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I’m counting the swirls of plaster in your ceiling to try & focus on something, anything, lying to myself that putting all of my attention into one pointless task will somehow free the words that have become trapped. Painfully, I admit that I’m not sure there are words at all, trapped or otherwise.

State of my head is hard to gauge, as ever, but it’s either that I have every thought possible traversing the electric highways & byways of my mental landscape or none whatsoever. A fleeting image that lingers – speeding cars distilled, so that each pair of headlights becomes a tiny, seamless link in an illuminated chain, the paradox of motionless motion. “The light shines within me like a diamond mine…” That blinding, deafening – altogether senseless – intensity.

I’m sick of paradoxes & definitions. Constant, relentless life with no last member in sight until it’s far gone, before then infinite numbers of half points that are apparently necessary to reach before you go further. I don’t do things by half measures; that’s why I’m alive.

Waves, that’s what they look like to me. Perfectly even, regular waves ready to break on the shore then return. The sea above & the sky below – between is no longer the earth I knew, or the earth that once was… Perhaps I’m deceiving myself but I don’t think I’m that clever or cunning. Tides are turning within me, each drop of blood groans as the current reverses. My axis is off kilter, magnetised to an altogether different field.

I’m not ready, to say the least. If there are words for this, I want to find them. But for now, I’ll hold my tongue – because it’s not worth saying anything unless I mean it.

Spent

My curtains are twitching like crickets. Restlessness in the face of a relentless life. Skin stays still whilst my organs squirm. That wet, claustrophobic heat that is part of the integral design. There’s barely room for my heart, let alone anything else. I am literally bursting at the seams, that’s why I’m wearing more clothes today, to keep all of me in. If this gets out, I don’t know if there’ll be anything left of me. Why am I so keen to remain, despite the majority of my thoughts taking the other side? This cowardice is actually bravery. Like a mewling infant, unaware but with its own concerns, there is much more invested in me than I care to fully recognise. If the whole world is against me, it could be for me, too. If I am against me, I could be for me too.

Where is this strength? Bones break, their middles are marrow anyhow. Metal buckles, my house is blown down. Perhaps I am like lightning, a jagged scar in an infinite dark, there then gone – but the mark is left behind your eye for a smarting second more because you had to look. This one verse, ever expanding & contracting in my mind. This one mind expanding & contracting in my verse.

I am back behind the desk, there for show, listening to fingers on keys, each tap a grain of rice falling on a marble floor. Echoing round the foyer are foreign mutterings as coherent as those of a lover asleep – I am not fluent in love but I get by. To be honest, I’m overhearing rather than listening; my senses have no purpose currently & have drifted like snow, appearing to have substance but falling through as soon as I try to support myself.

Existence is exhausting.

Honestly

I do not know where my day went. Therefore, it feels as if I’ve lost a day, rather than gained experience. Most of the thoughts & feelings that I’ve thought or felt today were not in any way new or unfamiliar. Still, I could not deal with or handle them with any of the expertise one would fairly assume would come with repeated exposure to such thoughts or feelings – or anything for that matter. That painful slide down the gullet, the force fed realisation that I’m going to get fuck all done today because I am fuck all. Ever so distant from everyone & everything I love. This, I am used to.

Appalling lack of concentration. My myopic focus inverts; all that is available to me is the piercing present surrounding, not the fleeting foreground. Someone talks to me & all I can hear is the grumble of a bus round the corner. I am not depressed – I am distracted when what I want is to be grounded. This ache radiates like fire from my bones; it’s in my tissue, fibrous & taut. Dull but dense humming in each part of me, feedback from a concert that’s about to begin or has just ended. Instrumental – I can’t make sense of it but it means something, or at least it has made me feel, even if it is only an anaesthetic. This is it, the numbness that signals the pain will be sought out & ripped apart. I will wake, sewn up, one part the less but altogether better.

I have to write. I will be fine, I am fine. Merely ‘one of those Godawful fucking black days where nothing is pleasing & everything is an excuse for anger’ – if I had the energy to be angry, if I had the courage to say what pleased me. There, breathe out, let go, let go of me, my life, those around me. Let me work, let me thrive, not just barely survive.

