores of death.
O bless the freedom that you never chose.
O trumpets that unguarded children blow
About the fortress of their inner foe.
O wear your tribulation like a rose.


I love his words and imagery and everying. I want to wear my tribulation like a rose. Sigh.