The work of a slightly younger me
Admittedly, I neglected this journal quite readily, much like 99 percent of all diaries received by birthday boys and girls as well as all the crosshuggers at Christmas. My only real reason for returning is that I don't have anything new to add. You see, today I came across several brief writings, each scrawled on their own piece of paper, which represent nearly the entirety of my work for the year of 2002. Most of it is narrative that I wrote in accordance with the intended plot of my long-planned screenplay written in distinctly non-screenplay format, something I did hoping that it would stimulate screenplay-oriented thought. What I accomplished is that I accumulated a large deal of interior monologue, which was hardly a help as voiceover represented nearly half of the screenplay at that point. Nonetheless, I post it here, along with some poem, for any who may want to read, but without the guarantee of quality that I would normally reserve before putting something up for other to read.
The Poem:
Long, they told me, I would suffer the consequences
Of dimly lit days and warm glow nights.
Quickly, they told me, I'd lose my senses
to the magnetic pull of illusion's might.
Resist, they told me, is the only way
Unless you want to waste all that we gave you.
But what they gave I didn't want
and what I knew I couldn't say
For I had to find a different way through.
No longer, I said, could their rules apply
When I saw that they didn't know me.
Slowly, I said, I would construct my lie
And perhaps in it I would find myself free.
Accept, I said, that all pleasures are chemical
One way or another, I would smile again.
But I did not find the pitfall they foretold
just an end to the constant, impenetrable drub
And never did I feel the need to say "when."
In retrospect: that poem is fucking horrible, in particular it possesses a shittily executed rhyme scheme. Fuck. Shit. In order to make up for that, I post this more recent poem, of which I am proud.
Nuclear-Grade Intensity In Ten Cities
Splitting an atom over Times Square would give more culture to New York than Broadway ever will.
Muhammud Ali--float like a butterfly, Parkinson's like a muthafucka.
Beat your children before they're big enough to hit back.
Eat the elderly before they die--nobody likes carrion for breakfast.
What kind of wine goes best with revenge?
Why, Strychnine Wine of course, friend.
Yup, that's the good shit. And now, excerpts from a work in progress, albeit one that is brutally self-centered and probably quite dull as a result. What a pretentious cunt I am.
Gifted. That's what they called me when I was growing up. Brains like my family's are rare. We aren't just 99th percentile people--we're 99.99th folk, IQs falling right alongside Einstein, although personally I think he was full of shit. When you're born testing like that, people want to talk to you about all the things you're capable of, your potential, how one day you could be a great scientist, professor, writer, whatever. What they don't tell you is the problems you're going to face. Geniuses, as a group, have rates of insanity, depression, persecution, addiction and seclusion that make being an AIDS baby look like an easy load to tow.
I'm not going to bother trying to say anything meaningful about suicide; it would all be trite. My reasoning was simple--I had the distinct impression that God was working against me, and I wished to have some words with him about it. I know it must seem awfully self-important to be an atheist for 17 years and then suddenly turn around and acknowledge his (fuck capitalization) existence only under the condition that he's out to get me, but what do you want me to say? That's how I felt. I swallowed pills until my throat was raw--Xanax, Valium, Oxycontin, Vicodin, Dilaudid, Demerol, Klonopin, Ativan, Librium, Halcion... two of everything in my collection that is designed to sedate or numb, and then I went to sleep. Although I knew it at the time, I would later verify through scientific means that the cocktail I injested that night would only be prescribed for the purpose of killing a smack-addicted horse if it absolutely had to be dead within two hours. This would be, by far, the worst of all the times I woke up.
After living for months without emotion, things have welled up inside of me. All those times that I felt like crying but couldn't, the screams that didn't have any breath... it all comes out at once. This is a panic attack. This is pain unlike all others. Pure emotional anguish--whatever Romeo and Juliet felt compounded exponentially. I'm throbbing for a release--my bones won't stop reminding me how much they wish they were being crushed between a cement wall and a nice big truck; the surface tension in my skin builds and builds, begging to be split and torn is if it were canvas. I imagine how wonderful it would be if there were a paper shredder large enough to accomodate my whole body...
