Post by AnimaStone on Mar 2, 2006 20:01:36 GMT -5
I sit calmly in my chair, staring out at the winter-painted world through the window. Slowly, I rock back and forth, my breathing calm and serene as my right leg twitches and my eyes lazily follow the path of the descending white. A car passes by, and suddenly my book lies forgotten on the table beside the chair as I strain to watch it through the dirt-clouded glass. The car leaves the house awash in an unfamiliar sense of urgency; soon, I am back to my book, fidgeting uncomfortably.
Now the book is no longer a book, but a journal or a computer screen (I can’t tell which). I am writing something, but I do not know what. The sense of urgency is back. I feel as if writing whatever it is I am writing is the most important thing to ever have happened. There is no sound. There is no time. There are only words, and then nothing.
The book is back now. I breathe a quick sigh of relief. The words “MENTAL HEALTH” pierce my vision at the top of the page, and I quickly glance farther down until the letters are no longer burning red into my retinas. I raise my eyes once more, careful to avoid the words’ caustic grins, and start reading. The story is good, but I cannot focus on it. My attention is somewhere else, somewhere my divergent mind is creating but can never remember. I put the book down. No use in wasting a perfectly good story on an empty stomach of grimaces.
The panic returns as I feel the cool water slide over my skin. I know that my fear is unfounded, and I’m sure that somewhere deep down the fear knows it too, but that’s just usually the way it is. The losers are always the hardest ones to beat. A short reprise of air bubbles up from my lips to the surface, breaking the already broken stillness with a faint pop. My shrink will surely have something to say about this if I mention it to him. What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him, I suppose. It’s decided, then. I just won’t tell him about this encounter with fear. About all of our encounters with fear. My head breaks the surface, and as my lungs breathe in, so does my soul. Everything is fine now. Damn cars, my mind appends to the happy scene. I didn’t want this pollution. Now scat.
This is how the world will end. This is how the world will end. This is how the world will end. Not with a bang but a whimper. I smile every time I read those words. T.S. Eliot had no idea how right he was, did he? He was just writing what sounded good to him. That’s how the mind really works. Life is nothing but odysseys through the eternal fog punctuated by brief, sterile moments of lucidity. But we come to love the sweet, enveloping anonymity of the fog.
She sits across from me on an uncomfortably cushioned chair. Slowly, my mind registers the fact that she is beautiful. Strikingly beautiful. The kind of woman that I would risk it all for, everything, everything, if I were a romantic. I’m not a romantic, so I turn my eyes back upon the pages before me. But my mind lingers upon the subtle cobalt eyes, the gentle cheeks, the smooth fall of hair. I push my mind away. What is it about love that gets the loonies so worked up? It turns them into slobbering idiots, not that anyone notices the difference.
An outraged shriek of rubber, an indignant scream of glass, an irate clamor of metal. I look through the window again. That idiot. Doesn’t he know that those new tires can’t keep traction on an icy road at those speeds, no matter what the advertisement said? Doubting is a lost art when it can be trumped by something as fake as a commercial. I try not to stare at the twisted metal hulk before me, but I fail. By the time he tried his brakes, it was probably all over.
I blink my eyes as the light floods my face. There is no fear here, or at least none that I will mention. He sits behind his desk, calmly moving his pen over the slick sheets of greasy paper. He’s done some remodeling in this room. The walls are a different color and the bookshelves are in a different place. He has a new fan and a new nameplate on his desk. The desk is stained a different color. But some things never change. He looks up from the papers at last and begins talking. I hear some mention of words I don’t understand, that no one should ever have to understand. He begins writing again as he continues talking. I trace the movement of his hand. He is writing my prescription, and I look on as his pen loops through empty space to leave the thin black lines that signify the drug and dosage. With a flourish of the pen, he signs. The gun is loaded, the switch is thrown. We talk about the football playoffs, but for once I cannot bring my lips to form the words. All of my teams lost, anyway. I leave his office after the allotted time has expired.
Nothing is clear, I type. In this case, it is unlikely that the motive was ever to harm; but rather, to create peace. The law of God differentiates between motive and result. The law of man does not. We must steel ourselves and follow the haughty laws we have created. The sin of pride is the most disgusting of all. The tangible results of this sin are the man before you.
I give a short half-snort in amusement. She jumps slightly in her seat, a look of momentary panic mixed with ever-present startledness on her face. In the shadow between us, our gazes meet, and words are exchanged though never spoken. I smile. She smiles. But that is the end of it. The smile refuses to extend past my mouth, and the silence lies fallow between us, laced with the inevitable explanations. In the darkness of the street as I drive home that evening, I remember the short five minutes in the waiting room. I have a wife, you know, and kids, and a highly paying job. I live in a big house in a rich suburb with a good public school system and drive a BMW. I cross every t and dot every i, and I know exactly what to say and when to say it. As a kid, I would have killed for the life I have now. How I dream to possess those days again, when a rainy day was the death of an opportunity, when death still inspired fear in me, when I still thought that stereotypes were lies. Now all I have is memories that I have made mine and memories that have made me theirs, sanity like a shattered mirror that gives at best a broken reflection, and staccato thoughts like piano notes in a Radiohead song.
Hope begins to effuse through the walls of my house as darkness closes over the neighborhood and the police cars begin to arrive. I strain to see through the dirt and the void, but the absence of light only tells me what I already know. This is their world, not mine. There is no future for those the future has abandoned. I sit in my chair, the lastborn child of the unholy coupling of chemicals and machines. Perhaps in another time this world would have belonged to me; but not this world, and not in this time. In this world, your faith in God is lost the minute you start to truly believe. In this time, words strain to be said but people never strain to say them. We answer our questions with money and drugs. But what happens when the money is worthless because the government collapses, and the drugs are no good because you’re so pumped full of them that you can’t even think? I turn my eyes back upon the pages. All these things I, Tiresias, have seen. And soon we’ll all be as dead as the leaves on the snow-covered ground.
