the "In the Alley Behind Sadness" collection:
possibly related
i say
sadness is a topic that bears discussion, according to me.
why? b/c i think it's important enough to take up brain wave w/ words.
then again, read on only if it is worth your time...
to it, then: i am mostly sad. most of the feeling state that i experience between waking and sleep is sadness, i'd say at least 71.4%
less than pleasant
had a flash the last tuesday in october, 2015, where i experienced in an instant my death by gunshot to the head—i felt with every cell in my bodymind, my skull* in fragments splattered amid brain matter mostly, with blood and hair like offal.
[it is ugly to edit this piece; bodymind is cagey now, wary, directing us to be smaller, on alert, vigilant.]
i almost live that in real-time, in 1981, in North Hollywood, on Laurel near Riverside. It was hot that day, and we had air conditioning.
i survived, and have been dogged by bullets on my trail every since. one must move fast to dodge bullets with nothing but mass and velocity, no malice just mission—to hurl 897 miles through space per hour, faster than sound, with no aim save forward momentum.
that was pointed at my forehead, in duplicate, but the trigger wasn't pulled. some man, about 24 years old, held those two guns into my skin, and didn't fire. that's all i know.
still haunts me to this day.
10 weeks later
i am so so sorry younger me that that happened to you and us..._
much sadness comes from that, from grieving younger me while living today's me, wishing i could have been better support to by fractured self.
sadness is not only having to go through daymares like that one, it's sitting in the warm water at the community center wondering only if it's better to live than live no longer.
and wondering over and over if it's worth giving a shit one more day, if it's worth getting up and facing whatever is to come.
no excitement, only duty not to let down (and bring grief) to those i love.
endure, "sleep", repeat
i know i don't have it as bad as it can be. what people endure is so far beyond my imagining, i half think hell is right here on earth.
like we fucked up to be here, we did something wrong a beautiful garden just out of reach bc no matter our grasp, nothing here in these sullied dimensions will last. or maybe it will "last" but not endure.