FUCKING RETARD LISTEN UP NOW

Dear Snow,

I have news for you. I am learning more about you every day. And today, I learned that I have a threshold. I cannot be talked to like that. I cannot be told how my relationship with myself should be. You say that I do not treat myself good enough. And then you make me feel ashamed for a very long time about how I treat myself. Catch-22. "You need to treat yourself better. The way you treat yourself is wrong," Wow, that makes me feel so good about myself! Those words, they makes me feel so self-loving! Well, you know what? I love myself very much. And I don't need to hear one more word about petting my fucking kitty. Because I am not the same arrogant piss I was four years ago. But I have self confidence. I have a lot of it. I have enough self-confidence to scream "I HATE MYSELF" because i am not ashamed of that feeling. We all hate ourselves at certain times. And instead of pointing the blame at other people, I had to point the blame somewhere. ANd you could not let it go. You had to dissect it for an hour. You could have done that on your own time. But no, it was something philanthropic you were doing for me. Never mind the fact that it made me feel needy, clingy, sad, and empty. That's the way you like 'em. If they are strong? Oh! They might hurt you.

I learned that you kept thinking you were being manipulated because you were manipulating me, emotionally.

What did I need? A reassurance. That's all. Five minutes, hey, it's okay, you made a mistake, it's okay.
But no.

The yarn you spun? I've spent years talking that way to my friends. And they were my therapists. And they fixed me out, they straightened me out. But you can't talk to me that way when I am upset AND think you are actually doing a good deed. Maybe you felt better afterwards. But I felt like SHIT. I felt worse than I did on that walk with the dog when I was crying my eyes out.

You have an ability to lie at any time.

You have an ability to manipulate when you want.

And you put down my friends.

My friends are good enough for me- I dont think your friends are good enough for you though from the way you talk about them.


I dont have a problem with my relationship with myself. I LOVE MYSELF. Therefore, I will not put up with speeches like the one you gave me today.

You Play DIRTY. I don't. I fight fair. You don't know how to fight at all unless it is dirty. And you need control. You even need to control how I treat my parents despite the fact that I know them a little better than you. I should never have doubted myself at all while talking to you.
And why should I be with somebody who doubts me? Maybe you learned more from your wife than you realize. All those things you despise about her- there must be a reason you despise them so much. And usually those reasons are because the things you most hate about somebody else are things you do yourself in some way. Like the way I HATE when you are late. I am late and let people down. So I hate it extra hard when you do it because it is a fault I am working on.

Your only role in this relationship is to try and love me. Why don't you listen to what I say I need instead of what you think I need?

I wish I could send this to you. But I don't think you are strong enough to handle this.

I want so much to be close to you. I love you so, so very much. But I don't believe you can listen to these words. I have lost that faith in you- the faith that i can tell you what is unacceptable. Fuck, I can't even mention other guys because you freak out. You know what you kept saying what normal people do-" normal people do this." Well Evan, as my dad said, "WHY DOESNT HE DATE A NORMAL GIRL THEN?" Because I am not normal. I was raised to play piano 6 hours a day. I WAS NOT NORMAL. I WILL NEVER BE NORMAL. "Normal people" do not try to get masters. "Normal people" do not write entire books that almost get published. "Normal people do not give 3 hour senior recitals at Cornish that make people cry. "Normal people" do not learn chess in two years at an expert level. Normal is people who sit around all day, watch tv, read "8 books in a lifetime" and fart. So if you really want your normal, find it. But don't ever lower me to that level again.

And don't lie to me about Isabelle. if she was really just some stranger in Chille, it would not mean so much to you that you have to keep her on as your friend. Whatever you are not telling me- whatever you are not practicing with her anymore- it is sad that you have to do that to fill your self esteem.


I couldn't say these things when you were talking to me. I was too busy getting bruised inside.

Snow, Snow, Snow....

Why didn't he call me back? In retrospect, that email was over the top. But those conversations had such a heavy weight. I had to interpret it cognitively. I had to make sense of it because what he said was so contrary. He told me I needed to love myself more but that I had to change or he wouldn't continue to love me. Maybe that wasn't how he worded what he said, but I am tired of repeating what people say verbatim, because I know in his case that for the first time in my life, the order of his words won't bring me any closer to his differential. This is different from every other person I have ever dealt with. I have always used peoples words to figure them out. Now I am changing his words and looking into his meanings instead of his words? When I start taking liberties like that, soon I will be making fiction.

So, tell me that it isn't a bit arrested to react to somebody handing you a loaded gun of their vulnerabilities and say "why did you wanna talk about this in person" and tell them that they found your final missing puzzle piece and oh, now they understand what was damaged about you, and oh, they are so perceptive, they are so damn perceptive. No, Snow, you would have been perceptive if you hadn't had to guess everything except the right guess. No, I didn't murder anybody you dimwit. And no, when I say that, I am not cussing you out the way you think I am. I care. So I am angry and frightened. And so yes, I was vulnerable when I told you that. Not because I have "not really dealt with it one hundred percent" but because I had to tell you something I knew might fuck up everything. And then you attributed me thinking that it might fuck up everything to some kind of arrested development on my behalf. Except what we mean by arrested development is so different it's like thinking teriyaki and the image you had of the dumpster with the soaking wet mattress were the same things. But the idea that somebody would see that image and think one of two things... and I forget what those two things were, because they were complicated- is not just brilliant, but beautiful.

So, you reacted. I guess in a way I am blaming you for letting me tell you over the phone and not understanding why this should be done in person.

