It's Hard To Be Something When Nothing Is Such A Worthy Opponent
It’s not depression. It’s not. Depression is overly laden with connotations of sadness and it’s not sadness either. It’s not misery or pain or suffering or angst. It leans toward words like fatigue or exhaustion but quickly veers away, not those either. It’s not boredom, not dissatisfaction, not ennui. It’s not a piano or German chocolate cake or a little boy standing listlessly on the corner with his hands in his pockets. It’s definitely not a red wheelbarrow. Or those damn white chickens. And it’s not a guitar or a star or a vague memory of your grandfather’s pipe. This is not a pipe at all. It’s not a book or a beach or a fuzzy orange peach or a photograph of a stranger and so on. It’s not anything. It’s the notting of any thing that tries to stake a claim in thingliness. It’s Shiva dancing too fast for Brahma to keep up and something like a me laying in bed, x/0, not all the things I might possibly be in the flickering web of signification.
It occurs to me that I do not want to open another door and that this is not a metaphor. The thought of opening another door relies on too many unverifiable assumptions. Has something been dreaming? I am not this strange animal with these perplexing hands. Look at your hands. They’re fucking weird. And then to by some mysterious will that originates from nowhere extend this perplexing hand to the doorknob and turn? I can’t open one more door ever again in my life. I’m dumbfounded by the impossibly complex interactions between physics and biology and the gods. I know that I could, that I could blur all distinctions and open the door, but I don’t want to turn the knob, pull, and endure the translation between being inside and out. Outside, where I will act like a man, say hello to others, play parts, engage in transactions, exchanging cash for goods and services. The monotony of eating. The periodic pissing. The perpetual starvation for love eating holes in my stomach.
There are pills for this. There are telephones and people to call. There are places to go and rest for 30, 60, or 90 days. But, ultimately, I know there is only one thing to do that is guaranteed to work without fail every single time. I act quickly, decisively, with no hesitation and fling the door open in brutal opposition to my own will. In just a pair of shorts and black shoes I go outside, outside my head where a bigger thing begins to sing the song of its emergence, and I run for and from my life—hearing each footfall like a gunshot to my head, blasting all the thoughts free from my wildly beating heart.
Let’s do this another day. Let’s do this another day. Let’s do this another day.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Reader Comments (17)
That's the way. It passes. So glad you have the running.
Ah, beautiful.
I know all of this. I know it. I don't run, though. I wish I did, but it seems like another door I don't know how to open.
There is no door between me and the treadmill. I exhaust myself without covering any distance at all. Salvation with a bonus metaphor.
Sometimes I feel like this about taking a shit at 5:30 in the morning. Especially the "wildly beating heart" part.
When I'm running, I never know if I'm running towards, or away from myself. I always pass myself, somewhere.
Givin' myself a motherfuckin' highfive. A nod to myself. "Still here, arsehole?" Like that cartoon Ralph and Sam - remember that, from the eighties? Clocking on with their cards.
Us and our heads, trying to kill us again, every day. Then we clock off, walk home, and go to bed.
Sometimes it's running, sometimes it's just walking until I'm further from here than I am from there. Always my sweat is healing, the metronome of footfalls somehow makes it easier for me to think, process what is rattling around on my brain.
Keep putting on those shoes. Keep opening that door. Keep running.
I do love this. I've been filling my head with 14 specific words as opposed to the 7 million non helpful ones that attempt to crowd into my brain on a mintutely basis. And then I try to breathe.
Your comments hate me, I hope this one works.
Sweet!
Hands (and feet) are bizarre, I agree. But, I love what you see in them. The family line is easily apparent. And then there is the wear and tear. My father lost a finger when his arm got caught in a winch. I have two mangled ones from a surfing accident, my husband got the masculine version of his mother's hands, my son has hands just like my brother, etc.. Fascinating stuff.
Wonderful piece, BHJ. It took me on a little jaunt, too.
I'm starting a running program today. One foot in front of the other. I figure it can't hurt...much more than life itself.
Whatever you do, don't stop doing this. This writing that you do. It's transcendent.
Yes. I am still looking for my thing - something to do for me what running does for you.
Adore that last line.
Wow...stopped reading you about the time I stopped writing a few years ago...funny to see those letters BHJ on someone else's blogroll today. Looks like you've had a few changes in life. Me too. Peace.
~Leslie f/k/a Laggin Under the Roof
I started falling into that pit of desperate worry. It wasn't depression. No woe is me. It was more like a forboding feeling of something pressing the life right out of me. One prozac a day later, it's lifting. I'm trembling, literally not figuratively, so there is soon to be a switch in medication but I'm getting there.
I remember my happy place so clearly it falls like sunshine through tree leaves. I'm buying an expensive camera when I get my tax money back. I want to capture my happy place so I can go there any time I want to, I doubt the camera will do the job. It will get me closer though.
Keep opening those doors. Maybe one day I'll be on the other side to pull you through to reality and you can run circles around me as I walk. I move a bit slower than you...
Not a pipe, nor a moon glimpsed between blackened trees, not little hands & sure as hell not water lilies.
Sometimes though, sometimes it is in music.
Like Leonard said:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
Keep opening the doors. Keep running BHJ. Toward the light.