Journal #2 - I Don't Expect You to Read the Whole thing, really
[Transcribed from "Slaughterhouse Five"- a novel by Kurt Vonnegut]
( Over the years, people I've met have often asked me what I'm working on, and I've usually replied that the main thing was a book about Dresden.
I said that to Harrison Star, the movie-maker, one time, and he raised his eyebrows and inquired, "Is that an anti-war book?
"Yes," I said. "I guess."
"You know what I say to people when i hear they're writing anti-war books?"
"No. What do you say, Harrison Star?"
"I say, 'Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?'"
What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too.
And, even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death. )
[End]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I read this the other day, thinking it brilliant. It produces in me haunting thoughts. One of my favorite films, "Igby Goes Down", entails a particular scene between the main character and his love interest. They are lying there together in bed (after sex) and she says something like, "You know what i always think about at times like this? I think about how the body lying in my arms, is going to one day turn cold and stop breathing. What if i read your obituary years from now in the paper? Wouldn't that be fucked up?"
Sometimes i get pretentious and i like to think that I'm a tragedy waiting to happen. Kind of like Princess Di or something. When i feel the most full of life, the most creative, the most beautiful, the most useful and the most loved, it is at those moments i believe I'll be snuffed out like a candle. I guess it's like, when the candle burns brightest, that is when it is most offensive to the eyes, and must be extinguished. Or perhaps, when we're at our best, we're terminated simply out of spite.
I think this is cruel, but what's more cruel is to think about death when you are still alive. Think about how pissed off the ghosts must be.
And yet further, i mean if you really wanna delve into it, you might think about those you love the most dying right before your eyes. Only then is perfection of happiness truly ruined......
" I'm sitting here in the kitchen and i think that my mom is amazing. She's not doing anything really, just cutting tomatoes. The juice is all over her hands reminds me of oozing wounds or maybe just someone's heart mashed up.
My mother is one of those moms who really really, loves her kids. I mean, i know all mothers love theirs kids, but she really does a great job of showing it. I'm her like, number-1 priority. How can i describe her without sounding lame? She takes care of me, bases her schedule around me, cooks, cleans, listens, really thinks out my birthday presents.... I could go on. I look at her standing there, busily chopping away like the tomatoes are my problems I'm telling her and she is just getting rid of them with her love and concern, wielded like the deadly, delicate blade of a knife.
Most of the time I don't pay attention to her novelties. Yeah, sometimes i even hate her. She has her mom-moods where she goes ballistic and i can't deal with her anymore, even though she always has to deal with me. Sometimes she's just so damn noisy and i want to be left alone, I'm a fucking grownup and she's a fucking nuisance. Other times she shoves her Catholic values in my face to the point of making me paranoid about any kind of sexual relationship, drug, or swear word.
Is my mother going to die? Maybe someday when I'm married with children who barely knew their grandma except during Christmas dinner. I'm crying at her black coffin funeral and they can't even begin to understand it yet, they're too young. A sensitive child, at best, might miss the money grandma sent. Life is wasted on the young.
So me, i'm trying to be appreciative earlier on. My mom finishes the tomatoes, moves on to the celery, and i say, "Mom, you're amazing".
Only she doesn't here me over the steam on the stove, or maybe i didn't really say it out loud. Fuck me twice for my indecision.
I go outside and look at our backyard. The leaves are chyrstallized by ice, and more breathtaking than the cold is the incredible beauty of nature. It usually goes unnoticed in my teenage world. Thoughts of suicide, sex, depression, physical appearance, the latest trends, and hatred of authority creep into my mind. I'm thinking about my boyfriend 99.987% of the time.
Right now i think about his face, his hands, the way he smiles and holds my hand, kisses me, teases me and makes me laugh. I love him i love him i love him i love him i love him. I want to run inside and write him my fiftieth love letter/email of the day, but something stops me.
Right at the edge of the woods behind my house, a creeping trail of liquid mercury infiltrates the snow and stays pooled magically on its surface. I'm watching transfixed and i think
sparkling diamond magic devil beauty.
Before my preoccupied brain has time to think, the mercury begins to form little beads like the tears on a rain-riddled rose. They merge into a web of silky pearls, a spider web that came from a mesmerizing monster. The web tangles and weaves, curling and furling the leaves of its own Crying Tree of Mercury. The foliage grows and blooms like a flower, like an orgasm, like color on your heated face. I think hot, i think liquid fire, and suddenly my body is burning even though i'm surrounded by snow and ice. i think about how the leaves are encased in ice, untouchable and still alive, and then i think i understand.
