Open Diary - GNelson

Five:

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 0:00:01 GMT

A dream came to me in the night. I was just a child again, playing on the swings in my grandmother's back yard. A mother swan came ashore, from the lake, with three signets. Try as I might, (though they could not fly), I could not catch the signets. We ran about in a circle, until the mother bit me in the hand. When she bit me, I lost the innocent glint in my eyes, and became terrifyingly aware of my existence in an indifferent world. I could see the strain in my father's eyes as he tried to provide for a fledgling family. I could see the scorn a man suffers, when he falls to his knees to beg. The pain of being man... Everything seemed to make less sense after that. All the answers, which I can find to explain myself, only lead to more questions.

Since I woke, I have had a feeling like I am being watched. Everything is disjointedly spinning, so that I cannot make heads or tails of it. I keep looking out of the peep hole on my door, half expecting to see somebody waiting there; but each time I look, the hallway is clear... Empty, and illuminated with a strange green, flourescent afterglow. I stand at the end of the kitchen, but it is just empty space. I pull a book off the shelf, start to read it, put it down, pick it up again, and finally put it away. Everything is painfully heavy. I light a cigarette, trying to blow the smoke out the window. It is bright out, and the sky is a color blue, as is only existent in California.

I consider going out, but hesitate perhaps just a moment too long. I'd rather just watch the clouds pass from here. I can't socialize like other people. I can't walk into a crowded room, and pretend to be comfortable, I am overwhelmed. People are no longer human, we can't look in each other's eyes. The walls constrict, and I feel as though I am the only existentent person. I feel the same way on the crowded sidewalk, but at least I can run from it. Try to find a corner in which to hide, but I can't shake the feeling that I am either a coward or a criminal. Yet I am niether. I don't fear people, only interacting with them. Something about it feels strange, awkward, as if everyone is trying to see who's side your on... I feel as though I've walked into a mother bear's den, and she is sizing me up.

Millions of people walk those streets, and somehow so confidently. Perhaps they can't see how infintesimally small they are in comparison to the world around them. Perhaps they don't understand that a sky scrapper looks like an ant colony from space. While I've locked myself up, crushed by infinity, they stand like Goliath atop their shrines, their tower of babel, their science and logic, and their gods, and like Atlas, they never shrug. But not because they know what responsibility means! No they do not think of responsibility! For the man who thinks of responsibility, will never act... The thinking man will never take a leap of faith... Yet that is just what I will do.

'You will not do anything,' you may be clattering, 'you've already thought too much of it, and now you shall never act,' but when the time comes gentlemen, when the time comes you will see what the mind is capable of. Why, a man can hurl himself off of a twenty story bridge! What things, then, must I be capable of.

four:

Sun, 6 Jul 2008 0:00:01 GMT

There was something rather depraved from the start... All the taciturn faces, sifting through the foggy mire. Strange laughing sounds drifting through the void, their source unseen in the shadows. There is some vauge element in the atmosphere and the architechture around here is hideously unsound. I pulsated with empty thoughts, trying to avoid the cracks in the sidewalk, as I walked, with the faint orange outline of industrial plants and boiler stacks on the horizen. Nothing seemed to move through the fog, faces and scenery all appeared and disappeared... All in some horribly twisted fashion, so that everything looked as if it were made of plastic for a coney island sideshow.

I feel sick. Another Friday night disappears behind me, as I shut the iron gate. It gives a long, painful groan, before it slams shut with a clang. Even the elevator appears to be coughing, as it struggles through it's last days. The clouded sky is lit up like fire, from the city lights... I can see the glow steaming in through the elevator shaft. Rm. 440... The key jams for a second in the top lock, before clicking open. I fear the darkness of my room. Perhaps there is somebody lurking behind the door today? Or perhaps in the closet, behind my sweaters and black jeans...

I make a mad dash for the lights... I immediately realize that I prefer the mystery of the darkness. The smoke begrimed walls seem to be melting, and I think I see rat turds in the carpet. I do not mind the rats, so long as I do not have to see them. I have not yet seen them, just evidence of their existence. Even the rats leave evidence of their existence, but what evidence have I left. When the city burns, all they will find are the rat turds, not even some scrap of my thread, or a photograph. When I go, nothing shall be left, and for now there is nothing but bewilderment.