Maybe it was better on the phone. Maybe it was horrible on the phone and would have been okay in person. I guess I am looking for answers in a place where it is irrelevant. At any rate, did I have to write back and talk more about relationships as if they were car trips and tell him that he got my baggage wrong, especially when he thought my stunt in hustling was something that is something I want to dwell on with HIM? I think I am afraid to say to myself, if he leaves me than I might go back to this because I will feel so crestfallen. And I won't have opiates the way I did with Burrow. But the truth is I am falling for him in a more real way than with Burrow. I can't compare the two because one must have been fucked up and this one must not be. But again, I am comparing. I don't understand. The only things I can compare are the quality and integrity of our phone conversations and our sex. And those things are better with him than anybody I have ever met. But maybe that is not everything because if it was, why would I feel so bad about the overall picture? Snow, I am trying to own up to things. But sometimes maybe you need to lie. I know you do Snow. You need to tell your best friend that my past is not my past. It sounds like you are ashamed, not me. You say it's because you know he will tell me to dump me. But can't you say to him "You are wrong." Can't you give him a chance to give me a chance to give you a chance to give us a chance? Why lie to your best friend you have known since five? I couldn't put my finger on it but it bothered me the first time you lied to him, and I usually, like I said on the phone, give my friends room to break whatever morals they want. You don't have a problem with a friend that lies to her wife about how she used to be a stripper. I would. I would have a problem. Maybe that should have given me the indication that I shouldn't have opened my mouth and told you about my past. But then again, I never thought I would have to deal with this issue at all, did I? I never thought anybody would give a damn why I did what I did.

You are making me break the pattern my life is in. Some would use the word rut instead of pattern. I believed you rescued me out of a rut. But now I don't know how to go back to my rut. I can't sleep through the night anymore, Snow. I wake up way too aware now. Too aware of the feelings I blocked, and blocked, and blocked, and blocked, and blocked.

My truth is getting in the way. Or what I think of are my truths. Or maybe I should be upset he didn't call me back. The truth is I am feeling so much I don't know what I am feeling anymore. The only feeling I recognize is the insane desire for him to call me. And then when we are on the phone I often feel skirmish and want to get off. He didn't believe me when I said I didn't know what I was feeling. It's something that is part of me, and it won't go away. But if he can't get over the fact that I freak out and call at 3 am he can't deal with me. He is so fucking proud of how he has been dealing with it already I don't know if I should say choice one, give him a metal. Choice be say "Okay, just go already, break up with me, we can already see how this is going to play out," or choice C, try to learn some fucking self control. I don't know how. Maybe he is wrong about me not loving myself enough. Maybe I started loving the wrong parts. The parts that could hurt myself more. But why didn't he call back when he opened all those cans of worms? To be truthful, I opened it. I didn't have to tell him anything. And I probably shouldn't have. He is probably wishing I told him nothing. But I didn't tell him nothing. But instead of saying I don't know how to have a relationship maybe I should say I don't know how to have THIS relationship. But I don't know how telling him that will help. He already knows that. But it doesn't matter. But shouldn't it matter? I have never, ever, fell the way I just fell and the falling leaves me feeling sad because I am afraid he is going to abandon be over and over and over again. That is all I know. It's scary that he didn't run away. Now it's getting scary every time he promises to call me back and doesn't. Why does he do that? If I say "I'm going call me back" and he says "okay" isn't the idea that he means it when he says okay? I keep my promises to him. Since he doesn't keep these kind of promises to me, does it mean I should stop? I have thought about trying to get some space, but what I really mean isn't space, it's pace. I am bulldozing through this trying to get through the good parts as fast as possible, I want to devour every moment as fast as possible and why? He said he wants peace. But I am a cliff-hanger. Maybe it involves the parallel between the way he likes to ride in bikes and the way he also has to take care of two children. Maybe I should have just listened to the feelings behind his lecture instead of intellectualizing the words. Maybe I shouldn't have sent him my response. Maybe it doesn't matter what I do, I am going to lose.

I know that part of me wants to run I have nothing left to find escape in. That is what scares me so bad. Nothing else. I am not scared of anything else.

I should never have started using words like relationship. They put so much space into the conversation that soon, everything else was smothered. There was so much attachment to ideas like relationship. But I feel like you are testing me right now and grilling me, and you saw the how badly I reacted to being grilled, remember? I give you way more when you don't try to get anything from me. I am resisting the urge to run with every fiber of my being because there is no place to go, I am caged. The cage is now made of my own doing. But I feel like I am going crazy in here.

Why can't it just be as simple as, yesterday was a bad day for us, and that doesn't need to mean so much right now? I feel like you understand things in your head but not in your heart. And how can I even say that? Maybe I am getting the two backwards. It happens with me a lot.

If I tell myself I am sorry in the corner where you think I should "pet my own kitty" (!!!) then where will that get me? Self-pity. Instead I am trying to say "I am proud of my scar, so stop telling me to apologize to myself for them." But I don't know who is right, you or me. Maybe it doesn't matter. All that matters is I learn to chill out. But when you do things like don't call me back after you you say you will, especially after my request was to read that email and call me back and tell me what you thought of my email, and there is nothing in my inbox- (I knew there wouldn't be anything in my inbox), maybe there is a tiny bit of you that is playing games here. Because isn't it easy enough to put A and B together and say, well, if she panicked about me never talking to her again every time we hang up and she tells me something I might not like, what is she going to DO right now?


What is she going to do right now indeed.

Why I want to write instead of going into music: writing is therapy
writing is beautiful
I could spend the rest of my life inside books and words and never play notes again and maybe not look back so much. But I won't. Because I don't want to be an idiot. I don't know. I don't know.

I hope we make up. I hope we make up so much it is awful. Why do I have to hope so much.

