One Week

Erika thinks I should post a little more personally on this blog. Everything I have written so far is certainly personal to some extent because it relates to wehatever is on my mind. However, in answer to her challenge, I am including here a sort of emotional-metaphorical journal that I kept for just one week earlier this month. I don't expect it to be completely comprehensible - feelings aren't - but hopefully it evokes the sensation...

Thursday:
Today I am a lead sparrow. I am small and inconstant and unimportant. I am heavy and fixed. Just as indecisive as always – today, unable to make good on a single whim. Unable to do anything but stare and breathe – like a vacuum trying to suck water out of carpet. I am a vacuum trying to suck water out of carpet. And a lead sparrow – leaving poisonous traces in skin of people that touch me. But today people don’t touch me – I leave poisonous traces.

Friday:
A pigeon is inside the study centre. We chased it towards the door but it flew where we weren’t, its chin pumping frantically. It has been here all night but doesn’t want food. Even when we leave it alone it will not take the open door. It doesn’t care about being free. Only about being safe.

Today I am the signatured bullet – the atomic bomb – boring fast holes in both sides of a pigeon so sunlight can glow on its entrails. I am setting it free.

Saturday:
Today I am the lazy hand inside the puppet. Moving the mouth and tilting the head carelessly. Forgetting for hours to animate my false creation – losing the artifice. A disillusioned illusionist.
I finally feel rested today. I took a three-hour nap.
My hand has been cramping, my armpits sore and sweaty from holding the puppet above my head – I am worn out holding it above my head. And today it drooped in my lap and only talked when I remembered it. So I finally feel rested.

Sunday:
I am the foam at the tip of a wave, curling away from the fall, clinging against the wind. A tentative mountaineer. An uncertain victory. I am static shock building up in fingertips. Waiting to startle someone’s heartbeat. Waiting to set someone’s teeth. I am going crazy with waiting. But I am the terrified fingertips, curling back from metal knobs and car doors and foamy streams of water out of taps.
I am the foam at the tip of a wave – wondering if I will ever crest higher swells. I am waiting to fall back into the sea.

Monday:
Alone very much today. Alone at work, alone here, alone running the streets and in my car. I’m my new Mazda’s four pistons. Fuel injected into my head bursts the rest of me into tortuous shoving. I am moving – I am making myself move but I can’t see where or why. I am only pistons. Sealed in perfect, greasy loneliness to keep the explosions from setting my engine on fire. Getting burned myself – in solitude.

Tuesday:
I am a man, today. Not a pigeon or a Sasquatch. The Sasquatch has a compliant gait – I lock my knees when I walk. And the Sasquatch weighs 600 pounds.
I am a Kodak 16mm catching blurry, debatable footage of Big Foots. I am my own self-assured cynic. I am the senseless debate. I am debatable, blurry, imaginary. But I persist in being. I am a boy.

Wednesday:
I am whatever you want. I am fun, severe, empathic – I belong to you. But don’t get comfortable, don’t feed on me too much. “Are you listening? This concerns you gentlemen.” By tomorrow I will be new, harder, less malleable: a lead sparrow – leaving poisonous traces in your bloodstream. Tomorrow I will be.

Thursday:
Tonight was the measly opening night of our play. And tonight was me not getting the refugee job and my wife depressed about it. And driving home from the play feeling dirty.

I am the slavering tongue being forced to the edges of my mouth. The cracking corners of lips. I am the convulsing hand, grasping at my costume. I am the evil leaking out of an upright shell. I am the unsuccessful actor. The unbelievable fraud. I am evil. I am trying to be light because I think I am light. But I’m not fooling anyone. My act is the corners, points, edges of my soul poking through the stretched-smooth bottom of my plastic shopping bag. I am a stretched shopping bag.