I am so afraid at this point. Like ready to piss myself. I don't remember taking acid. Going to sleep? i want to panic but I'm frozen. My surroundings are laughing at me. What was i just thinking about? My head is brimming with thoughts about funeral pyres. boys shipped off to war. holocaust. empty tombs of skulls and ashes. If this is a dream, i am really fucked up. I'm groping desperately like a virgin for my previous thoughts, my safe little world of my mom and my boyfriend and my life back inside the kitchen in my small house in the suburbs. But this tree is real, and now i think it's speaking to me.
I'm shaking the marrow out of my bones. The tree, which looks half like a fairy, half like Satan in a dress, is forming sentences. Still in liquid form, it opens its mouth, and the mercury sticks like strings of saliva. It's disgusting but intense. i think it's forming the strings for the Harp From Hell.
What kind of music do they play in hell? i ask it.
It doesn't respond. Instead it reaches inside its own body, and parts the watery liquid to reveal this throbbing, burning cavern of a heart.
Burn. Ruby. Blood. Life.
I'm not sure if i threw up at this point or not. The thing points to its heart, and says, "choose".
"what"? I'm on my knees now, but i say it in a pissed-off-kind of way. i'm bold like a namebrand pair of jeans.
"Choose!" it says. The voice is God, or at least Zeus. thunder and lightning. my fear increases. pulsing wildly.
Choose between the two people you love the most. Choose between your present and your future. Your blood or your heart. Your love or your other love.
"What the fuck," i say. then it hits me. slap me hard.
I think of my boyfriend, so incredible and he calls me every night and i love him more than i love myself, but i'm too naive to know what that even means. i wonder what i did to deserve to be so happy. i wonder why the half of everybody else's soul isn't as easy to see as mine? i hear wedding bells and i see little kids and secret smiles exchanged and great sex. lying together in the morning with sunlight filtering through the window. together through the wind and rain and we're afraid but we're afraid together and it all makes sense. this is forever.
And then a searing pain. I see my mom, cradling my infant self in her arms, carressing each facial feature and deeming each one a perfect part to the miraculous whole that is me. i see her frosting a birthday cake. crying when i tell her i hate her because she won't let me out on Friday night, she wants me here with her because i'm still just a kid. i see her holding me as i sob with a broken heart. she tells me she would rip out the inside of the guy if she could, just for hurting me. telling me i'm beautiful. giving me money for college and a car to drive and letting me go. letting me sleep in her bed after a scary movie.
It hurts. The images melt into each other and i see his face, scared, on my right... and i see her face, downcast and quiet, on the left. sunset. rage. They both know, yet they have no idea. They plead for their life, but they accept my decision. They don't hold it against me. They give themselves to me. With terror i glance at the gun to their heads, the nooses around their necks, the bottomless pits below their feet.
I want to run to them both and hold them tight. Sobbing. Screaming. all this love i didn't know i had turns into a solid block of ice, a phenomenal force of hatred. directed at It. i shove it at the thing, like an atom bomb or a mountain fallen from space. n o
no
nO
No.
NO!
i hate you. i hate you i hate YOU. i won't i wont do it.
i
hate
you
suddenly an explosion of glittering flecks. They look like twinkling Christmas lights. In between are slivers of tinsel- remnants of mercury. festively they float down over my face, my eyelids and eyelashes still intact. i open my eyes. no Mercury tree. No hated creature. no nightmare of fear and pain and ultimate loss worse than death itself. i'm crouched down, cowering in the snow. in front of me is a pine, just an ordinary pine covered with snow and fantastic glittery tinsel and glowing lights. merry christmas. i feel like i just woke up from a fever. i cough out a little blood.
Run inside. my mom is still cooking. i rush to the window. look at the neighborhood. same tranquil place, quiet little suburban town, mundane street. i call my boyfriend just to see if he's breathing. he sounds so alive over the phone.
i've never been so fucking happy in my life. i think how shallow i've been, and what i've wasted and how much i've missed. i try to cry self pity, but it freezes into droplets on my cheek. i brush them away. look out the window. the last thing i see, in my final moments of bliss, are a few specks of blood on the pure white snow. shine red like tomatoes, like love, like the heart of the monster i ripped out and defeate-
or
did
I?
Mom and world and self, i love you, i say, standing alone at the window in my kitchen. i realize the deal i made with satan in his dress, the mercurcy tree. that fucking piece of shit, i still hate him.