My opera is what is unfinished business. It is about the people who hurt me the most. It is about depraved heart syndrome. And that is what is hanging over me. The escorting really didn't hurt me, but when you insisted on the phone that it was a puzzle piece, I didn't have the energy to convince you otherwise. There weren't enough words in all of the world anymore.

You think that if I was confident, it would be easier for me to take this slower, or less intensely. To care any less about you because, in theory, I would care more about myself. It makes me sad that you think this because it shows that you don't understand me after all. Not at all. Not at all.

After I handed you that loaded gun of a weapon... you should have told me you trusted me more, not less. Especially since you apparently know a lot of people who lie about their life.
But that did not suddenly make you right to say my friends were fuck-ups. I did not invite you to say I was messed up because I am still friends with the people in my past. I am doing things my way, not the way you think it should be done!! You didn't have a problem with that until yesterday, when I handed you something so loaded your need to control issues began to balloon. And I understand that it is normal. It is normal when I do something so passive and trusting to feel you must take control. But you also need to realize that all those things you thought were right, that lecture that stormed out of you right then... well, those things were informed by your feelings. They were things you want to believe because it means you have figured things out. But you would be wrong. You would be discharging somebody with the wrong diagnosis and they would take the wrong meds and die.

But maybe I should understand that guys don't deal well with these things. Maybe I should never have trusted you with the gun in the first place. How was I supposed to know until I tried?

Maybe it is a build up thing. You can only take so much. And I told you so much. I told you so much already and then told you more.

I want to say something like, if you don't trust me with the gun, you don't deserve to be with me. Maybe it is even true. But it doesn't change how much I feel for you. I almost wish it did because then I could go back to my "normal life."

I am worried that this intense manic thing with you will prevent me from getting my work done. I am so carried away with you that I can't think straight, and for the first time in a long time my thoughts were getting brighter and sharper.


It's going to be okay. I wish I could know it was going to be okay with us. Again, I will have to accept dealing with the uncertainty of not knowing. I wish you knew how hard that was for me. I wish you understood that was the real root of the problem.


PS. Here is the email. And for the record, his last name has snow in it, and I call him Snow.


Subj: letter
To: Snow
From: Ivy
Sent: May 3, 2009

Why you can't bring it up again:

You dont guilt somebody about their past
I am being totally honest and open but when we agree the topic is over it's done
why cant you bring it up is particularily strong.. it's a power play and there are enough of them anyway. I just handed you a loaded weapon if you wants to use if and if you care you will give it back to me and say you won't use it against me ever. And do you really want to have any of this in your mind when you spend time with me? No, for your own sanity it needs to be put behind. WHy should it be in person? Body language matters. Think about it as a road trip from seattle to miami. We go on a road trip. We each want to bring something from our house. Who drives? Who decides where to eat? Sleep? What do we listen to? All those different decisions are a metaphor for a relationship, and if one person is always determining what to do or where to go and controlling what to do then that is not a good thing . I relinquished control by telling you so it is natural to automatically resume control.
Im going to move out of my apartment so I take all my baggage with me. But there are two different kinds of baggage. First kind is one is that I'm not going to open, I'll just bring it with me. The other kind is something I plan to use and dwell on. Me being a piano player is baggage from my past too but I plan to make use of it. And part of being a composer is being moody and wierd and being a million miles a way and I can't just turn that off because it's something that is important to me and I can't not do that, and it's not fair to attribute it to the other bag. Drug addiction is something I have to deal with for now on a daily basis but I don't want to have that bag. There is conceivably a place from the future where I won't have it but
Then totally separate from that is issues from my treatment from my mom. Totally different is baggage from my sister. And we all deal with families for the rest of my life so it is NOT going to go away!!! Ever. It's part of who we are forever.

But here is the thing. There are three diff. reasons for my going into escorting. Money.. But me going into it wasn't because of my family or my mom. It had to DO with previous negative sexual experiences I had in the past and I was looking for the meaning of love, the meaning of sex, and what they had to do with each other. It might not have been the healthiest way to find these answers but one of the reasons I went there is that I KNEW i did not understand these things. I looked in a weird place for answers. I did choose to push boundaries. And no it didn't give me a well-rounded view but it helped me deal. Even though I got a microcosm of what men are like but I understand that all of them are not really like that. And part of it was trying to discover what my sexuality was in that kind of environment. On one level, these guys can ask me to do anything and I get to choose what I am comfortable with. I had to figure out what my boundaries were and make those decisions... and they DID NOT carry the same kind of emotional baggage that they do in an emotional relationship. So... I openly have the decision to decide what I am going to do or not going to do but I could explore it if I chose to and I was able to learn about myself and I don't think those things happen normally. And they might have made me broader or narrower... I know the answer to that.. but I was able to explore what my boundaries were.

Closely related to that were some moral and boundary issues. I was given some moral boundary issues as a kid that didn't really resonate with my heart so doing that was part of finding that. So I did it for ALL those reasons. And I don't know which was the most important but I know those had a lot to do with it.

Stigma against these things are other peoples issues not mine.

But please... don't attribute everything to the loaded gun I handed you today.




Bride Wars movie quote

"I don't want to be perfect anymore. I wanted to be perfect for you."

"I didn't want a perfect women anyway. Besides, they are too hard to blow up anyway."




Three kinds of hope in this world.


1) spirituality, God

2) your reason, your logical faculties, your way to parce through the world

3) your dreams and aspirations, the kind of ideal world that you want to live in, what you want your future to be, dreams of maturity.



I want to be in a relationship that points towards hope, not perfection. A progression of suffering leading to perseverance, perseverance leading to character, character leading to hope.

