Not being in altercations all too often, I find myself greatly out of practice. I get jittery, short of breath and my heart races the second I engage in any act confrontational. I still have my answers, but the delivery is too quick and extra sneer so the co-confronter probably writes it off as a melodramatic ephemeral flutter instead of the cold, hard truth.  

The subject of the altercation? Home decorating.  I don't pretend to be better than any accredited designer, architect, interior decorator, acclaimed artist, etc. etc. I only assert that I was born with some sort of artistic sense more devloped than the average, and it is exactly that which draws me into such creative endeavors as redecorating the brand new blank canvas of an empty house that we moved into. I don't have many creative outlets these days, so when something comes along to inspire, its an automatic response that I be involved or make myself involved. All I have is an eye, that has not been cultivated nearly enough, and that is far inferior to many other great talents and learned people, but it is better than my mom's. Not only is it better due to nature, I have been researching and reading and thrusting myself into every design resource on the internet I can find. I'm about to buy the book. Granted its not a degree, but I'm learning the rules, the basics, and that's better than not knowing anything at all. Room function, focal points, furniture placement, balancing objects spacially, balancing weight, where symmetry is useful, where it is not, design problems, design positives, picking an inspiration piece from which you will draw your color palette, dividing space into 8x14 conversational squares in a large room, putting an eye-catcher below a window to extend the room ---SEE, just look at all I've learned. Well, I guess because my mom asked my help for such and such...or I sat at Home Depot for 3 hours helping her decide how she wanted her kitchen, or milled over color swatches at the dinner table various evenings...I guess I am only allowed to give input when I'm asked, and that I don't speak unless spoken to.

This is not a struggle over space or color or anything except for control. Somehow every attempt at a suggestion I make shakes her grip, loosens it, it's like there's some power struggle for her, yet all I want is for the house to be aesthetically pleasing. I suppose one man's trash is another's treasure...and she can have a pedestrian, suburban, mismatched, mediocre, jarring, aesthetically dead brand new colonial if she wants. It's not my house; she's right about that. But she has an eye for fake oak finishes, an eye for shiny yellow-gold plated thin metal framed mirrors, an eye for peach where it doesn't belong, a taste for pushing all your furniture up against the perimeter, a taste for color monotony in a room, remnant area rugs. And it's all trash as far as I'm concerned. She's certainly worked long enough and hard enough to have it her way. Maybe that's what this is about.

I'm saying I'm better. I'm saying I'm better at this, and it's like she won't admit it. I didn't want to let go of the wales green walls in the comp room, but I haven't pushed about anything else. I've been to that place before where I had the expert educated background in something, pushed and it resulted in catastrophe. Why is it so hard for someone to yield to another person who just knows more about what you're doing than you do? Isn't it a tad bit more egotistical to act as if you know better or refuse the help of someone who is even just a wee bit more knowledgeable than you? If the difference is distinguishable, I say yield. Yes, maybe there are one or two blue moon cases when the expert faultered and you-the lay person-had some nugget of knowledge you garnered from some strange late-night special documentary. But other than freak cases, the people born with it, the people who studied it, and the people who've lived it generally know what they're talking about, generally know more than you, and generally are right about it...and you don't and aren't. I don't think it's so difficult to yield, which is why this is about power and control, not my artistic merit. If you've paid your dues to sing the blues, be it through education, experience, therapy or god-given talent, I will most likely yield to your suggestion, 'specially if you are good at justifying it. I actually usually feel like an idiot that I tried to sound as if I knew more than you, and then I shut up. The only time I won't is when I have learned something else, contrary to what the subject at hand is saying, a person I feel to be more in-the-know, educated, or experienced in the matter. Like that fluke late night documentary. Or my dad's best friend who happens to do it too. Then I'll argue, if I have enough to even contest, otherwise I yield...or smile and think about how I should have read that book or paid attention better.  

It's not my job to decorate the fucking house. She will, and it will look okay. You won't walk in and think a designer had anything to do with it, she won't follow the rules, she's break all the design dont's; it'll look sloppy even when it's tidy, it'll look unfinished even when it's done, it'll feel unbalanced, out of center. It won't be an eyesore, but it won't be an aesthetic pleasure either. It's fine to break the rules once you know them because then you know how and why rules should be broken. But she doesn't know them, doesn't get them when she reads them, because she wasn't born with it and hasn't been educated about it, so what else is there? She acts like she doesn't care, but I know if we had that kind of money, she'd hire a designer. We don't, and I guess in my mind I'm the next best thing. If she doesn't see it that way, she's lost total confidence in me. Perhaps I have to "produce" something every matter of years in order to keep my claim staked as the family artsy. Actually, I don't think it's either, I really just think it's power, control. I've perhaps overstayed my welcome and, in regular gen-y fashion, should have abandoned the nest months ago.