Now the book is no longer a book, but a journal or a computer screen (I can’t tell which). I am writing something, but I do not know what. The sense of urgency is back. I feel as if writing whatever it is I am writing is the most important thing to ever have happened. There is no sound. There is no time. There are only words, and then nothing.
The book is back now. I breathe a quick sigh of relief. The words “MENTAL HEALTH” pierce my vision at the top of the page, and I quickly glance farther down until the letters are no longer burning red into my retinas. I raise my eyes once more, careful to avoid the words’ caustic grins, and start reading. The story is good, but I cannot focus on it. My attention is somewhere else, somewhere my divergent mind is creating but can never remember. I put the book down. No use in wasting a perfectly good story on an empty stomach of grimaces.
The panic returns as I feel the cool water slide over my skin. I know that my fear is unfounded, and I’m sure that somewhere deep down the fear knows it too, but that’s just usually the way it is. The losers are always the hardest ones to beat. A short reprise of air bubbles up from my lips to the surface, breaking the already broken stillness with a faint pop. My shrink will surely have something to say about this if I mention it to him. What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him, I suppose. It’s decided, then. I just won’t tell him about this encounter with fear. About all of our encounters with fear. My head breaks the surface, and as my lungs breathe in, so does my soul. Everything is fine now. Damn cars, my mind appends to the happy scene. I didn’t want this pollution. Now scat.
This is how the world will end. This is how the world will end. This is how the world will end. Not with a bang but a whimper. I smile every time I read those words. T.S. Eliot had no idea how right he was, did he? He was just writing what sounded good to him. That’s how the mind really works. Life is nothing but odysseys through the eternal fog punctuated by brief, sterile moments of lucidity. But we come to love the sweet, enveloping anonymity of the fog.
She sits across from me on an uncomfortably cushioned chair. Slowly, my mind registers the fact that she is beautiful. Strikingly beautiful. The kind of woman that I would risk it all for, everything, everything, if I were a romantic. I’m not a romantic, so I turn my eyes back upon the pages before me. But my mind lingers upon the subtle cobalt eyes, the gentle cheeks, the smooth fall of hair. I push my mind away. What is it about love that gets the loonies so worked up? It turns them into slobbering idiots, not that anyone notices the difference.
An outraged shriek of rubber, an indignant scream of glass, an irate clamor of metal. I look through the window again. That idiot. Doesn’t he know that those new tires can’t keep traction on an icy road at those speeds, no matter what the advertisement said? Doubting is a lost art when it can be trumped by something as fake as a commercial. I try not to stare at the twisted metal hulk before me, but I fail. By the time he tried his brakes, it was probably all over.
I blink my eyes as the light floods my face. There is no fear here, or at least none that I will mention. He sits behind his desk, calmly moving his pen over the slick sheets of greasy paper. He’s done some remodeling in this room. The walls are a different color and the bookshelves are in a different place. He has a new fan and a new nameplate on his desk. The desk is stained a different color. But some things never change. He looks up from the papers at last and begins talking. I hear some mention of words I don’t understand, that no one should ever have to understand. He begins writing again as he continues talking. I trace the movement of his hand. He is writing my prescription, and I look on as his pen loops through empty space to leave the thin black lines that signify the drug and dosage. With a flourish of the pen, he signs. The gun is loaded, the switch is thrown. We talk about the football playoffs, but for once I cannot bring my lips to form the words. All of my teams lost, anyway. I leave his office after the allotted time has expired.
Nothing is clear, I type. In this case, it is unlikely that the motive was ever to harm; but rather, to create peace. The law of God differentiates between motive and result. The law of man does not. We must steel ourselves and follow the haughty laws we have created. The sin of pride is the most disgusting of all. The tangible results of this sin are the man before you.
I give a short half-snort in amusement. She jumps slightly in her seat, a look of momentary panic mixed with ever-present startledness on her face. In the shadow between us, our gazes meet, and words are exchanged though never spoken. I smile. She smiles. But that is the end of it. The smile refuses to extend past my mouth, and the silence lies fallow between us, laced with the inevitable explanations. In the darkness of the street as I drive home that evening, I remember the short five minutes in the waiting room. I have a wife, you know, and kids, and a highly paying job. I live in a big house in a rich suburb with a good public school system and drive a BMW. I cross every t and dot every i, and I know exactly what to say and when to say it. As a kid, I would have killed for the life I have now. How I dream to possess those days again, when a rainy day was the death of an opportunity, when death still inspired fear in me, when I still thought that stereotypes were lies. Now all I have is memories that I have made mine and memories that have made me theirs, sanity like a shattered mirror that gives at best a broken reflection, and staccato thoughts like piano notes in a Radiohead song.
Hope begins to effuse through the walls of my house as darkness closes over the neighborhood and the police cars begin to arrive. I strain to see through the dirt and the void, but the absence of light only tells me what I already know. This is their world, not mine. There is no future for those the future has abandoned. I sit in my chair, the lastborn child of the unholy coupling of chemicals and machines. Perhaps in another time this world would have belonged to me; but not this world, and not in this time. In this world, your faith in God is lost the minute you start to truly believe. In this time, words strain to be said but people never strain to say them. We answer our questions with money and drugs. But what happens when the money is worthless because the government collapses, and the drugs are no good because you’re so pumped full of them that you can’t even think? I turn my eyes back upon the pages. All these things I, Tiresias, have seen. And soon we’ll all be as dead as the leaves on the snow-covered ground.