Yeah. The dirt, the crap, the shit, the "torment" they have created character. But I want to focus on hope. What I want to be. I DO NOT want to focus on what I have been. I didn't want to DENY IT. That is why I TOLD YOU ON THE PHONE. You can look at the dirt or the flower. It's up to you. Dwell on the muck, fertilizer, and shit, but I'm more interested in the growth of the plant. not growing every two weeks, but thinking about growing therefore GROWING ALL THE TIME, becoming a better person.
My past was something I HAD TO DO to get to where I are. And the very things you may like about me are informed by being through hell.


-One is a bag that I own but don't need to open.

Don't You Panic

We’re fighting. We fought. The words don’t taste so good down in my throat. I think I might want to spit them back out again. A screech of a tire. A window breaking. Isn’t that enough? Somewhere somebody in a white hospital is fighting for their life. The word is beginning to sound a little better, it’s giving me some ground. Who gets mad because somebody is too apologetic, too meek? I didn’t. But it sounds good if you say that I did, right? That’s looking at the world with one set of blind-folders on.

I got a cold feeling inside, like a frozen tire. He told me I was making him feel like a cocker spaniel. So I swallowed, a little swallow, and I felt hollow inside. I had to do the right thing.

“Nobody should be made to feel like that,” I said. I hung up. I was gone. No more relationship or bogus love. It was him that went on about love, anyway, not me. No more whatever he said it was.

A different day, if he had told me I made him feel like he was a cocker spaniel, I would have cracked up. It would have been the wrong response, but maybe it would have been better than this. My seriousness. It's like a cancer he doesn't know how to look at.

He keeps calling back. But I won’t pick up. I don’t like his apologies. He is always saying “I don’t want to make you mad so I won’t tell you this” or “I don’t want to make you mad but you said you want the truth so..” He’s always making it about what I said I wanted and adapting it to the next day. And when I’m quiet about what I want? It throws his world upside down. He wants, oh so bad, to make me feel good. I don’t always feel good, it’s not natural. I’ve gotten over that, so why can’t he? I was stressed this morning, a lot on my plate that I had to say and I felt like I was going to a trial. So he was angry with me for having a life that I must engage with. His is so bare, he leaves it behind all the time without thinking. He has no idea what it must feel like to be so connected you can’t look back. So he can connect to me and my world feeling lighter than a feather. The only thing he holds on to is me. But he isn’t prepared to see what I see. Nobody could be.

I got annoyed with him. But he couldn’t get anything right. I said ten-thirty, and he doesn’t show up.

“Well, truthfully I didn’t know what kind of mood you’de be in, and gaging from this morning, I know I told you I had to go to this appointment I’d forgotten, but I also wanted to get away…”

Then go. You now see I would have been happy to see you, but it’s too late. I’m in a bad mood again, so I better hang up the phone. Only the bright side to you. Nice end. No end.

He doesn’t like my “truth at all costs.” He doesn’t like my arrogance. “Well, somebody needs to act without thinking,” I say. I ask him what I said. He doesn’t know. His three favorite words.

I finally call him on my terms. Everything is always on my terms. I told him this the second day, when he was falling hard for me. But did he listen? No. Anyway, the phone didn't pick up. He can get a hold of me, but I can hardly ever get a hold of him. He shares a phone with a huge apartment full of drug-using hillbilly beatniks downtown with security that makes me wait outside the door, away from the comfy lobby on a windy day until he gets downstairs. Somebody has to pick up the phone, and then travel to the fifth floor to see if he is there. As a result, everybody ignores the phone because they know it's not going to be for them. Sometimes somebody offers to give him my message and I'm relieved. Mostly, they don't.

what is wrong with people who dont comment?

No comments on my short story Martian? I guess only trivial stuff gets people commenting. Fuck you brainless tweets.

conversation topics that will win your guy over

1). discuss physical ailments, even if you have to make them up. the more visceral, the better. after all, he doesn't want to think your squeamish or prissy. go on and tell him that there is a varicose vein in your left thigh that's been there since you were 12. tell him that you like to pick at your face and bite your nails. this will make him think that you have a sexual appetite, because after all, don't nervous women have a lot of pent up energy for sex? explain how your snoring could wake up all the inmates at a state penitentiary. this way, he'll know you have a sense of humor and aren't shy about his bodily imperfections. last, drool a little on his shoulder so he doesn't suspect that you aren't making this stuff up to win his approval.

2). make sure your date feels stupid and inadequate. you want them to realize how inferior they are to you. speak in technical lingo. use big vocabulary words. talk about how you can fix computers. all you have to know is just a little bit, and your date will be all over you. make sure they get that dazed expression in their eyes that shows they are bored. after all, if you can bore them, it's proof that you must be good at your job and are going places.

3). tell as many casual stories about your exes as you can. this is crucial, because you want to reveal some of your flaws so they don't think you are too perfect. a clean slate will get you nowhere. you need an instant history with this person instead. you want your date to see you as a challenge, so make sure you blurt out as many of your past dating foibles as you can. this will make them feel they have to overcome your past history, and they will try harder to win you over by trying to avoid doing what your exes did. be explicit about the sexual stuff so that they feel they aren't as good in bed. now you will have an automatic advantage with them at the get-go for as many free sexual favors until you want to let them think they've won a little bit of your approval. get them addicted to needing your approval, and they will never let you down.

4).if you are a girl, talk about nails and girly things. if you are a guy, talk about sports nonstop. you want to appear feminine/masculine. this is such an ambiguous culture, that people really need stereotypes to balance out all the confusion. if you are a policewoman, tone it down. wear pink and talk about how you want to buy a poodle. if you are a guy, act extra macho. be insensitive and make all the choices for her.