"you or them. YOU for THEM."
i am complete. Final reverie... before i black out, immersed in mercury. [end]"
( Over the years, people I've met have often asked me what I'm working on, and I've usually replied that the main thing was a book about Dresden.
I said that to Harrison Star, the movie-maker, one time, and he raised his eyebrows and inquired, "Is that an anti-war book?
"Yes," I said. "I guess."
"You know what I say to people when i hear they're writing anti-war books?"
"No. What do you say, Harrison Star?"
"I say, 'Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?'"
What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too.
And, even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death. )
[End]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I read this the other day, thinking it brilliant. It produces in me haunting thoughts. One of my favorite films, "Igby Goes Down", entails a particular scene between the main character and his love interest. They are lying there together in bed (after sex) and she says something like, "You know what i always think about at times like this? I think about how the body lying in my arms, is going to one day turn cold and stop breathing. What if i read your obituary years from now in the paper? Wouldn't that be fucked up?"
Sometimes i get pretentious and i like to think that I'm a tragedy waiting to happen. Kind of like Princess Di or something. When i feel the most full of life, the most creative, the most beautiful, the most useful and the most loved, it is at those moments i believe I'll be snuffed out like a candle. I guess it's like, when the candle burns brightest, that is when it is most offensive to the eyes, and must be extinguished. Or perhaps, when we're at our best, we're terminated simply out of spite.
I think this is cruel, but what's more cruel is to think about death when you are still alive. Think about how pissed off the ghosts must be.
And yet further, i mean if you really wanna delve into it, you might think about those you love the most dying right before your eyes. Only then is perfection of happiness truly ruined......
" I'm sitting here in the kitchen and i think that my mom is amazing. She's not doing anything really, just cutting tomatoes. The juice is all over her hands reminds me of oozing wounds or maybe just someone's heart mashed up.
My mother is one of those moms who really really, loves her kids. I mean, i know all mothers love theirs kids, but she really does a great job of showing it. I'm her like, number-1 priority. How can i describe her without sounding lame? She takes care of me, bases her schedule around me, cooks, cleans, listens, really thinks out my birthday presents.... I could go on. I look at her standing there, busily chopping away like the tomatoes are my problems I'm telling her and she is just getting rid of them with her love and concern, wielded like the deadly, delicate blade of a knife.
Most of the time I don't pay attention to her novelties. Yeah, sometimes i even hate her. She has her mom-moods where she goes ballistic and i can't deal with her anymore, even though she always has to deal with me. Sometimes she's just so damn noisy and i want to be left alone, I'm a fucking grownup and she's a fucking nuisance. Other times she shoves her Catholic values in my face to the point of making me paranoid about any kind of sexual relationship, drug, or swear word.
Is my mother going to die? Maybe someday when I'm married with children who barely knew their grandma except during Christmas dinner. I'm crying at her black coffin funeral and they can't even begin to understand it yet, they're too young. A sensitive child, at best, might miss the money grandma sent. Life is wasted on the young.
So me, i'm trying to be appreciative earlier on. My mom finishes the tomatoes, moves on to the celery, and i say, "Mom, you're amazing".
Only she doesn't here me over the steam on the stove, or maybe i didn't really say it out loud. Fuck me twice for my indecision.
I go outside and look at our backyard. The leaves are chyrstallized by ice, and more breathtaking than the cold is the incredible beauty of nature. It usually goes unnoticed in my teenage world. Thoughts of suicide, sex, depression, physical appearance, the latest trends, and hatred of authority creep into my mind. I'm thinking about my boyfriend 99.987% of the time.
Right now i think about his face, his hands, the way he smiles and holds my hand, kisses me, teases me and makes me laugh. I love him i love him i love him i love him i love him. I want to run inside and write him my fiftieth love letter/email of the day, but something stops me.
Right at the edge of the woods behind my house, a creeping trail of liquid mercury infiltrates the snow and stays pooled magically on its surface. I'm watching transfixed and i think
sparkling diamond magic devil beauty.
Before my preoccupied brain has time to think, the mercury begins to form little beads like the tears on a rain-riddled rose. They merge into a web of silky pearls, a spider web that came from a mesmerizing monster. The web tangles and weaves, curling and furling the leaves of its own Crying Tree of Mercury. The foliage grows and blooms like a flower, like an orgasm, like color on your heated face. I think hot, i think liquid fire, and suddenly my body is burning even though i'm surrounded by snow and ice. i think about how the leaves are encased in ice, untouchable and still alive, and then i think i understand.