Hope is integrally connected to misery. That's how it all starts--you invest your hope in something, effectively putting a part of yourself on the line, and when the wheel stops spinning and you realize that you lost, that piece of your being is gone and it won't come back. I always try to not be hopeful, to look at things rationally and predict what the likely result will be. My forecasts tend to make people call me a cynic or a pessimist. But, I ask you, what exactly is the point of "looking on the bright side" if you can see the clouds looming? I place conservative wagers of hope, I hedge my bets, because I'm afraid of the effect that getting cleaned out would have on me. Of course, we all know why it is that casinos rarely go out of business, and despite my efforts to play life smart, my stacks have been severly depleted. The truly sad thing is that my predictions always end up being right, so every time I lose, I knew it was coming.
People think that depression--clinical depression--is constant sadness, but it's not. It's constant absence. Completely devoid of feeling, I force myself from day to day. Despair would be a nice change of pace, because with depression it's the tedium that destroys you. Nothing is interesting, nothing ever seems to happen. The days just pile up, always reoutine regardless of the actual events. You go to a party, you stay home, you go to work, and it's all the same. You're the same. If you want to experience any kind of sensation, you have to turn to chemicals. Only by altering the biological factors at play can you stimulate a real experience.
It isn't withdrawal that I'm going through, because I was always careful not to injest any chemically similar substances regularly enough to develop a dependency. I just can't believe that nothing has changed in my three years of near-constant intoxication. I've been suddenly thrust right back into the state I struggled with for years before I learned how to control and maintain through drugs. When I was using, I could barely even remember what this felt like, but now it [end]
I blame them all. They don't share my pain, so I try to give them a taste. And none of them have made any effort to stop me, or to help me, so don't they really deserve it? Of course, none of them have a clue about my true nature, but that doesn't dissuade my wrather. Hopefully, some day, everyone will pay.
My initial reaction to a close examination of an average person, ranked in order of frequency, is either anger, amusement, or sympathy. The unfortunate part is that they all seem to be the same... everyone, despite their seeming idiosyncracies, blend together under some common heading. I have to be careful of those rare occasions in which [end]
Living sober is harder than I had expected. With nothing to help me control my impulses, I'm just barely maintaining a guise of normality. People are getting suspicious of my shifts when I start stabbing my hand repeatedly with a well-sharpened pencil, or curl up into a ball in a public place and am incapable of any speech, thus unable to explain myself. When I get the opportunity, I grudgingly describe how I'm having toruble coping with the death of a fictitious grandparent, old friend or girlfriend, pet, it's always something different. With everyone having heard different accounts, confusion runs wild, and there's a rumor going around that I'm schizophrenic, which I'm contributing to by mumbling to myself in made-up languages whenever class bores me too much.
It was probably the loneliness that most directly contributed to my depression. For the five years my brother was in college, and then the two years after he left for California but before I met Sprak, I had no friends. Days of isolation piled upon each other until it just became routine. Not the best state in which to struggle to maintain mental competance as you're entering and passing puberty. Without anyone to contradict the increasingly chaotic thought process gainging dominance in my mind, it was easy to slip so far from normal.
What I'm doing goes against all of my basic rules for survival: never give anyone power over you; never rely on anyone. Unfortunately, as I am a slave to chemical pleasures, I cannot deny the purity and intensity of this high. THe pheremones this girl is putting off have me completely twisted. I'm sure that the attraction is chemical, because I can't really identify any specific qualities in her person that could account for this. Pretty, sure, great smile, laugh, yeah, but whatever. She's not funny, or smart... she's not an exceptional case. Still, for the first time in my life, I feel addicted.
(Revised version of already posted paragraph, or perhaps original version of revised version already posted)
Most people think that depression--clinical depression--is when you're sad all the time, but it isn't. Sadness would be a nice change of pace. I feel nothing, all day, every day, for years now. At least, that's how it is when I'm sober. Gime some hallucinogens, or a few hundred milligrams of pure MDMA, and maybe you'll see a genuine smile, or a tear that's actually related to a throught, but the rest of the time I might as well be dead. Shit, sometimes I wonder if I am. I feel so far removed from these people it would make sense if I was a corpse. When I look at my fellow humans--really look at them--all I can see is how they're fucking up, and I don't understand how it's possible that they're so blind.