5). make a choice. either stick to dull topics or stick to exciting topics. if you don't want to be dull, so talk about ax murderers, rapists, suicide, abortion. pretend to be somebody you aren't, and then make fun of them for not noticing that you weren't acting like yourself. or, talk about what you did that day in excruciating detail. either way, you should get some kind of reaction or response. it's better than sitting there awkwardly, batting your eyelashes and waiting for the other person to create familiarity between the two of you.

6). bring up all the people your date has never met, and see how much they can retain. don't worry, they won't judge you based on your opinions of the people you talk about because he or she will be too busy worrying if he or she stacks up to the other people in your life. exaggerate your flaws so that you will seem animated. if you hate somebody, become almost violent. if you love somebody, break into poetry. they will appreciate how different you are from all their other dates.

7). talk about your pet. a lot. talk about everything that people tell you not to talk about. otherwise, you will appear boring. why do so many experts on dating not end up married? because they read stupid magazines that tell them to do the right things. the right things are just what societal trends are, and societal trends right now show that most people aren't in good, happy, loving relationships. so buy as many of those magazines that say "this is what to do on the date" and do the exact opposite.

8). bring up what your view is on sexuality. if you avoid this, your date will think you are being pretentious.

9). don't try to win, and don't try to hide your flaws. display them proudly, and see if any fireworks happen. and don't spend too much time observing their flaws. it will ruin all the fun.

10). don't speak badly of your family. also, pick a culture you relate to, study it, and pretend to identify with its habits. your date will find this refreshing and cool, because like most people out there, they are probably feeling lost, with a mixture of beliefs that are as eclectic as they are spanish, irish, english, french, and russian. they will find the fact that you have a cultural identity very comforting.


Final Thought:

break the rules at any time to change it up. be impulsive, and then suddenly be obsessed with sticking to a plan.

Martian

lots of errors-
got tired of editing so some things stop midway
got to that point where after having confidence about the story i have all doubts
the beginning is random, doesn't tie into the story
need to do some more research on Russian culture

Martian

It's snowing in the middle of February, and nobody in the city will say why. Maybe the scientists attribute it to global warming, but if that's the case, it's going to suck when it hits summer. I can already feel the waves of heat rolling down my back. Being on one hundred and seventy milligrams of methadone, I should sweat a lot, but I hardly ever sweat. That doesn't mean I like all the side affects of this drug. For instance, I've gained an awful lot of weight on this drug. But that's no excuse for my bust size to increase three sizes and my jeans to get tight and for a new, almost cute fleshiness to appear in my cheeks, when I'd rather they look gaunt and haunted, the way I feel all over. I plan to start working out soon as daybreak hits. People say we live in the present tense, but sometimes it feels like tomorrow is all we got. If today didn't go so right, or even if it did, tomorrow can always be played better. Even if I knew what was coming tomorrow, doesn't mean I would handle it any better. Maybe if we could see the future we would screw it up a whole lot more than we do not knowing the future.

I've had this nagging feeling that I was much more capable in the past than I am now. It's not merely a lack of confidence, but an awareness of how much has been lost. I thought you could add and add without ever having to subtract, but experience seems to be this thing where you have to decide what you want to give up in order to learn something new, and the more experience you get, the more you have to give up.

I used to have a lot of interesting interpersonal interactions with people. I didn't keep them at arms length the way I do now. I had a way of letting go, and not keeping track of my happier moments. (holding on?)

I called Dr. Ignatovan the mathematician at 1:43 am on a Saturday night.

I wanted to see if we were still friends or not. The answer if obviously yes, but we don't talk much anymore. That's because I got tired of listening to him ramble on and on about the most trivial things. It wasn't just that what he said was trivial, it was the way he went about changing subjects.

He didn't pick up the phone right now, but he often calls you back, the same way I don't pick up my calls, and then have to call people back. Some habits of his bother me because I do the same thing, but he does them with less finesse. One day he told me that I overestimated my understanding of other people. That's one of the few things I know about myself that isn't true. To attempt to gain his trust, I'd have to do a lot more than categorize my experiences with people. Hitherto now, I'd have to stop hiding my pity for him until he was constantly reminded by how distasteful his ignorance of human behavior is to me. Only then could my innate understanding about other people be put into a scientific rhetoric Dr. Ignatovan could study.

He does not like to hear stories about other people. Once I was foolish enough to come to him with a question about what to do in a delicate situation with a friend of mine who was blatantly trying to move into my home. She would not pay even a portion of the utilities, much less touch the rent. She lied to me, and would leave without saying so for days at a time, often to do drugs, leaving me to worry about her and her new pregnancy. If pressed to summarize without eliciting sympathy, which was always foremost in her mind, her speech might have gone something like this.
"I've always had unprotected sex with Brian, my abusive spouse who is in jail, and I never get pregnant. Well, only one time, and I had an abortion. No big deal. But really, just because my nipples are cold every single morning now, and I suddenly smell everything, and I have strange cravings and need to pee all the time, and I'm suddenly hormonally challenged? This means nothing. I need to smoke my cigarettes and shoot up speed."
So I saw it coming, I read the signs, I told her to take a test, even though she denied her pregnancy for 15 weeks. I forgave everything except her inability to express the slightest gratitude. When I kicked her out, and she surprised me by not contacting me for a long time, Dr. Ignatovan was thrilled. He considered the fact that I could feel surprise tacit proof that I overestimated my intuition where people were concerned. Just because I considered her behavior a possibility was of no concern to him. The proof was that I could not predict her behavior with one hundred percent accuracy. Thus, I do not have any insights into human psychology.

So often people speak of themselves when they think they are talking about you.

(Ignatovan couldn't give me advice, etc.)