This, I am used to – but that doesn’t mean I’m good at it.

Revision

I don’t want to see again. These things, anyway. I saw them once & that was enough. So low, crying so hard that the tears roll up my forehead. If words on a page can change your life for the better they can also change it for the worse. Sick (sick sick sick sick) of rehashing whilst feeling I still don’t know anything. Recognition abounds but remembering is just out of my reach.

Reach, wretch, wretched. Swear I thought that I could do this once. Do it once, do it again. But what if once is enough? Endless bouts of having to prove myself when I’m not sure the evidence is conclusive. Constantly improvising. No memory, no line-learning – just the immediacy, the full flush of blood washing me clean. Reciting dead men’s living ideas or thinking through not-thinking, by being whoever however. At least not having to write about it in an hour to satisfy someone else’s expectations of me. My own expectations are high – how do I kid myself into thinking I’ll please them?

Thick, dense – how I feel, not just in my head. This unnecessary excess that I let limit me – or is it what I hide behind, in, around. I am so alone in this fleshy home of mine. Yet I hear voices, more like whispers, sometimes shouts, often screams; conspiracies & counter-attacks. Spectres lead ethereal dreams whilst I tightly knit my own nightmare. No one’s fault, just many of my own. My mind is drowning fast by the weight of its own chains. I have heard this all before.

Life is a war – my body is the battlefield.

Prima Facie

From the Introduction, ‘Material Constitution: a Reader’ by Michael C. Rea:

“…[Q]uestions about identity over time, the essential properties of objects and events, the nature of persons, the relations between material objects and their parts, the necessary and sufficient conditions for kind-membershp, and other such ontological issues have loomed large in the philosophical literature.”

And in my mind. Your misty handprint still hovers over my mirror. Sticky fingers, sweat on glass that won’t evaporate no matter how hot the water is from the shower. Stubborn print, an organic smudge that will not shift under my antiseptic-sodden cloth. I don’t want to wipe you away. This isn’t about forgetting, it’s about forgiving.

Epicharmus was trying to be funny when he insisted it was another collection of particles that had business to complete. I get the joke now. Brilliant punchline. I’ve been building this collection for years. Less of a hobby, more a way of life. Categories, labels, archetypes – the punctuation of personalities. No one is a stereotype, unless they let themselves become one. There’s always a choice, however inevitable or random the outcome may appear. Forces beyond us equalled by the forces within us. I need to organise this disordered bunch “Emily-wise”. Whatever I decide that that will be.

Who are you? Who were you? How can two emotions be in exactly the same place at exactly the same time? Did we swap bodies, minds, hearts? Fluids? Am I the same person I was last week? I am not a proud person; was I ever?

From ‘Particulars II: Persistence Through Time’, ‘Metaphysics: a Contemporary Introduction’ by M. Loux:

“Metaphysicians, it seems, have a difficult time reaching consensus.”

Metaphysics, not ethics, is the philosophy of relationships. I have to answer these questions myself. Think about them, at the very least – on my own. Not lonely, just alone. Justified solitude. Fair isolation. Icy, it is, certainly. My mother walked a mile through the snow to meet my father, returned from a fiery, faraway land. Each excess of heat collides. You can’t compromise the elements. Let me be pensive, thaw myself amongst this glacier terrain as I singe, seething.

Yet the snow still comes. Yet I still live.

Ouroboros

“It doesn’t matter if you fail. Are you that arrogant? Just begin.” — Saul, ‘The Golden Notebook’ by Doris Lessing.

I cannot imagine my life beyond this moment. Life in the sense of living, of doing things, the simplest actions. To act without a thought. Reap a good, you will be deemed spontaneous. Harvest an evil, you will be called careless. What is really scaring me now? Where does the actual fear lie? Dormant, it shies from truth – but it is real. It is more real than the steady tides of people that ebb and flow through the city. It is more real than each thick tower of flesh that look sturdier and sturdier as I feel every cell crumble. It is more real than my thoughts of it. I had decided that my mind was my prison. Now it is a distant refuge. That sickly spectral shimmer blanches the dark so I cannot hide. I look through the night but I do not see. I am somewhere but not here.

I suppose it is a sort of death.

