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Monday, November 03, 2003
*Misc Journaling of Memories
Well, that last post was rather hideous *shudder, twitch, twitch*, but I have decided to leave it up as a form of self flagellation or perhaps in hopes that someone in this big wide world will find it at least slightly amusing. I did when I was writing it, and you know when you are writing it, you always think to yourself "This is the work of a pure genius! Holy crap, this is amazing!" But then by the time someone else gets around to reading it, the magic lights have dimmed and the little fairies that danced around the paper have gone for a smoke break and the critic looks at you with a strangely questioning look and you stutter, "But, but...". And that's your precious piece will ever be, a but-butt, consigned to sit on your shelf with the rest of the but-butts (mostly every work you have ever done) and gather dust in the far corner. Sadly, I fear for the life of my writing. Morale is running rather low among the troops, and I haven't written anything good or interesting for months now. If you happen to like a particular piece, I have probably rehashed it from some previous age when everything was new and creative. My Vadel piece, I have looked at again and again (working on it since the end of September - still only seven pages) and decided that number one, I am bored out of my mind (I get bored very easily) and number two, it is not any good and to make it good would require untold boring hours on my part, by which time I would find no enjoyment in the finished piece anyway after spending so much time on it.
Oh puff and bother.
I need something to write about, something that sparks my interest, something that is new and exciting. Once when I moved I couldn't attend school for various reasons [though through no fault of my own] I took up writing. Sometimes I would write for ten hours a day, hundreds and hundreds of handwritten pages in total. It was partly an escape from reality, and partly because I loved it so much. I wish that I felt that way again, that passionate, that dedicated. You know what else I would do? I would walk down to the mall, the main shopping area in town, and just walk around. There was this wall in the food court that had windows all along the top and then the whole wall was completely covered in foliage and in my mind, I always equated it to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. I loved that place and always wondered why the malls back home didn't do it. It looked so peaceful. And I would go and look through the stores. They had a San Diego [a perverse store in some places, but still with many things that I always wanted to buy, like their dolphin, wolf, and fairy figurines that always sparked my imagination] and a furniture store with wooden, satellite-like beds that could be turned into couches just by readjusting their position on the stand. Sometimes I would go and see a movie all by myself. But most of the time, I would just stay home, seek a quiet space and just write. I had been given a cassette player for Christmas, and had bought a tape before leaving home. The cover had a man's face with his turtle neck pulled up over his mouth [now that I am thinking about it, it was very symbolic - the title was "Speechless"]. I listened to that tape all day when I was writing and things were just too noisy for me to handle and all night when there were fights down the hall, when I wanted to shut out the world. Every night I would cry [we all learned how to cry silently] and cry, for nothing it seemed. I couldn't really put words to it, but it was this inexpressible trauma, this inexpressible pulling and stretching of me, too tight, until I felt I would snap. I always felt as if I were a clothes line, slowly being reeled in tighter and tighter, and as long as nothing happened, as long as no wind blew, I would be fine. But everyday, another crow would come and land on my line, and I'd hold my breath and hold my breath, straining evermore to keep myself together.
Valentines Day, I remember Valentines Day. I went over to the mall and bought Mum a rose and a "love bug" [a stuffed animal - a lady bug, that had hearts instead of spots] and brought them home and drew her a picture of a rose in a glass vase in a window and set them on her night stand. I knew she would be lonely that day for someone to love [I always felt responsible that way] and she cried, but I wish she hadn't. It's not a responsible thing to cry in front of other people, and in a sense, it was childish. You shouldn't cry on other people who are going through the same thing as you, people who are just as stressed as you, that is selfish when it really doesn't help you and only puts that much more on everybody else. But at the same time, I felt a flush of pleasure that my gift meant that much to her.
There was this other time when we had a bomb threat on our building from some angry ex-husband, and the police woke us up and we all had to meet downstairs in the livingroom while we all went through our stuff, looking for anything that could be suspicious. That was a bit unnerving, but they didn't find anything to speak of, so I just went back to bed, although with still a lingering doubt in my mind over whether I would suddenly hear a huge bang and be rudely awakened yet again but this time by falling down into the livingroom, because the ceiling had given in.
In the quietroom [their new age speak for livingroom] there were these romance novels that someone donated - not just a few, not just a shelf, hundreds of them. Mum always called them women's porn, so only rarely, when I was dying for something to read, and I knew she was out, would I grab one. One in particular I began to read, it was something about Mary Morgan [meri morgan - woman of the sea] and a mermaids curse. I didn't get very far into it because of the rare times it was available for me to read and because it soon progressed into a very sensual book, that did not quite meet my standards for literature.
They had this big bay window in the quietroom, with this old Victorian couch in it [all of the furniture was from donations, so the room had no noticeable decor to speak of] with some sort of bright red floral material. I used to sit on it, looking out the window at the busy street down below, watching the snow come down. But then one morning the couch was moved and the window had the shades pulled down. It wasn't safe to look out the window anymore, someone could see me.
The adults would have these meetings at night about how not to be abused, and we were never allowed in on them, even though I didn't assume they would be very interesting, I wanted in on one, just for curiosity's sake. We would have to be in bed, even though it was only nine o'clock at night. I was sixteen at the time, and a nine o'clock bedtime was really quite insulting for my gentle teenaged ego. Gradually, they relaxed their rules and I watched TV in the TV room until they were done. I didn't spend much of my time in that room, and really I don't remember what it looked like, except in reference to this lady who had diabetes and always forgot [or disremembered, whichever it was] to take her insulin. We were watching TV together and gradually, she sank lower and lower into her chair, and fell down onto the floor. I was too unnerved to tell anyone about it [the staff weren't as approachable as they liked to believe, plus their being in a meeting made it an extra taboo], so I left and a little while later I saw an ambulance had come to give her insulin. I breathed a sigh of relief, but still lived with an overwhelming feeling of guilt for many weeks to come [and indeed it pangs me still].