*****************

Ignatovan calls me back seven minutes after I call. I ask him"what's the Russian movie you are watching about? What is the plot?"

"It's a great movie," he answers. "It's an hour and a half long, and my mom and I watched it together, but I don't understand why I can't get full reception on it. Have you heard of the director in it? He's a great poet. I'm saying why he became famous, he said this great poem."

"No, I have not heard of the director of an unknown movie where I don't know the title or the plot. Do you mean he composed a great poem?" I say, irritated by the inconsistencies in his speech.

"No, no no. He played three great roles," he says. He has a history of being impervious to questions.

"So he is an actor, not a director," I say, trying to understand what we are talking about. We're trying to have a discussion about what makes a life great, but his answers are hysterical when I look at how insular they are.

"No, he is a director, no he is an actor you should like. He very famous. He actually came to the United States. He became famous before Great Revolution. He was like famous of great royal family. " It is just like Ignatovan not to specify what Revolution he is talking about, or what royal family he is talking about, or what actor he is talking about, or how this all relates to our conversation.

"What royal family? Are you talking about Stalin or something?" I ask.
"There are two versions, he committed suicide or he married an American ballerina."
"There are two versions of what?" I ask.
"Well, in this movie the official version is that he committed suicide," he says breathlessly. "But they speculate on the idea that he was killed by the KGB. And he definitely married the ballerina. The movie is all very dramatic. It was famous even before the Revolution. But there were two of them and they both committed suicide. They are great but they really have their own style, very different from anybody else."

To ask him what "they" he is talking about would be useless. Also, how can he even claim to tell if somebody has a style that is different from somebody else or not? He is incapable of grappling with those kinds of aesthetic judgment calls.

Dr. Ignatovan giggles randomly.

"He even left a suicide note. I even remember a couple lines. The last two lines are, well, 'to die is not new in this life, but to continue to live is not newer. "

I tell him that his double negatives make no sense. He mutters in Russian, and then says that the phrase is closer to "there is nothing new about death. But to continue to live, that is not new either."

"I still don't get it," I say.

"It's not profound," Dr. Ignatovan admits. I don't know whether he means his translation abilities are not profound or the text itself is not profound because what he means when he speaks is too painful for me to derive out of our conversations. Nevertheless, I can't stop trying, for to connect with this strange creature would be rewarding, creative, and possibly meaningful. Except it would probably take more time than either of us have left on this earth.

He addresses me as if each sentence is a prophet in disguise. His excitement, paired with what he is saying, makes me sad.

"There was an answer to his suicide note. It's not new to die, but to make a life is profound. You can't just continue living, but make life," he says.

"What constitutes a great life?" I ask him. I know he can't think for himself, but I want to prove myself wrong.

"After the Russian Revolution, that is a major discussion," Dr. Ignatovan says. He does not answer the question, as usual, but makes a comment about what sort of conversation my question elicits. For Ignatovan the interesting part of a conversation is never about getting to the heart of the matter, but conducting an outside formal study of textbook cases full of facts that accidentally relate to bits and pieces of what we say.

Again he avoids my question. It's like talking to a deaf person over paper.

"What makes a life great?" I ask again, adding extra emphasis to the word great.

"I probably can't say it concisely." Still, Ignatovan's mind finds it hideous to think that he is in a classroom and does not have the correct answer, so he gives me an answer in the hopes that he will be accepted. "Make people happy, have a family," is what pops out.

He giggles like a 12 year old trying to flirt, then talks about Olympic medals.

"I think to live a great life is to have great education," he says. "I cannot permit myself to consider moral issues. I probably won't agree with moral issues because they are ambiguous."

"So by your standards are you living a great life?" I ask, tired of trying to guess what he is saying.

"Pretty good so far for yes, I was married."

"But you didn't sustain the marriage. You got divorced."

I want to be kind with Ignatovan but I doubt his rulebook covers what kindness means coming from another person with their own needs, much less artistic aspirations. Art and expression are related, and if he were to understand this he would find it emotionally and sexually threatening. The massive weight of believing that everybody in American will never discusses their feelings has him bringing exalted expectations to every new social encounter. He probably thinks compassion is also something that is an obvious trait that every American handles in the same way, and therefore, needs not be discussed or analyzed.

He believes that a couple should not discuss things that are relevant to ones feelings or life. He should have lived in the 18th century, and married a wife whom he never spoke to. It was acceptable in those days. Now, we fight for the right to be personal, the right to comfortably shout what we feel. Self-reassurances aside, he finds this very discomfiting. Even though he tells himself that it is anti-American to speak honestly, he is not immune to the laws of human nature. Once, he filed a complaint because a man in a bar was taking stock of pictures featuring women in provocative outfits, photographs in a magazine carried in most grocery stores. Dr. Ignatovan found this offensive because the name of the bar was the Canterbury. He thought that the rules of hospitality demand that people sitting inside a bar such a name should only read articles which pertain to Geoffrey Chauncer's literary keepsake, "Canterbury Tales." Dr. Ignatovan must have also felt that it was a sin that nobody inside this bar knew anything about the history behind the chancellor and Archbishop working for Henry II, beheaded at Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. This was a murder that turned the Canterbury cathedral into a place of refuge for Christians throughout the world.

However, for Ignatovan, this was not a matter of paying history its due respect, but of following rules. For Dr. Ignatova had no problem ogling the naked women in the back of the Seattle Stranger. His argument had something to do with the fact that he could read the Stranger because the Canterbury circulates the Stranger.

Although for the first time Dr. Ignatovan is saying he is interested by the idea of a "great family," Dr. Ignatova'ns marriage occurred largely by accident. The women he married, a dentist, was secretly living in Dr. Ignatovan's cramped quarters. For whatever reason, she could not find it within her to tell her family or her boyfriend that she was living with Dr. Ignatovan, so they got married. Three days after the wedding, his mother moved from Russia to the states.