RECOGNIZE

Someone can do enough to change your mind.  Someone can do enough to take it all away. There is a threshold that can be crossed by one single person that allows time to reverse itself and all in between to be forgotten. If I let time slip through this sieve where I am merely an observationist, an on-looker, a passenger, a by-stander and I stand to let the wind blow me over and watch the beams of bridges fall into rivers that soak them up and all their parts aflame and reckless with debris --if all I can do is stand and let my own civilization crumble before me while time is whirling all around me and I let go of every intention to catch a second flying by...if I just let him and all the tresspasses you can muster in your mind that have built over months of distortion, suspicion, impurity, if I let them all pile around and drop mid-air at my feet. I would be in the eye of a vast love and all around me the world could be circling and pitching an armageddon but he could traverse any destruction with a word, walk through a wall of water twelve feet thick and balance on the breath of the earth's last rattle. He could do enough, he could say enough, to change time...to resurrect and maybe if it were enough as it would be, I could believe it all again. There is nothing that one person is not capable of if he gives enough of himself. He could un-hurt, unburn, remove from me everything, everything that I cannot change myself; heal me. It is possible to forget and unlearn what burdens and throw off all crosses and level each scar if only the wounder could forfeit enough, could prove enough, could sacrifice as we have, could combust before our eyes in grief and rise from the ash of remorse. He could give birth to a new consciousness that knew nothing of the past, anew so truthful that all that fell before was lies and plagued dreams and this is the new reality. What kind of deaths I would die in his embrace, in the forgiven state, in the forgotten state, completely free and detached from everything I had known up to that beating second.

I think for the innocent and idealistic romantic, the virgin lover, there is only one capable of saving you. Only one that can retrieve all the injustice of years of abandon, wipe away the residue of pain upon pain unresolved, an iron-ore cast and wrenched round the heart, fill the trench dug of all those quintessential tears ---and that's the first. My imagination can only deny the rest of my mind for a moment, but its long enough to see it, to know it. I can't be happy now. I'll always be fighting my disbelief, struggling without avail to destroy my penchant for mistrust forced on me, my ghosts and shadows erected because once I trusted everyone, and now I trust none. He could do enough if he knew it, if he could, there is an amount, a great and egregious amount, but it still has a limit, it is finite and possible. There is some energy enough in me to withhold all my intolerable knowledge for that moment, where I can see it and feel nothing but what I once felt when I was scarless, my unwounded soul. It would require nothing of me and everything of him...to change his status quo misery and denounce his decadent commitment to sloth, allowing life to rush over him with ill-laid plans, half-efforts, never finished starts, retreats to ephemeral gratifications, mediocre events that confirm his own false-faith in his worth; it would require him to see instead of willing a complacent blindness. One of the most unlikely pursuits for someone whose impulsive efforts are routinely devoured by distraction, frequent bouts of depression, self-doubt and destructive behavior. The catalyst is the only agent for true reconciliation, for absolution of the past. Newer love can dull the spearhead of the fatal sling and arrow, but what hurt remains can never be effaced but by the hand of the one who caused it. Enough can be done however improbable; capable. A cause is lost when the means do not bear way to the end. You may say, I wish I could take away your pain. But you can...you can, it's whether you will endeavor. It's whether you will stay. It's whether you will strike yourself in my name, bleed a constant blood, fall through ranks of fevers and fail a thousand times only to fail a thousand more and wonder when it's enough.

My brain is going to mush too. I think about nothing, or continually exercise the same tired thoughts and relive the same tired memories. I have no other synaptic connections to make except for the shit I've gone through in the past few months. No wonder the hole seems so deep.  I got so damn excited the other night when someone had Kafka in his apartment I almost wet myself. I need to start thinking about new things. Start---I don't know what it is to start things anymore.

I am so full of fear, so full of it. When its put in plain text like that, I know exactly the answer to the incourageable equation.

Other people have worse things to worry about, but I'm still stuck, STILL. I am not stuck in the same way, the shit I'm stuck in evolves and so do the feelings with it, but I'm still not moving. I have been having these recurring dreams about him...like the past three or four nights I have experienced a string of dreams, and the kick-off dream was one of those dreams that changes how you feel about the person in reality. I generally dislike those dreams because they confuse me. The first one was us getting back together or me seeing him and being able to ask all the questions about the girls that came in between the time when we broke up until present time. And I didn't like the answers, none of them, I hated all the answers and they made me feel more displaced, more disoriented. Maybe my love is dying this time. Maybe that's the sadness I am finally coming to terms with. But it doesn't feel that way; it feels like my heart is breaking all over again. Actually, it feels more like a folding over, such as when you take a piece of maleable plastic and make a crease in it and keep bending it back and forth and back and forth and it gets that white linear path along the supposed break line, but just never breaks.