I cannot imagine my life beyond this moment. I cannot remember it before this moment. I am unavoidable. I know I have tried. Enduring is eternal, forgiveness is forever. My watch has stopped. The circularity of the seconds, the minutes, the hours. Every one a revolution. Why not now? What to do? Walk at the same pace as all of my selves. Be fluent in my own language. No longer translate myself. Whatever I do, it is by me. Both from me & beside me.

I suppose it is a sort of birth.

Vonnegut

My house only has one story. It can get quite crowded.

My birth was impolite for two reasons. Firstly, I was seventeen days late. Secondly, I shat on my mother. These two initial incidents set the course for much of my life that followed. Perhaps not as specifically as the original events themselves but as themes they are undeniable.

Bungalow baby on its belly, close to the ground, staying still as the earth turns.

Just because I do not remember my lack of punctuality or soiling my mother, nor any possible intention behind these actions – or inactions – does not mean I am blameless. Oh no, I was the cause. I was the cause, I am the effect.

Every part of the earth is moving, all the time. No one looks carefully enough to see. I am short-sighted.

Wiser people than I have distilled the key to human kindness as being capable of seeing the divinity inherent in every person, not just seeing it but accepting, respecting, reflecting that glorious core. I do not see the divinity in people, though I often try. I see the loneliness in people. More than that. I accept it, I respect it, I reflect it. Solitude fills me with emptiness, such a full feeling that leaves me satisfied in my dissatisfaction.

Was that the door? Please wipe your feet. I was expecting you earlier – but who am I to judge?

Schrödinger

In pulling you closer, am I pushing you away?

From deep contentment rises this burning thirst.

Paradox is the logic of the universe.

Daddy

We were paying for every experience, similar but not identical to those we had from where we came from. No matter how many hours you fly, you are still suspended in the same sky. The sun rose faster where we had landed but took longer to set. How the nights seemed eternal I do not know. Heat was solid there. I felt it pressing against the inside of my skin, boiling my bladder & stirring up sweat. Throw a few coins into the light, blind those with their own boats & plastic tubes attached to elastic bands. I found myself face down in the syrupy sea, dissected lengthways as I spluttered along coral turrets, stalking bright shoals. Mimicking their movements felt easier than walking. They did not notice me for some time. I did not feel altogether human. Discovered, uncovered, I drifted.

Hundreds of tiny incisions caught your attention. Beads of my blood dissolving into this mighty water, each miniscule globule dispersing further & further into the sovereign soluble. I am travelling around the world but I am here having my hand held by you. Pulling me across the shallow bed as the fish sleep. Suddenly a drop, sturdier than any liquid. The beach disappears, the earth; all there is before us is the dark expanding blue black. The silver shard of my stepbrother, your stepson, snakes into the depths not merely meters but galaxies ahead of us. The only part of me of which I am aware is through you, my hand, held by you in yours, there is nothing else of me, nothing, but that related to you, I follow as you lead, I am your shadow. I hope I do not weigh you down. The sun is so high here, perhaps I am short. Maybe we should stay.

Daddy, daddy, my hero – how do I live up to you?

Daphne

“…a heavy numbness seized her limbs, thin bark closed over her breast, her hair turned into leaves, her arms into branches, her feet so swift a moment ago stuck fast in slow-growing roots, her face was lost in the canopy. Only her shining beauty was left.” — Metamorphoses, Ovid.

Everyone says you were running away. That is what it appears to be to those who do not understand you, those who stand sternly in their laboratories, their libraries, clutching their dissecting tools, racking their plotted minds. But I understand you. He blinded you whilst he warmed you. He hunted you before you knew you were prey. That is what you thrived on. That is what gave you the strength to run. You were not running away from him. You were running to who you wanted to be. Under the pressure of your feet, worlds of worms turned their heads into their tails, their tails into their heads. Irrevocably inspired, you felt your power to change as his footsteps drew closer. Standing still but growing all the time for those who care to look. Your fruit garnished the heads of kings. They were aware of your selfish sacrifice, your bountiful beatitude. The misunderstood martyr. Forever nurtured by his light, you reach further to touch him.

Rooted, released, rejoice.