In retrospect:
This was a big mistake, as all of this material embarasses me to read it now. What shitty, shitty writing it was, and continues to be. I've had that experience about once a year every year for the past six or so, where I go back and look at whatever I've been working on and then want to kick my ass for sucking such fatty cock. Strange that so much can change in just a year, isn't it? Here's a game for all the loyal readers: since I'm too tired to go back and proofread for typos, let me know where there are mistakes so I can fix. Whoever finds the most wins a mouthful of my choosing.
The Poem:
Long, they told me, I would suffer the consequences
Of dimly lit days and warm glow nights.
Quickly, they told me, I'd lose my senses
to the magnetic pull of illusion's might.
Resist, they told me, is the only way
Unless you want to waste all that we gave you.
But what they gave I didn't want
and what I knew I couldn't say
For I had to find a different way through.
No longer, I said, could their rules apply
When I saw that they didn't know me.
Slowly, I said, I would construct my lie
And perhaps in it I would find myself free.
Accept, I said, that all pleasures are chemical
One way or another, I would smile again.
But I did not find the pitfall they foretold
just an end to the constant, impenetrable drub
And never did I feel the need to say "when."
In retrospect: that poem is fucking horrible, in particular it possesses a shittily executed rhyme scheme. Fuck. Shit. In order to make up for that, I post this more recent poem, of which I am proud.
Nuclear-Grade Intensity In Ten Cities
Splitting an atom over Times Square would give more culture to New York than Broadway ever will.
Muhammud Ali--float like a butterfly, Parkinson's like a muthafucka.
Beat your children before they're big enough to hit back.
Eat the elderly before they die--nobody likes carrion for breakfast.
What kind of wine goes best with revenge?
Why, Strychnine Wine of course, friend.
Yup, that's the good shit. And now, excerpts from a work in progress, albeit one that is brutally self-centered and probably quite dull as a result. What a pretentious cunt I am.
Gifted. That's what they called me when I was growing up. Brains like my family's are rare. We aren't just 99th percentile people--we're 99.99th folk, IQs falling right alongside Einstein, although personally I think he was full of shit. When you're born testing like that, people want to talk to you about all the things you're capable of, your potential, how one day you could be a great scientist, professor, writer, whatever. What they don't tell you is the problems you're going to face. Geniuses, as a group, have rates of insanity, depression, persecution, addiction and seclusion that make being an AIDS baby look like an easy load to tow.
I'm not going to bother trying to say anything meaningful about suicide; it would all be trite. My reasoning was simple--I had the distinct impression that God was working against me, and I wished to have some words with him about it. I know it must seem awfully self-important to be an atheist for 17 years and then suddenly turn around and acknowledge his (fuck capitalization) existence only under the condition that he's out to get me, but what do you want me to say? That's how I felt. I swallowed pills until my throat was raw--Xanax, Valium, Oxycontin, Vicodin, Dilaudid, Demerol, Klonopin, Ativan, Librium, Halcion... two of everything in my collection that is designed to sedate or numb, and then I went to sleep. Although I knew it at the time, I would later verify through scientific means that the cocktail I injested that night would only be prescribed for the purpose of killing a smack-addicted horse if it absolutely had to be dead within two hours. This would be, by far, the worst of all the times I woke up.
After living for months without emotion, things have welled up inside of me. All those times that I felt like crying but couldn't, the screams that didn't have any breath... it all comes out at once. This is a panic attack. This is pain unlike all others. Pure emotional anguish--whatever Romeo and Juliet felt compounded exponentially. I'm throbbing for a release--my bones won't stop reminding me how much they wish they were being crushed between a cement wall and a nice big truck; the surface tension in my skin builds and builds, begging to be split and torn is if it were canvas. I imagine how wonderful it would be if there were a paper shredder large enough to accomodate my whole body...
Hope is integrally connected to misery. That's how it all starts--you invest your hope in something, effectively putting a part of yourself on the line, and when the wheel stops spinning and you realize that you lost, that piece of your being is gone and it won't come back. I always try to not be hopeful, to look at things rationally and predict what the likely result will be. My forecasts tend to make people call me a cynic or a pessimist. But, I ask you, what exactly is the point of "looking on the bright side" if you can see the clouds looming? I place conservative wagers of hope, I hedge my bets, because I'm afraid of the effect that getting cleaned out would have on me. Of course, we all know why it is that casinos rarely go out of business, and despite my efforts to play life smart, my stacks have been severly depleted. The truly sad thing is that my predictions always end up being right, so every time I lose, I knew it was coming.