"It was like a fairy tale, being reunited with my mother," Ignatovan said of the time. His mother moved in with the young bride and groom. Insisting on living in the same apartment with them, the brides pleas went unheard, even though she purchased an empty apartment on the floor below them. The bottom apartment remained bare. When I heard the story, and met the mother, I was left with the feeling that a mental vacuum of debasement had taken over any attempts the bride might have made to make a place in Ignatovans' heart.

The marriage was short-lived. The first time I asked him why he got divorced, Ignatovan told me that they got along very well, and that the divorce was mutual and friendly. The second time I asked, it was six years later. He told me that his wife was probably a lesbian, and that she accused him of being gay. I could feel the contempt swelling off of him in waves. It didn't help matters that his mother had died a year ago. He also gave me a paltry excuse for why their lives went in different directions.

If I tied the man down, connected electrodes to both of our heads, and with advanced technology beyond our current reach made him speak the way I understand the truth, he might explain it this way:
"I took thirty world cruises in a row. My bride didn't understand why I didn't continue to write textbooks, create groundbreaking new theories, and teach graduate students math at MIT, as I was up for tenure after teaching there for only two years. I'd begun work there at 25. I wanted to teach high school students, but I don't have the right certificate. She moved for me once, but I didn't think she wanted to move again."

However, I could only deduce this, for I did not get to tie Ignatovan down to a table with electrodes in our heads.

"So somebody who has never married has not led a great life?" I ask, annoyed.

"You can't compare the two," he says.

"But if you want to say what is a great life you have to say what isn't a great life," I say.

"Not everybody is competitive," he answers. "For instance, I don't think there is anybody who doesn't watch the Olympic games."

"I don't watch the Olympic games."

"But you traveled to Canada this summer for two days!" Dr. Ignatovan babbles on about hammer throwing medalists. I don't have the heart to tell him that my trip to Canada was a lie to get out of hurting his feelings. In early February, I couldn't hang out with him so I told him I was on a road trip to Vancouver. It was plausible enough. Friends have offered me road trips to Canada so they can score extra bottles of codeine. The next time I saw him I gave him a birthday present, knowing how big he is on formalities. Maybe the gift would become a pivotal moment in his life, I'd thought.

"I don't understand the relevance between my going to Canada and the Olympics," I say, my jaw clenched.

"But you want to win in chess," he says.

"Not always. It's an art form to me."

"No, you want to win," he says. "You want to win. You want to win."

"I might pick a chess line that is ambiguous over one that is forced and wins because I want to see where it goes," I say. I know people that lose on purpose." It's true. I know a hustler who does this for extra money, to boost peoples egos so they will underestimate him. Then he crush es them for money. I also know of an intellectual who occasionally plays the losing line to see how well his opponent knows the winning line.

"Yes, I do this sometimes too," he says, always the smug know-it-all child, eager to please. He is the biggest kiss ass, except he can no longer make a living being a teacher's pet. Just as I cannot make money by my defiant attitude.

"What does competition have to do with living a great life?" I ask him. This conversation is going much better than most of our conversations, for I am getting a word edgewise in. Normally I have to shout over him or hang up to get his attention. I must be coping with his vicissitudes in a manner incongruous to the way we normally talk. There is usually conflict when we speak. My guess would be that today I am not trying to ignore or pacify the conflicts. I am not trying to help him, or try and treat him like he is normal when he is not. And. I am not talking to him as if he were my good friend. Perhaps I have a talent for acting like a different person on every new encounter I have, conversational or physical, partially do to my extraordinarily selective memory that tries to create new uncovered topics every time I talk to somebody I have spoken to before. However, I normally don't change my attitude. With Ignatovan, changing my attitude has established a new conversation pattern.

"If you want to compare great lives you have to have something more uniform, like having a great family," he says. Back to the great family theme. He is obsessed with the idea of a great family.

"In America competitiveness is more unified by the idea of success. In Europe, I think, actually maybe in Russia, everybody believes it is outside of the U.S. that it is important to have a great family."

What he means is that Europeans place more value on family, while Americans don't.

"Great family?" I ask, sick of the phrase.
"Good family," he answers happily.
"Good family? Why not just family," I say.
"Make a family," he says. This is how you have a good life, he believes. This is too pathetic. Has he ever read a philosopher? Would he understand philosophy if he read it? Probably not unless his mommy breastfed it to him.

"What if somebody wants a family but can't find the right person?" I suggest.

"People who want success get married. It's almost universal for people to have pals," he says, sounding like the communist he is.

"Does it make them less great to live alone?" I ask. "After all, somebody might dedicate their life to science, or to medicine, and not be able to marry because they couldn't find anybody who accepted that their priorities were with their job first."

"And in a lot of these cases, if the person had married, they might not have pushed forward in the field they were in and contributed so much research and knowledge," I say.

"Freud was saying all persons actions are either to be successful or to be popular among the opposite sex. And Yung proved that no, it's only in order to attract more potential mates, success is only to attract mates, " Dr. Ignatovan says.

"But maybe Freud or Yung had problems in their marriage. What about people who end up murdering their family? Am I supposed to think they had a successful life just because they had a family once? You say your morals are ambiguous but what else do we have to judge people by besides morals and actions?"

"But Freud grew up constantly with girls," he says. It takes me a second because at first I don't know what this has to do with anything, but this is how Dr. Ignatovan talks, and he means that Freud's childhood gives him a free pass when it comes to living a great life.

