filing time (2)

If I wanted to punch you would you hold still? Pardon me while I empty my brain. I'll plug some kind of vacuum device into my cranium and let things go.

To-day I made a new friend and I killed another. (I will not graduate with a degree in Music, it will be a Bachelor of Vagueness and Cryptology. Something wants me to think that "cryptology" is a real word.) If I wait a while and chill a bit, I think think the good will outweigh the bad. Not only do I scream at the world on a regular basis but it somehow refuses to talk back. Writing that now made me think of something I wrote three years ago. I am a writer at heart; know that.

--

ٱ

I am in a box. I don’t know how many sides there are because my eyes are flooded with tears. It doesn’t matter; I know that. Each and every side I bang on bruises my hands and grates my knuckles identically. They’re all the same; relentlessly captivating. I tried to guess how many sides there were by counting the number of echoes. I keep screaming at the top of my lungs; the walls all absorb the sound and pass it to each other, like some twisted game of keep-away. And I can never count all the reverberations because soon I’m screaming or crying again.
As much as these walls appear to mock me, they don’t really know what it is that they ridicule. I know that even metal would sympathize if it knew I was screaming, "YOU’RE HURTING ME! LET ME OUT!" Cold hard steel really does have an ounce of decency in it somewhere, believe it or not. But right now, these steel walls' number one priority is being steel walls. They want me to stay within them to admire the handy work. The texture, the joints, the perfect ninety-degree angles, the color, the temperature: by their own standards, they are very good walls. I recognize that and I would tell them that if they would just turn around and face me. Apparently, a wall takes its compliments best with its back turned and mind pre-occupied.
This much screaming and sobbing is hard on the human lungs. I am strong but I cannot survive without Oxygen any better than the rest of us. When I start to scream for air, the echoes miraculously stop. The walls no longer conform to the Laws of Physics; they’ve moved on to bigger and better things. Now I can hear my wailing and shameful tears in all their disgusting glory. Why would steel be interested in this noise? There is no light so it’s impossible to tell if I’m blacking out and about to faint. But my knees grow weaker and I can’t help but to continue screaming when I know it’s the reason there’s not much left to breathe. My screams shrivel into weeps.
The precise moment before I relinquish consciousness, the walls snap to attention, dissemble completely and, for a split-second, blind me with outside light, stunning me enough that I forget to inhale. They then reassemble the opposite way to look me (in)directly in the eye. The configuration isn’t the same as before so the walls are having trouble staying put and can no longer brag about their great wall-ness. As my gasping and writhing becomes more subdued, they speak, all concern for their favorite audience member. "Sorry we didn’t notice your asphyxiation sooner. Here, have all the Nitrogen you want." Even as my brain tries to shut down, I am able to say what I really need but the walls have resumed their former position, assuming that the problem is solved on account of their oh-so-generous donation. I am blinded again for that moment during their change of configuration but this time I remember to snag some air. It is barely enough to say, (with no resonance) in a scream drenched with tears, "Let me die," before I pass out on the steel floor, bringing the walls down with me.
(15/07/03)

--

Go listen to Liszt's Un sospiro and tell me if you are not moved by its beauty. No, seriously - who writes things like this? Who has that kind of gloriousness sitting inside their head and proceeds to drop it with ink onto paper? Ahh.. it's ... I love what Schubert does with music. Schubert, Pergolesi, Vivaldi (usually) and Liszt, I think, I like, too. I can say this now with different thoughts and perspectives after listening properly to some of their works - along with many other canonical works of the Western world - for a course at university that these are the artists whose crafts move me, either into euphoria or creativity.


I think I will sleep on the floor to-night. I am tired of standing up for myself. Here's an excerpt from a book printed in England in 1987:
"There once were three golliwogs who were most unhappy in the nursery cupboard. None of the other toys liked them, and nobody ever played with them.
"Their little mistress, Angela, never even looked at them as she was always playing with her very pretty dolls." (7)
golliwog n. A doll fashioned in grotesque carticature of a Black male.

I am not a black person, I am not a white person, I am not a mulatto, I am not a half-breed, a wigger, a nigger or a poser. I am not brown, am not a "what are you, anyway?" and I am NOT coffee-colored. I am not an insect smeared across a windshield or an ancient text to be scrutinized and laughed at. I am a person. If you're trying to figure out who I am, ask me. If you want to talk and joke about race with me, let's set the boundaries and avoid double-standards. (Let's try the same jokes with the race reversed when you're the blatant minority.)
Race is important and beautiful but it stops with the visuals. After that, you're calling personality traits and cultural trends genetic and that's not cool or accurate.
Let's have a moment of transperancy. Yes, I am talking to specific people because I am cowardly like that. But, I also write to sort out my thoughts for my own sake. I am not really into being angry at an unseen animal that is asleep in its cage. Go wake the beast, calm it and part ways peaceably.

Hey, apparently dictionary.com thinks Black people get a capital B but white people keep the lower-case w. I am curious about the reasons for this.

This post is SO over.

[K.S.: if this is the first post you read then I am sorry. I don't always post angry rants so go read something else less scary to balance out.]