I am so afraid at this point. Like ready to piss myself. I don't remember taking acid. Going to sleep? i want to panic but I'm frozen. My surroundings are laughing at me. What was i just thinking about? My head is brimming with thoughts about funeral pyres. boys shipped off to war. holocaust. empty tombs of skulls and ashes. If this is a dream, i am really fucked up. I'm groping desperately like a virgin for my previous thoughts, my safe little world of my mom and my boyfriend and my life back inside the kitchen in my small house in the suburbs. But this tree is real, and now i think it's speaking to me.
I'm shaking the marrow out of my bones. The tree, which looks half like a fairy, half like Satan in a dress, is forming sentences. Still in liquid form, it opens its mouth, and the mercury sticks like strings of saliva. It's disgusting but intense. i think it's forming the strings for the Harp From Hell.
What kind of music do they play in hell? i ask it.
It doesn't respond. Instead it reaches inside its own body, and parts the watery liquid to reveal this throbbing, burning cavern of a heart.
Burn. Ruby. Blood. Life.
I'm not sure if i threw up at this point or not. The thing points to its heart, and says, "choose".
"what"? I'm on my knees now, but i say it in a pissed-off-kind of way. i'm bold like a namebrand pair of jeans.
"Choose!" it says. The voice is God, or at least Zeus. thunder and lightning. my fear increases. pulsing wildly.
Choose between the two people you love the most. Choose between your present and your future. Your blood or your heart. Your love or your other love.
"What the fuck," i say. then it hits me. slap me hard.
I think of my boyfriend, so incredible and he calls me every night and i love him more than i love myself, but i'm too naive to know what that even means. i wonder what i did to deserve to be so happy. i wonder why the half of everybody else's soul isn't as easy to see as mine? i hear wedding bells and i see little kids and secret smiles exchanged and great sex. lying together in the morning with sunlight filtering through the window. together through the wind and rain and we're afraid but we're afraid together and it all makes sense. this is forever.
And then a searing pain. I see my mom, cradling my infant self in her arms, carressing each facial feature and deeming each one a perfect part to the miraculous whole that is me. i see her frosting a birthday cake. crying when i tell her i hate her because she won't let me out on Friday night, she wants me here with her because i'm still just a kid. i see her holding me as i sob with a broken heart. she tells me she would rip out the inside of the guy if she could, just for hurting me. telling me i'm beautiful. giving me money for college and a car to drive and letting me go. letting me sleep in her bed after a scary movie.
It hurts. The images melt into each other and i see his face, scared, on my right... and i see her face, downcast and quiet, on the left. sunset. rage. They both know, yet they have no idea. They plead for their life, but they accept my decision. They don't hold it against me. They give themselves to me. With terror i glance at the gun to their heads, the nooses around their necks, the bottomless pits below their feet.
I want to run to them both and hold them tight. Sobbing. Screaming. all this love i didn't know i had turns into a solid block of ice, a phenomenal force of hatred. directed at It. i shove it at the thing, like an atom bomb or a mountain fallen from space. n o
no
nO
No.
NO!
i hate you. i hate you i hate YOU. i won't i wont do it.
i
hate
you
suddenly an explosion of glittering flecks. They look like twinkling Christmas lights. In between are slivers of tinsel- remnants of mercury. festively they float down over my face, my eyelids and eyelashes still intact. i open my eyes. no Mercury tree. No hated creature. no nightmare of fear and pain and ultimate loss worse than death itself. i'm crouched down, cowering in the snow. in front of me is a pine, just an ordinary pine covered with snow and fantastic glittery tinsel and glowing lights. merry christmas. i feel like i just woke up from a fever. i cough out a little blood.
Run inside. my mom is still cooking. i rush to the window. look at the neighborhood. same tranquil place, quiet little suburban town, mundane street. i call my boyfriend just to see if he's breathing. he sounds so alive over the phone.
i've never been so fucking happy in my life. i think how shallow i've been, and what i've wasted and how much i've missed. i try to cry self pity, but it freezes into droplets on my cheek. i brush them away. look out the window. the last thing i see, in my final moments of bliss, are a few specks of blood on the pure white snow. shine red like tomatoes, like love, like the heart of the monster i ripped out and defeate-
or
did
I?
Mom and world and self, i love you, i say, standing alone at the window in my kitchen. i realize the deal i made with satan in his dress, the mercurcy tree. that fucking piece of shit, i still hate him.
"you or them. YOU for THEM."
i am complete. Final reverie... before i black out, immersed in mercury. [end]"