After a moment I light a cigarette. I wonder if it may be worth it to venture out into the night... To observe for the sake of observation. Just a pair of eyes in a depraved crowd, seeking wonderment... But no, such things have lost their appeal for me. I imagine that soon everything will loose it's appeal. I shall go to the roof and wonder what it is like to be human. I haven't known for some time. I know that I exist, I have always been sure that I am alive, but I certainly am not human. I know that I am not human, when their eyes brush over me indifferently, as if I were a ghost... Perhaps I am a ghost. I am merely the last remaining evidence of existence.

It begins to rain. I open the window, simply to feel it on my skin. I close it again, and watch as little beads form on the window and drip down slowly, but with purpose. Humanity lacks a purpose. At least the rain washes away our sins. Finally the sound of the rain soothes me. I no longer feel so anxious. I let the little pelting sounds wash over me until sleep comes.

Three:

Sun, 6 Jul 2008 0:00:01 GMT

I can't look my mother in the eyes any more. She seems so triumphant in her reproaches, like she doesn't know that we are all made of the same ephemeral sperm and egg. It's all so meaningless. I feel like a sperm, or even worse, a red blood cell, wandering aimlessly in an infinite stream... alone... unaware of my goal... unable to comprehend that my goal is simply survival. To go on another day, and fight my disease, and feed myself, and work, work, work for nothing but dimes. I try to fight it, but I am pushed along in the stream, and I can't look at anyone, not even my own mother, because none of them remember what it was like to be human. Some of them never knew that they were human. All they know now is that they are dying, and in such a rush to get there.

I'm dying, but I'm in no rush. I want to remember what it was like to feel the worms eat my brain. I want to remember what it was like to fall like Newtons apple, from the tree of life. I want to watch others rush to their death, like they have the answers. I want to watch the worms eat their brain. Do they really all think they are going to heaven? Heaven is for the weak of mind anyways, perhaps they belong there. They live their lives without doubt, don't they ever look in the mirror? don't they ever take off their clothes? They are just blood in the veins of the city. Slaves. What is money anyways? Nobody has ever been able to answer that, and I doubt anyone ever will.

My mother visited today. I couldn't look at her, or speak to her. She reproached me. "I am your mother you ungrateful bastard," I fell as though she is not my mother, but some woman that I've never known, or wanted to know. In any case, she never wanted to know me either, she expects her children to be a trophy of her greatness, so it gives me a sick satisfaction that I wound up here... in the tenderlon... with the creeps.

She comments that my apartment is ugly, but I know it is more beautiful than she is, if only because it is not where she sleeps. I often wondered if I would be indifferent to her death, like Camus' Outsider... No, I won't be indifferent, but I may be relieved. I cannot spend ten minutes alone with her. She tries to tell me a funny anecdote. She thinks I will laugh. It is about my father. How she took him to a ballgame the day before father's day, and he said I'm glad my gift was cheap, because it comes out of my pocket anyways; to which she replied that he wasn't in the clear yet, she would getting him a new grill the following day. I asked her if the grill was for her or my father. I know who it is for. She is the most selfish person I know. I can't believe I came from that. It makes me sick to imagine that she is my mother. I have always had a nagging feeling that it isn't true... That somehow, I had a real mother somewhere, who sang me lullabyes, until I was stollen from her arms. It is as if I can even remember the tune, somewhere in the back of my mind.

I open the window and smoke a cigarette. She reminds me that they will kill me. I murmur to myself that I wish they would. She annoys me. I want to blow smoke in her face; which is hardly a face, but more like something from hell. Even her hair is red like a demon. I remember when my father died. I felt that she killed him, slowly and over many years. A life with her would kill anyone. She is more fatal than my cigarettes. I take a quick glimpse at her face, but I don't see a soul behind her eyes. I attempt to speak, but she isn't listening. She is going through my drawers now. She will find something she doesn't like, but what do I care if she finds out the truth now. It wouldn't matter now anyways, there is nothing she can do. I have already outlived myself. My spirit is gone. I could care less, and soon my soul will be more empty the even hers. For in her the still rests and disgusting force, which makes me want to scream in horror. I want to blame everything that has gone wrong in my life on her, but I know that isn't true. I have nobody to blame but myself. That doesn't stop her from annoying me.

