Who likes to feel laughed at?

Once upon a time, the world woke up. It was the funniest story that ever happened. And then it could have been the end, everyone slapping their knees, except no one got the joke, so they just kept living. It would take too much time to explain the joke, so everyone is very patient with each other, and humorless. We ruffle each others' hair, and pretend to be grumpy about this small consolation. If you catch someone's eye right after they see a balloon that someone has lost hold of, they will show you a piece of the infinite, blue chuckling music that we are deaf to. But it doesn't make them happy, for who likes to feel laughed at?

awake and not feeling anything particularly strong

And so I am just going to write and see what comes of it. An invitation into the night, into the mind spaces and the in-between places. Between one window of glowing light and the cathode ray signals I'm beaming out, or between mind and brain, between the fingers and my keys, perhaps that is where it really happens, mind and keys, fingers and keys, yes there's a dance going on, a dance I can't understand because (have you ever felt this way?) as soon as I think about it, I stop being able to type.

for a while.

THe way to keep myself functional functioning in motion is to keep myself from knowing what my hands are doing. IF not, I will steadily undermine all my own work with secret ninja thoughts sent by which half of my brain? the half that doesn't like me, sent to assassinate all my attempts to create something or be happy. I was happy in the midst of a sea of rain, I was happy floating in a dream somewhere beneath the pine trees, I was happy in my nest, in the soft warmth of silence, a cloudlike comfort, heavy and confining.

How do I keep myself conscious, when my instinct is to be ever wider, ever open, and embrace that which is most uncritical and free? I feel afraid, afraid to love too much, to be the firefly leaking sparks in every direction until I must fizzle out. It is uncontrolled, I am crashing and burning. And I like it. The hardest things for me are easiest for other people, and I will start with the basic premise they struggle with for their whole lives. Do I want to close down? There are people who could show me how, show me myself in the mirror if I wanted such things. What is the value of control? Learning it so you don't have to use it if you don't want to. Dammit, that means I should. It's a good thing there are counterterrorist cells in my mind, and spies and counterspies. Otherwise, I would have to make up far more for myself to do. IF I weren't self-sabotaging, imagine, I'd have to imagine a lot more. Have wizard's duels with people I met at the bus station. Not that I ever go to the bus station, but it seemed appropriately inappropriate. I am inappropriate. I laugh inappropriately. And I act this way when I'm sober. I act this way all the time. Do I act this way when I'm me?
How do I console myself, is feeling emotion just my indulgence, my bigger weakness, bitter, the emotions and the elements I'm drowning in, am i the vaguest Flower like the Little Prince's, not seeing anything in front of me, my reasons not making any but internal logic, what is my character's motivation? I worry somehow that metaphors fail me, and everyone else sees through being a hippie, they see in it something silly which escapes me. Perhaps I take myself too entirely serious when I should laugh, so that I do not laugh inappropriately as well as laughing inappropriately. In that case, and on that note, I will end this post by expressing the regret that I ate so many chocolates before bed. Though I cannot guarantee that such a thing will not befall me a second time. Temptation wiggles her fingers even now.

Shabby magic; some words and a handful of dust

As I spell I keep myself spellbound, fixed at my desk, fixed in my head. The words come flowing out, I read them, I read them or do they read me, but we remain aside from the world in a solitary love affair, in isolate reciprocity, ours the dying lovers' embrace. When will the words grow cold and stiff and press too tightly on me, corpse-white? Will I feel the growing horror, loathing as the thing nearest to me is revealed in its full monstrosity and hideous mockery of life? When will I curse fidelity? keeping me rooted in a loveless union out of fear, a miser grasping at sand, fists clenched, now emptying as the final grains tumble and with them, illusion.

Emanate

flight

How dull to be pinned like a bug to this earth, confined only to motorcars and reliant upon roads and contraptions. Oh, to move freely, to soar! To soar. To swoop low over fields, to see the hills come close, as if in embrace, and then to shoot up over it, to rise above it and be not encircled by the hills, not enclosed by the geography, able to see beyond it and to rush to the horizon with a puissant speed and solemnity, but in the intent, the forwardness, the hurtling, soaring flight, a joy, a delight, a rightness with the world, a glorying and a reveling in the air, the speed, the sky, oh god, the SKY, and control, a being-in-oneself, a being in one's element.