People think that depression--clinical depression--is constant sadness, but it's not. It's constant absence. Completely devoid of feeling, I force myself from day to day. Despair would be a nice change of pace, because with depression it's the tedium that destroys you. Nothing is interesting, nothing ever seems to happen. The days just pile up, always reoutine regardless of the actual events. You go to a party, you stay home, you go to work, and it's all the same. You're the same. If you want to experience any kind of sensation, you have to turn to chemicals. Only by altering the biological factors at play can you stimulate a real experience.
It isn't withdrawal that I'm going through, because I was always careful not to injest any chemically similar substances regularly enough to develop a dependency. I just can't believe that nothing has changed in my three years of near-constant intoxication. I've been suddenly thrust right back into the state I struggled with for years before I learned how to control and maintain through drugs. When I was using, I could barely even remember what this felt like, but now it [end]
I blame them all. They don't share my pain, so I try to give them a taste. And none of them have made any effort to stop me, or to help me, so don't they really deserve it? Of course, none of them have a clue about my true nature, but that doesn't dissuade my wrather. Hopefully, some day, everyone will pay.
My initial reaction to a close examination of an average person, ranked in order of frequency, is either anger, amusement, or sympathy. The unfortunate part is that they all seem to be the same... everyone, despite their seeming idiosyncracies, blend together under some common heading. I have to be careful of those rare occasions in which [end]
Living sober is harder than I had expected. With nothing to help me control my impulses, I'm just barely maintaining a guise of normality. People are getting suspicious of my shifts when I start stabbing my hand repeatedly with a well-sharpened pencil, or curl up into a ball in a public place and am incapable of any speech, thus unable to explain myself. When I get the opportunity, I grudgingly describe how I'm having toruble coping with the death of a fictitious grandparent, old friend or girlfriend, pet, it's always something different. With everyone having heard different accounts, confusion runs wild, and there's a rumor going around that I'm schizophrenic, which I'm contributing to by mumbling to myself in made-up languages whenever class bores me too much.
It was probably the loneliness that most directly contributed to my depression. For the five years my brother was in college, and then the two years after he left for California but before I met Sprak, I had no friends. Days of isolation piled upon each other until it just became routine. Not the best state in which to struggle to maintain mental competance as you're entering and passing puberty. Without anyone to contradict the increasingly chaotic thought process gainging dominance in my mind, it was easy to slip so far from normal.
What I'm doing goes against all of my basic rules for survival: never give anyone power over you; never rely on anyone. Unfortunately, as I am a slave to chemical pleasures, I cannot deny the purity and intensity of this high. THe pheremones this girl is putting off have me completely twisted. I'm sure that the attraction is chemical, because I can't really identify any specific qualities in her person that could account for this. Pretty, sure, great smile, laugh, yeah, but whatever. She's not funny, or smart... she's not an exceptional case. Still, for the first time in my life, I feel addicted.
(Revised version of already posted paragraph, or perhaps original version of revised version already posted)
Most people think that depression--clinical depression--is when you're sad all the time, but it isn't. Sadness would be a nice change of pace. I feel nothing, all day, every day, for years now. At least, that's how it is when I'm sober. Gime some hallucinogens, or a few hundred milligrams of pure MDMA, and maybe you'll see a genuine smile, or a tear that's actually related to a throught, but the rest of the time I might as well be dead. Shit, sometimes I wonder if I am. I feel so far removed from these people it would make sense if I was a corpse. When I look at my fellow humans--really look at them--all I can see is how they're fucking up, and I don't understand how it's possible that they're so blind.
In retrospect:
This was a big mistake, as all of this material embarasses me to read it now. What shitty, shitty writing it was, and continues to be. I've had that experience about once a year every year for the past six or so, where I go back and look at whatever I've been working on and then want to kick my ass for sucking such fatty cock. Strange that so much can change in just a year, isn't it? Here's a game for all the loyal readers: since I'm too tired to go back and proofread for typos, let me know where there are mistakes so I can fix. Whoever finds the most wins a mouthful of my choosing.