i have nothing (new) to say (still)

this is from march 2007. but it is today too. and my "current mood" is still soulless:

ocean filled marbles
The rage of seventy-three oceans are in my head, all compressed to the size of a marble. Like a black hole. Such an extreme of gravity, density, pressing chunks of matter the size of the earth into a fingernail's thickness. I am collapsing in on myself. My body thinks it's a fist. I keep forgetting to breathe. Even my lungs are clenched and knotted.

I am a song on repeat.

Always lost. Always angry. A construction of rage, using the same adjectives over and over.

I am a song on repeat.

I should have been an Artist-- channeling my pain into dark beauty. But I can't paint. I can't sing. I can't even find words to catalogue and dissect it. Everything I write tastes the same.

I am a song on repeat.

I can't even think of an original metaphor. The ocean? How trite is that? But nothing else feels quite like the tide knocking you over as it drags at your ankles. Nothing else I know has such a sense of power and such a lack of conscience. Cool wet choking apathy. It is the only truth that comes close, cliché or not. I can remember being very young and touching the foam on the waves as it melted beneath my fingers. This was before the Disney movie came out, but I'd read the story of the little mermaid. Dead mermaids become foam on the waves. There always seemed to be such an endless amount of foam. I remember feeling sad about all those dead mermaids, and also feeling sad because it meant that they all died without ever being happy. I would imagine the little mermaid standing over the prince and his wife with the knife, right before she kills herself. At age four, I thought that was really stupid of her. She should have stabbed that prince jerk. Plus, I thought stabbing herself was really melodramatic and needlessly painful. I suppose I was a lot smarter at four… So silly. As if a few drops of blood could drain out an ocean. I know it doesn't work, but it feels like it should. A pressure inside my skull that I ought to be able to release, like popping a blister. But everything, any and all attempts, just feed it. Just make the black hole denser. Me, stupider.

I am a song on repeat.

I used to "feed the waves" at the beach-- with my hands full of sand and anticipation, and i liked how the waves licked my fingers. I thought of the ocean like a hungry wild-animal, so i fed it sand to appease it. But it was always still hungry. Just like that marble still rolls smugly around in my head, untouched, and even if I were to smash my skull open and claw it to mush, I doubt I could reach it. I am a song on repeat.

Symmetry

Symmetry. I think about symmetry a lot, because i am not very symmetrical. Well, sure, maybe in an OCD way... but i mean literally. (don't i always?)

i know most people have one slightly bigger side of their body, which they only notice when they have to buy shoes or a bra... but the left side of my body irritates me more often than that. my left leg is longer than the other one and i walk weird, but people don't notice. "people never notice anything."

anyway, i have been thinking a lot about my 3rd grade science project, which was about the halves of the brain. and the visual object lesson was several pictures of faces in the middle of the board, and a small mirror... and people were supposed to put the mirror up to the mid-line of the face so that you could see what a person would look like with 2 left halves of their face, or 2 right halves. perfect symmetry.

now, the point of my science project wasn't supposed to have anything to do with this next part, but this next part is what i remember best...

one of the pictures i had was of ted bundy. (yes, we had an extra picture of ted bundy lying around in the garage.) and the others were just of neighbors or people from church who let me take their picture.

so, the guy who seemed like normal-happy-church-guy looked fine both ways. 2 rights or 2 lefts... he looked about the same. still nice and happy either way. but ted bundy was rather more dramatic. if you doubled his face one way, he looked normal. and when doubled the other way he looked evil and psycho. i mean, it was shockingly noticeable, and many kids and adults commented on this fact, not just me.

so, i don't really know where i am going with this, but i thought about this a lot later on-- like when you learn how humans are attracted to symmetry, and how we instinctively know that symmetry means healthier and more genetically viable.

when i did the mirror thing and saw the 2 Ted Bundys... i asked if that meant there was a nice Ted was trapped inside the brain with the other one... but i heard back, "No. He is all bad now."

But i still worried about it.

i'm not incapable like a stroke victim or anything... But, i only use half of my face to make expressions.

