It is after 1 a.m. and my brain is hopping like a frog on a skillet but my body wants to go back to sleep. Sinus Tylenol is not to be taken before bed. Sudefed will get me every time.
Not even trains in the distance to listen to tonight. When we lived for a brief time in Illinois and I couldn't sleep I would drag my pillow and my notebook into the bathroom and write and listen to the trains through the metal vent over the bath tub. A soft 'hoo-hoo' made hummy as it came through the metal. A sound that reminded me of home and lying in my bed. I could hear the trains very well then and I would pretend I was lying in an upper berth and was being taken away from the screaming and the hitting and confusion and the fear. Taken to my real world, the place I knew I belonged. An 1980's princess living in a golden tower in NYC where I would wake up in the morning and ride in a limo to the School of the Arts or to MOMA or shopping or maybe just lie in bed safe and read. Where servants would flit quietly in the background making life perfect and leave me alone.
I am smoking in the bedroom. Bad! Bad! It might wake He Who Must Not Be Disturbed. But tonight I don't care. I only have a few packs left until I become clean again and there for since I got em' I'm going to smoke them.
Where was I? Oh, yes trains. Here, I just need to crack the window a little bit and I can even here trains clacking over the tracks late at night. There's a gravel place or something a few blocks away and I think they load at night. (someone obviously never played SimCity when they planned the placement of that) I can hear the whistle quite well and I like it. Have always loved the sound of the train's whistle. When Shelle and Katy were little they had a large wooden whistle that made the sound of a train's whistle and I loved to blow on that thing more than they did.
I read my first Joyce Carol Oats book tonight and am working on my second. First Love was first and now I'm going through a collection of short stories. Haunted I think it is called. I wonder if the the woman knows she is damaged? She obviously went to the Bob school of writing.
"You need to add more sex to your stories." He tells me. "It should have sex."
"But my story isn't about sex." I say.
"Everything is about sex," he says. "And piss and shit and every other dirty thing you can think of."
I say nothing. I'm offended that the words are said to me and I don't want it. I know it's not at me and he's not being a dirty old man and that is how people from his generation, people who have lived through the wars and the poor times and the 60's and 70's doing what he did feel. More than that, they really believe.
I can tell by reading their books, their memoirs, listening to their music and watching their movies. How can I make him understand that the X'ers aren't that way. We don't give a shit. We've got other issues. And we want to believe in rainbows and dammit we want our fricken' happy endings and we are mighty pissed that someone stole it all away. What the hell happened to Mayberry? Why did they have to screw it all up? How are we going to fix this mess that life has become?
He tells me I am ignoring my own pain, my own past, my own experiences, that I need to relive them and write them. That is what I should do. I am writing crap if I don't write them because that is what life is.
I am living it every day, even on the days that I don't actively think about these things they are on a permanent loop in my psyche to be called to the forefront by a single word, a phrase, a scent, or a sound? And some memory or other will suddenly blaze to life in gory living color and I literally have to catch my breath and push it away. Push it back and make it go into the background where it belongs? I am pretty sure there are things swimming around in the hellish soup of my memory that really do not need to disturbed or called out again. Things that are just on the edge that want to be touched and screamed at again and I don't want to go there.
Read more...
It is after 1 a.m. and my brain is hopping like a frog on a skillet but my body wants to go back to sleep. Sinus Tylenol is not to be taken before bed. Sudefed will get me every time.
Not even trains in the distance to listen to tonight. When we lived for a brief time in Illinois and I couldn't sleep I would drag my pillow and my notebook into the bathroom and write and listen to the trains through the metal vent over the bath tub. A soft 'hoo-hoo' made hummy as it came through the metal. A sound that reminded me of home and lying in my bed. I could hear the trains very well then and I would pretend I was lying in an upper berth and was being taken away from the screaming and the hitting and confusion and the fear. Taken to my real world, the place I knew I belonged. An 1980's princess living in a golden tower in NYC where I would wake up in the morning and ride in a limo to the School of the Arts or to MOMA or shopping or maybe just lie in bed safe and read. Where servants would flit quietly in the background making life perfect and leave me alone.
I am smoking in the bedroom. Bad! Bad! It might wake He Who Must Not Be Disturbed. But tonight I don't care. I only have a few packs left until I become clean again and there for since I got em' I'm going to smoke them.
Where was I? Oh, yes trains. Here, I just need to crack the window a little bit and I can even here trains clacking over the tracks late at night. There's a gravel place or something a few blocks away and I think they load at night. (someone obviously never played SimCity when they planned the placement of that) I can hear the whistle quite well and I like it. Have always loved the sound of the train's whistle. When Shelle and Katy were little they had a large wooden whistle that made the sound of a train's whistle and I loved to blow on that thing more than they did.
I read my first Joyce Carol Oats book tonight and am working on my second. First Love was first and now I'm going through a collection of short stories. Haunted I think it is called. I wonder if the the woman knows she is damaged? She obviously went to the Bob school of writing.
"You need to add more sex to your stories." He tells me. "It should have sex."
Read more..."But my story isn't about sex." I say.
"Everything is about sex," he says. "And piss and shit and every other dirty thing you can think of."
I say nothing. I'm offended that the words are said to me and I don't want it. I know it's not at me and he's not being a dirty old man and that is how people from his generation, people who have lived through the wars and the poor times and the 60's and 70's doing what he did feel. More than that, they really believe.
I can tell by reading their books, their memoirs, listening to their music and watching their movies. How can I make him understand that the X'ers aren't that way. We don't give a shit. We've got other issues. And we want to believe in rainbows and dammit we want our fricken' happy endings and we are mighty pissed that someone stole it all away. What the hell happened to Mayberry? Why did they have to screw it all up? How are we going to fix this mess that life has become?
He tells me I am ignoring my own pain, my own past, my own experiences, that I need to relive them and write them. That is what I should do. I am writing crap if I don't write them because that is what life is.
I am living it every day, even on the days that I don't actively think about these things they are on a permanent loop in my psyche to be called to the forefront by a single word, a phrase, a scent, or a sound? And some memory or other will suddenly blaze to life in gory living color and I literally have to catch my breath and push it away. Push it back and make it go into the background where it belongs? I am pretty sure there are things swimming around in the hellish soup of my memory that really do not need to disturbed or called out again. Things that are just on the edge that want to be touched and screamed at again and I don't want to go there.