from my past self

Hi, I'm writing you a letter. I don't know if I could say this. Out loud, I mean. I say things in my head sometimes, to practice them, because they never sound right in my mouth, and i want it to come out right, but it doesn't. So I bounce things around in my head, to remind myself of what to say.
I'm always waiting. I don't know why, I just feel like that's how it works, and something should happen, someone should say something, like in books where something happens, always. I am always waiting, and no one comes, nothing happens, still and quiet, static. I watch, and I can't find anything big happening, like it does to the heroine in the story. So I read, and I hurl myself into the story so deeply I am the character, and the author, and the setting, and the time, just anything but me, and time stops, all the petty things stop, my body and my aches all stop, and I can be happy, or can will be happy, because it may be dark or depressing, but I know that there will be happiness, but more, not happiness, meaning, purpose. That's when I cry the most. I don't really cry, but I cry more than when I really cry, I cry deeper and maybe it never ends. Jolted out of the story, the plug pulled, my body snapping back, and this sinking sensation as I reorient myself, as I close the book, it/she/he/I screams No! Not back to that, don't go, stay and lose you and find me and ride the waves.
It's called emoting, isn't it? When you are in a story so deeply that you are riding the same emotional currents. I guard myself so much in the real world, but in a book or better, a movie, it's ok to relax, let go, because whatever happens, whichever rollercoaster turns plunge me through despair, rage, loss, I know that the ride will end in fulfillment.
If you take me to a movie, I don't know, would you? you can see me being the other person. It's so much safer to be this other person, because their life is planned out, and nothing bad can happen, or if it does, it will eventually come out right. I can't be me, because everything would be happening to me, all that nothing, like the universe saying one big NO.
Reading novels has left me so dissatisfied with life, with my life. I am wandering aimlessly, vaguely searching for something meaningful, grasping at shadows and elusive aromas that slide along the wind. I want real, but not this real, I want Everything to mean something, life that is like having a lunch of bread and cheese and an apple (macintosh) and cool water after a whole morning working in the garden, a full belly and the satisfaction of life (that's why fresh bread is so good, it's irresistible because it is life channeled into something, you work at it and turn it into life, and you eat it and it fills you, healthy and whole and completed in a way that sweets cannot imitate). But life is really for me like a box of chocolates, but not really a good quality kind of chocolate, more like the nestle junk. It tastes good that first moment, and you enjoy, but then you wonder why you ate it, you feel it, poor and shabby, like dirt, in your mouth, and you think of rich and exquisite things, and filling things, and then all the joy of eating has gone, and you want to spit it out, but you are left with the bitter after-chocolate tang. That is my despair. What I want is the water which tastes so much better, cool and singing from the tap, than any soda hissing when opened. I want full, and satisfied, and all I am is empty, with that tantalizing hint of chocolate, sensations of the strange, and I want more, more fantasy, even though I know it won't fill me, it can fill me, but just in a sickly way, a sickeningly empty way. I want to be full.

storm

Something in the night kept me from bed
an event, hanging in the distance, electrified
the still summer sky. Wide awake, despite the complaints of my exhausted body
only then did I realize fully the freedom of summer, to do anything I wanted,
the boundless sun powering my veins with
raw energy I never felt in winter,
the need to act, to move, to be in motion.
But the charged pause held me too, to wait, part of the calm, and it came.
the reason I was still awake at 2 am.

Storms are the most exciting thing that can happen
No one can stop them, and everyone, even important people
scurry inside, out of the rain.
The danger, the thrill of lightning in the air
fries all superficiality and manufacture and everything is
nature, man just another beast, cowering
in awe and fear of inevitable, majestic Nature.

The vanguard was a blast of warm wind,
rippling in the grass and tossing treetops
to show the silver underbellies of the leaves.
It rushed and trilled just beyond my window
and I pushed up the screen and stuck
my head out, letting the wind make my hair
a brown tangle as I tried to breathe in
the vitality of the tempest,
only ducking my head back in once the
tangles turned to heavy, damp ropes
and the rain came lashing down
shifting to slant through my window
at just the right angle so I had
to shut out the cooling breeze.
But then the light show began
tremendous cracks following
the blue blazes lighting the whole
familiar scene until long after
I could peer nearsightedly through
the fogging glass, and long after
my body shut down, propped against
a mound of pillows beneath the sill,
and the lightning played inside my eyelids
the rain washed through my dream
as I drifted through a sea of raindrops.

summer kiss

How silly to sleep in summer
with the heat and the restless sheets you kick
and find yourself in a web of nightmare bedding knots
and all you want is to run barefoot on the cool wet midnight grass and breathe
that secret quiet air refreshing itself, breathing the new air of tomorrow before anyone else.

hai... ku

How often are haikus
of cherry blossoms and yet
the trees still hold grace