SEER-- drawing from High School era

Day is for day, Night is for night.

Amanda is not: sleep at night.
Am i stuck in a book again?
Fight, fight, fight all night... like Go Dog, GO!
??
i am INDO board. i am Watch-the-Tree-lights-dance. i am Listen to XM music on TV... and why, why do i get sucked into Infomercials??? but i really do think i want a Trikke... it looks so cool and swoopy-swervy... i am Sure i must need one... but i could just want to be Warm-and-happy-people-riding-near-a-beach and not cold-and-dark-snow-outside, like i Am.
can a Trikke ride in snow? go! go! go in snow? there is a ski kind too but i don't want that one, just the wheel kind, because i am not talking about SERIOUS snow, just the sidewalk kind.

Do you like my hat?
Do you like my hat?
Do you like my hat?

No. I do not.

SEER page 42

SALT

Today, I do not like Salt. I only like paprika. Mommy makes very excellent mashed potatoes, and she splashes beautiful RED paprika across the surface before she puts the bowl on the table. I like to scoop out the part that has drippy gold melts of butter and RED paprika SPLASH across all the white. I don’t know how long this day is or when it starts, but at first, Mommy would put the scoop on the plate for me, and now, sometimes I have to stop hogging all the butter and share.

And Today the radio plays Push It by Salt-N-Pepa all the day. And you love Salt-iN-Pepper! You think they have a great name. You have never considered salting your pepper, because you are not really a fan of pepper… but maybe that is because your pepper just needs SALT!!! But, you decide that Pepper, even salted Pepper, is not good all alone. However, SUGAR, is very different, and you like to eat that plain just fine.

When grown-ups say “AMANDA! You are A PILL!” …you agree and think you are probably a SUGAR pill and NOT the vitamin kind.

Today, we go to Joseph Smith’s house for dinner. Joe is Mommy’s professor at Law School. (Mommy graduates Law School when I am 7, so I was probably 6 at this dinner.) Joe is blind and has a guide dog. I already like Joe, because one time he gave Mommy a pack of stickers. The stickers were ALL purple circles, and he said he got it for her because she was so color-coordinated. And Mommy laughed and didn’t understand the joke, but I DID and thought Joe was very funny, and I was excited to meet him and his dog-eyes. And Joe’s wife makes HOMEMADE mashed potatoes, which sounds very yummy, because you love mashed potatoes… And since Joe is blind, he probably has a more developed sense of taste, because you know blind people sometimes have better sense after they lose their eyes. But the wife makes GROSS mashed potatoes. They are LUMPY and you like SMOOTH. And PLUS, no paprika. And PLUS, no golden river of butter! And you know your mother is a much better cook because she knows that instant potatoes from a can are much smoother, and therefore, BETTER. And you ask about Paprika, and there isn’t any, and Mommy probably gives you a LOOK to BE POLITE! And so you just use some salt, and you discover that SALT… DOES, in fact, help. And you feel sorry that Joe does not have a Mommy to make him really GOOD mashed potatoes, but maybe he can TASTE so well, that his (same) potatoes ARE good.

And later, you realize why people think, “salt of the earth” is a good thing to be. Because salt is pretty good.

And later, you notice that sometimes people forget salt all by itself is gross.
“...if I were blind, I would know what you are...”
—Schemendrick the Magician (when he greets the Last Unicorn)
And you SEE that you HEAR a different meaning in that than most people, just like most people can not see the unicorn in the movie and instead just see a white horse.

And I wonder what else I am missing by not being blind.

Rain

The icy sidewalks were melted this morning. And it was raining drops so fine that i could breathe them in. I went for a walk and i could BREATHE. Not that it was quite nice enough to forgive Utah for not being Florida, but still, it was so nice to have rain and be able to pretend a little. And all the trees were looking black and wicked because they are are leafless and bony now, and so they were scratching up against the sky in a nice way, and it was not oppressively cloudy but just the right amount, enough to erase the horrible, suffocating mountains and give me the illusion of SKY.