If you've made it down to the bottom of this post, I give you congratulations. I realize that it is rather long, but nonetheless, it was not placed here for easy or entertaining readings. It was not even placed here for you, but rather for me, to express things always left unsaid, to become one whose name will not always be "Speechless".
© 2003 All rights reserved MJ Jackson
This article may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the permission of the author.
Oh puff and bother.
I need something to write about, something that sparks my interest, something that is new and exciting. Once when I moved I couldn't attend school for various reasons [though through no fault of my own] I took up writing. Sometimes I would write for ten hours a day, hundreds and hundreds of handwritten pages in total. It was partly an escape from reality, and partly because I loved it so much. I wish that I felt that way again, that passionate, that dedicated. You know what else I would do? I would walk down to the mall, the main shopping area in town, and just walk around. There was this wall in the food court that had windows all along the top and then the whole wall was completely covered in foliage and in my mind, I always equated it to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. I loved that place and always wondered why the malls back home didn't do it. It looked so peaceful. And I would go and look through the stores. They had a San Diego [a perverse store in some places, but still with many things that I always wanted to buy, like their dolphin, wolf, and fairy figurines that always sparked my imagination] and a furniture store with wooden, satellite-like beds that could be turned into couches just by readjusting their position on the stand. Sometimes I would go and see a movie all by myself. But most of the time, I would just stay home, seek a quiet space and just write. I had been given a cassette player for Christmas, and had bought a tape before leaving home. The cover had a man's face with his turtle neck pulled up over his mouth [now that I am thinking about it, it was very symbolic - the title was "Speechless"]. I listened to that tape all day when I was writing and things were just too noisy for me to handle and all night when there were fights down the hall, when I wanted to shut out the world. Every night I would cry [we all learned how to cry silently] and cry, for nothing it seemed. I couldn't really put words to it, but it was this inexpressible trauma, this inexpressible pulling and stretching of me, too tight, until I felt I would snap. I always felt as if I were a clothes line, slowly being reeled in tighter and tighter, and as long as nothing happened, as long as no wind blew, I would be fine. But everyday, another crow would come and land on my line, and I'd hold my breath and hold my breath, straining evermore to keep myself together.
Valentines Day, I remember Valentines Day. I went over to the mall and bought Mum a rose and a "love bug" [a stuffed animal - a lady bug, that had hearts instead of spots] and brought them home and drew her a picture of a rose in a glass vase in a window and set them on her night stand. I knew she would be lonely that day for someone to love [I always felt responsible that way] and she cried, but I wish she hadn't. It's not a responsible thing to cry in front of other people, and in a sense, it was childish. You shouldn't cry on other people who are going through the same thing as you, people who are just as stressed as you, that is selfish when it really doesn't help you and only puts that much more on everybody else. But at the same time, I felt a flush of pleasure that my gift meant that much to her.
There was this other time when we had a bomb threat on our building from some angry ex-husband, and the police woke us up and we all had to meet downstairs in the livingroom while we all went through our stuff, looking for anything that could be suspicious. That was a bit unnerving, but they didn't find anything to speak of, so I just went back to bed, although with still a lingering doubt in my mind over whether I would suddenly hear a huge bang and be rudely awakened yet again but this time by falling down into the livingroom, because the ceiling had given in.
In the quietroom [their new age speak for livingroom] there were these romance novels that someone donated - not just a few, not just a shelf, hundreds of them. Mum always called them women's porn, so only rarely, when I was dying for something to read, and I knew she was out, would I grab one. One in particular I began to read, it was something about Mary Morgan [meri morgan - woman of the sea] and a mermaids curse. I didn't get very far into it because of the rare times it was available for me to read and because it soon progressed into a very sensual book, that did not quite meet my standards for literature.
They had this big bay window in the quietroom, with this old Victorian couch in it [all of the furniture was from donations, so the room had no noticeable decor to speak of] with some sort of bright red floral material. I used to sit on it, looking out the window at the busy street down below, watching the snow come down. But then one morning the couch was moved and the window had the shades pulled down. It wasn't safe to look out the window anymore, someone could see me.
The adults would have these meetings at night about how not to be abused, and we were never allowed in on them, even though I didn't assume they would be very interesting, I wanted in on one, just for curiosity's sake. We would have to be in bed, even though it was only nine o'clock at night. I was sixteen at the time, and a nine o'clock bedtime was really quite insulting for my gentle teenaged ego. Gradually, they relaxed their rules and I watched TV in the TV room until they were done. I didn't spend much of my time in that room, and really I don't remember what it looked like, except in reference to this lady who had diabetes and always forgot [or disremembered, whichever it was] to take her insulin. We were watching TV together and gradually, she sank lower and lower into her chair, and fell down onto the floor. I was too unnerved to tell anyone about it [the staff weren't as approachable as they liked to believe, plus their being in a meeting made it an extra taboo], so I left and a little while later I saw an ambulance had come to give her insulin. I breathed a sigh of relief, but still lived with an overwhelming feeling of guilt for many weeks to come [and indeed it pangs me still].
If you've made it down to the bottom of this post, I give you congratulations. I realize that it is rather long, but nonetheless, it was not placed here for easy or entertaining readings. It was not even placed here for you, but rather for me, to express things always left unsaid, to become one whose name will not always be "Speechless".
© 2003 All rights reserved MJ Jackson
This article may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the permission of the author.
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