I've experienced several breaking points in my life, but this one tonight was the easiest and most positive. It's not a snap, or a "breakdown." It was more like becoming overfull of the pain and sadness, to the point of overflowing, a feeling that in a way simplified my actions, and I completely spontaneously wanted to call Megan. Up until this very point the thought would have made me even more wretchedly sad. But it was as if I simply no longer had the choice; that I simply missed her so much that I would do anything to ... what? Hear her voice again? Perhaps... but as I recall, though it was not even an hour ago yet, I just wanted so badly to tell her that I missed her. I wanted to hear that she missed me too and still loved me. I didn't think that was even likely; but I was so desperate that I had to take the chance.
For weeks I had been avoiding talking to Megan in any way, and likely as a result, becoming more and more depressed. I still find it gut-wrenchingly painful to think of her with this new boyfriend. He's not even new now, really. Is this just insecurity on my part? Is no-one confident enough to be immune from that pain?
The other night, when I was visiting Ruth and Laura, Ruth asked me something about pain, possibly something like how I deal with pain. I thought about it and was mildly surprised to find that I simply felt used to it. I don't think I've ever fought pain; can it be fought? I've always simply let it hurt me and hurt me until it went away. It never occurred to me that there would be an alternative, though now I know some people fight it weakly with TV and shopping and other modern nostrums and snake-oils.
It's not like I've "lived with" pain in the way that all too many people truly do. Generally I consider myself to be a quite happy person, and I think I always have been. But I've also always—first implicitly and later explicitly—accepted the highest highs for the lowest lows, and immediately accepted those trials and the great suffering that is fundamental to all life, and fundamental equally to true happiness.
Soon, I’ll fold the martyrs
up into inkblots,
sing to and barter with the stars
for a half-pound of light,
and coax dinner out of the pan.
I’ll write stanzas that span
canyons, soon,
soon, I’ll sell the car
that dad gave me, but not
its grief or memory.
The lunar cleft demands that
I continue soon into
the dreadful alleyways of the night,
but I’ll be fine, he says,
I’ll get mine and you’ll get yours.
Soon I’ll know the bleak refrain of death, (he says,)
the life that’s in the chlorophyll,
and spin that’s in the spider—
and I’ll hope that I can at least
become a little closer to
my father, the martyr,
soon to be the ink I’ll spill.
--Place and date unsure. I'll have to look it up in the archives. My favorite lines are "the life that's in the chlorophyll / and spin that's in the spider."
I cannot claim I’ve never cried
aloud for time to quit its silence.
I cannot name that sovereign dusk
that shatters sky with violence,
and renders us as silhouettes
at one both burned and violet.
--Gainesville, (2004?)
The rest of the poem doesn't live up to this stanza. I might chuck the rest of it... or reconstruct a new poem around it.
The other week I wrote a new EBM dance track called "Suffer as I Have Suffered" under a new project name, Mucinogen, which I think will pretty much take over from STAUB. At first I thought I'd do both but, might as well simplify.
I threw together a little site today so you can hear the song: http://mucinogen.com/
The funny thing is, last night I was talking to Brien's girlfriend Kristhal, and she ended up sending the song to her friend who runs a radio program in Mexico called "Terror Alert: High" on Radio Mente Abierta. You can listen to the program here: http://radiomenteabierta.com/teah/?p=16
My song is towards the end, maybe the 3rd to last or so? Enjoy!!