I know my own kind. We're obvious to each other. . .My own kind. I'm not sure there's a name for us. I suspect we're born this way: our hearts screwed in tight, already a little broken. We hate sentimentality and yet we're deeply sentimental. Low-grade Romantics. Tough but susceptible. Afflicted by parking lots, empty courtyards, nostalgic pop music. When we cried for no reason as babies, just hauled off and wailed, our parents seemed to know, instinctively, that it wasn't diaper rash or colic. It was something deeper that they couldn't find a comfort for, though the good ones tried mightily, shaking rattles like maniacs and singing "Happy Birthday" a little louder than called for. We weren't morose little kids. We could be really happy. Once there may have been an early tribe of us. We'd have done alright at cave wall art, less so at hunting. We'd only have started a war if traumatically bored. (Boredom is our most dangerous mood.) But most likely we broke up and scattered. The number one cause; overwhelming distraction. . .I wanted Normal, and I was willing to accept the bargain. First, you hand over some basics -- overwhelming joy, existential angst, a giving-in to desire, etc. And then you promise to withstand talking idly about the weather, to encourage cliche, to uphold the virtues of average. You hand over the need to be understood and, in return, you get a bar of Normal soap. And you can wash in it and be daily reborn to a safe world of modest, enduring love or, at least, mild, well-mannered bonding. -"Which brings me to you""I can't manage my way through this feeling because my mind isn't working,and because it, the flesh in which i'm housed, hasn't yet become me.""On the first floor near the foot of the stairs, we have placed on the wall an antique mirror so old that it can't reflect anything anymore. Its surface, worn down to nubbled grainy gray stubs, has lost one of its dimensions. Like me, it's glimmerless. You can't see into it now, just past it. Depth has been replaced by texture. The mirror gives back nothing and makes no productive claim on anyone. The mirror has been so completely worn away that you have to learn to live with what it refuses to do. That's its beauty.""Life and love is just like deer in headlights: terrified, blind, and wait to die. I wonder when they'll come get me..."
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Marah Johnson This layout was handmade with love by the folks at My space or yours? Go get one!