She gets up after thumbing through a draw. She suggests we go to dinner together. I make some excuse. The truth is I plan to drink away her prescence, until nothing is left but a pale outline of her obese frame. She looks at me with disappointment. It is the first human emotion I have ever seen in her face. It is too late for disappointment. The world can scorn me for not caring about mother, but what makes a mother? Is it enough to give birth to something? Is that all it takes? I have birthed thousands of shits, but I am not a mother...

Two:

Sun, 6 Jul 2008 0:00:01 GMT

I am waiting for the day when I can give up the charade. I can stop parading to work everyday, like I know there is a world out my window. I open the gate... It creeks slowly, like an old black and white horror movie; the corner of polk and eddy unfolds beneath the dim orange haze of the streetlights. I turn the corner, counting no less then fifteen cracks in the pavement. As I turn the corner, I see somebody arguing with a shopkeeper in the sandwich store. "Whaddaya mean the credits no good." I'm shocked they even let people pay with credit around here. I think about stopping in, I even take the first step. Another step and the guy behind the counter would shout at me... "Hey! Cousin, its been a while yes?" I scurry up Ellis to Van Ness Boulevard, to catch the 49 bus.

The stop is crowded. I feel like the world is starring at me... Are they, or have I finally lost it? I try not to look anyone in the eye, because for now I believe they are crazier than me. What gives me such an idea? They appear crazy? Yes... But how do I know that I do not? Would I know. There are only two things the human mind cannot fathom, infinity and nothingness; but perhaps there are things which it chooses not to know. I turn away to avoid the stares, but I can feel them pinching into me. The more I feel like I might be behaving strangely, the more I tend to. In any case, they are stranger than I.

For a moment I am jostled... "Spare any change young man?"

"No, sorry..." I give a blank stare... There is no use in being either passive or aggressive. I let him know there is nothing I can give him. It is all there in my eyes, he only needs to feel my glare. He looks at me with scrutiny... or perhaps it is desperation... Regardless, there is nothing I can give. I step to the curb and lean my toes over. I balance my body over the street so I can look for the bus. The beggar has moved on to the others, but he is still lingering; nevertheless, they have no more reason to stare at me. I see the 49, way down there by the Civic Center. Still a few lights to go. I consider walking up a stop, just out of impatience. The city makes you impatient. No, better stay... I have to get to work.

I can see the green neon glow: "49 to Fisherman's Wharf," bouncing over the badly paved street, loosing itself amongst the blur of flashing headlights and the sounds of Friday night, just beginning. The bus stops in front of me. A flood of young hipsters hit the streets, talking loudly of some shitty band or other. I can only describe their hairdos as complicated. After being jostled by the evening bar crowd, we all must wait for an elderly man in a wheel chair to make his way down the ramp. It takes a minute for him to position, then the driver lets the ramp down. When the ramp hits the pavement, it looks as though the bus is leaning to its side, pushed up by the hydrolic lift. Finally the old man wheels himself away, slowly and pathetically... One day, I will be this man. I look at him empathically. Though I have become like a rock: stolid, emotionless, frigid; I occasion am touched by such a thing.

I get on. I don't have exact change, so I have to over pay. Everything about this city is designed to wear you down slowly. I sit on the hard plastic shell of a chair. The bus is almost empty. It jerks and jostles away to the next stop, four blocks up. I look around: all the eyes are red and agitated. How many years can a person be expected to do this? I can't bear it anymore so I look down at my feet. Somebody has spilt a soda pop on the ground, and now it is sticky. I try to move my feet away, but it is useless. I feel like I am stuck to the bus. The bus has become my prison, and I look out the windows as if they were my bars, to watch as people live life outside. I do not get to live, I only work.

One:

Sun, 6 Jul 2008 0:00:01 GMT

currently working on a rewrite...