Some more very shitty lyrics but relevant when taken out of context:

Because of you
I never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side
So I don't get hurt
Because of you
I find it hard to trust
Not only me, but everyone around me
Because of you
I am afraid 

Because of you
I never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side
So I don't get hurt
Because of you
I tried my hardest just to forget everything
Because of you
I don't know how to let anyone else in
Because of you
I'm ashamed of my life because it's empty
Because of you
I am afraid

Because of you
Because of you

I think he's here. Or he's planning on being here. I always liked to think myself capable of prophetic dreams, and it has only happened once or twice before, especially when I don't know where these dreams are coming from and it just seems a more likely explanation that I am tapped into some ethereal cosmic flow of energy.  I received an IM on yahoo messenger from him a couple weeks ago, something like "Hey...I hope this is your address (but never included my address), I got so much to tell you, first thing, I miss you, well, talk to you soon, bye for now." I think I remembered that nearly verbatim but didn't bother reading it more than twice nor did I save it like I have saved so many other of our correspondences. It didn't even occur to me to do either of the above, and I should at least laud myself for that progress. 

It would be nice to finally understand myself or why I keep having these feelings now that this has been put to rest for so long. I keep putting everything off in my life but am daily more aware of my aging. I am aware of the bad things, of the evil things and I keep getting these psychotic suspicions that God is dead and satan rules the world. I feel afraid of everything, but desiring even moreso to get out and do all that I used to do. I used to do it, I used to love it, why don't I now? Why is it so hard to like what I used to, or just do things as I used to.  I used to be naive and blind and idealistic and where did all this go? I want my innocence back, and I don't mean innocence as childish innocence, I mean my belief that I could change the world and that all I have to offer is worth something and that the world around me is what I make it instead of what it makes of me. I am still feeling very much the victim, vulnerable, set out in the clear for all the predators to see. Will I ever regain my sense of self, throw off the feeling of alienation and victimization? I trusted someone more than my family, was willing to sacrifice everything, and he betrayed my trust and abandoned me and in the same second acted like it mattered naught that he did these things and that I deserved what I got. I feel like I'm being punished...Catholic upbringing. This universe is godless now, I hope someone is ultimately happy.

I'm on the head of a pin.

Everything I do goes against all that I think.

I need to make my self-control.

I haven't updated in an exorbitant amount of time, and it isn't too late, and I started to feel guilty for isidore checking and checking to no avail! P.S. (prescript) I like your entry on the fielddays.  You captured the misery and the mirth perfectly. I wish I didn't have that panic attack! Wicked ...

I can say now that the fog has partially lifted. This was somewhat inspired by a painful episode of nostalgia that occurred when I was trying to go through some of my old things that are heaped in boxes in the garage and cellar. I described it as my past being gutted and spilt around. I found an e-mail correspondence that had occurred between us when he was still Shane. How high above him I was, how far below was he.  At first I was repelled by my former self, and exiled again given my outside viewing of my previous faultlessness. He was so weak, and scraping for a one frame insult, scraping all the same as he was telling me how drawn in he was. Spewing insults but circling back to me and how somehow I was all worth it.  And this was only in October of 2003, two months before he moved to the US and I got that fated call.  Fucker then, and I was aloof. I was great. At first it was a shock, but soon after I abandoned my organizing and contacted a couple of people I had in my premordial address book. The original displacement I felt when directly confronting a past full of aloneness and contentment and invulnerability had somehow shifted into a pillar, a small one, but somehow erected in the dark.

I wanted to discuss this in therapy tonight but when I got there, the bottom door was locked and I couldn't get to her office, so I called the office phone and it was set at two rings then voicemail.  I waited 20 minutes and then left a note on her car on graph paper and left. I went home, baked brownies, she called, apologized, rescheduled, and mom walked in the door equipped with half moons.

So this past weekend, my nostalgia caused me to converse with this guy named Greg that I haven't spoken to in years. We met on the internet in highschool when I was an addict with no cure in sight, and then met for real my soph year of college.  It didn't go anywhere, not that it was particularly headed in a direction, but it was one of those things where, after you meet, it becomes apparent that the apex was the meeting itself and not what was was supposed to come thereafter.

Greg talked to me about energy. Astral fields, auras, energy sharing, out of body experiences, all things that he takes with a considerable force and seriousness. He backed it up with a tiny discussion of physics and brief mathematics. He told me he had proof to validate the ability for two people to make an energetic connection when they are distances apart.  This was the apotheotic O, the O of all ages, the O that'll make a believer out of you.  We had a good conversation, all in depth about this, and then this moved to the phone. We were hours into discussing the physics of emotions, the plane of existence of energy and its interaction in one's regular life, etc..we were miles into it, and I questioning and questioning at every turn. He said he had to be careful not to fall for me, very careful indeed. Somehow I had resurrected something that I thought incapable of resurrecting because it never existed to begin with.

...Phone...