"But anybody can say it's because of their childhood that they don't live a great life," I say. "Your definitions are fragile." And so are you.

"Why, I am just making a point that I think everybody needs to have a family, and I'm trying to support my argument," he says stiffly.

"I think there's a lot more to life than that," I answer. I refrain from sighing. "If you had to write a biography of your life where would you want to start?" I ask him.

"Ostroesky was blind and he wrote a book on special paper. His mom helped him and then sent it to the editor," Ignatovan says. He is obsessed with mothers who help their sons. I don't think we have ever had a conversation where he didn't mention somebody who's mother saved their sons life in some major way.

"I don't like writing at all especially about myself. I like yes or no," he says.

"You don't know yourself because you haven't given yourself the chance to explore who you are,"I say.

"I have painful memories. They would give us topics and we'd have to write about them." Again, he refers to his ubiquitous they. He's spent so much time in America, and he speaks like the opposite of a poet. And to think that the mathematician in my graduate program I befriended before Ignatovan spoke like a poet. I thought there was a connection between poets and mathematicians.

"My mom would do it for me," he shares. What a shock.

"I remember when I wrote what I thought, but I wasn't supposed to write what I thought, but what they want you to write."

This is how he lives, I think.

This is how he thinks.

This is how he talks.

This is how he lives, thinks, and talks.

"You are still operating on Russian principles. saying you say what you want to because in America you are supposed to," I tell him, knowing that he will not understand.

When he argues with me, going on about how there are never any conflicts between family and career, or cultural divides, I go for the jugular.

"You are one of the least personal people I know," I blurt out with more than a hint of lost allegiance in my voice.

Anytime you meet somebody, there are a few moments where one permits oneself to imagine an incredible integration taking place. A remarkable meeting of the minds. In Ignatovan's case, we spoke for weeks on the telephone, and my fantasy was fed on two levels, for Ignatovan's intellect and kindness was of use to me. This was enough to keep me considering whether his ideas were enough for me romantically. However, we all are capable of imagining the most gruesome of people being capable of meeting our needs.

When I knew him six years ago, he appeared to me to be a more desirable person. I had seen much less of the world, and did not understand how maladjusted he was, and how disgusting I would eventually find his particular disease. It is possible we are all sick, but to fall in love, we must be able to tolerate our loved ones condition.

Back then, his mother was still around to hold his hand.

He knew how to cover his chillingly choreographed hugs so that I mistook him for somebody who did not know how to contain his feelings, instead of what he was- a man protecting a sexual love that most people try to purge from society. Having no polite term for the relationship of this man and his mother, I tried to think of it as another cultural difference. Sadly, his cultural background is simply a brilliant diversion to what prevented anybody from seeing or stopping what continued until the woman's death. Her eyesight became stricken. She could only see what was straight in front of her. She could not move her eyeballs. It is a strange way to die, and to this day Ignatovan is slightly obsessed with rare forms of eye disease. The last girl I think he had a crush on could only see out of one of her eyes, and her eyes were each different colors. So, Dr. Ignatovan why the search for all that is proper and right?

"I usually separate if it involves somebody else and me," he says. "I would say, I like a book. But I would never say to somebody else that I liked a girl. This is normal," he says arrogantly.

"No. It's neurotic," I conclude.

"It's not okay to say anything personal. It is sexual harassment to look at a girl. It is not okay to have a conversation with a doctor if it is about anything but medicine," he tells me.

"Then you are not very American," I insist. "Americans often go up to each other and tell each other who they like."

He claims he likes questions. In particular, he likes tests that offer him either a yes or no. Tests with multiple questions. He doesn't like essay questions that ask him personal questions. The word "personal" to him is as violent as the word "murder" is to somebody else.

So I look up sexual harassment online, and explain how it has to involve physical touch, stalking, requests for sexual favors, verbal threats, or intimidation- like if the girl is afraid she will lose her job if she does not sleep with the boss. Ignatovan disagrees with the legal definition of sexual harassment.

"If somebody is murdered, you have a case. If you look at a girl wrong, you have a case," he says. But this is not the most important thing on his mind. The most important thing on his mind is that everybody considers him to be American.

"What I said about not being personal and not telling people that you like a girl is actually totally American," he declares.

"No it's the opposite of American," I say, sounding bored. "The fact that you think you have to do what is supposed to be American is very communistic of you as well, except you completely misunderstand what is and what is not American. It's not very simple in the first place, and I don't like how simple you like to make your separations." I try not to sound like a total bitch when I say this.

"I'm just saying I don't say who I like and don't like," he says, sounding very frustrated. I don't take much notice.

"That is such an over-simplification. It's insulting."

Then, I call him repressed.

"I wouldn't want some boy to tell my father or some other person that they like me. That would anger me," he says.

Would the feelings anger him, or the expression of feelings anger him?

"Really? I would be more upset if somebody withheld that sort of stuff from me. I would want to know. " I go on some more about how Americans like to be candid and open.

"Don't talk about me behind my back. That sort of thing," he says. "What is private? If it involves feelings, I wouldn't share it with somebody else." He also explains that somebody either has a girlfriend or boyfriend, or they are not together. I try to get him to understand that in my culture, people "hook up" and are not together, and that there are all these new in betweens, and that people love to gossip with one another and tell people in explicit detail acts that do not have the sort of labels he is thinking of.

As I talk, I heavily tone down how I say what I say because otherwise, he would not believe it.

"Here is a metaphor, Ignatovan. You are a bottle with a cork in you about to explode while others are fountains spouting freely. You go out of your way to eject and edit personal material," I say, giving him my own label.

"No it's all labeled, they never say they don't like Tom Cruise." He thinks celebrities fall into a separate category from normal people when it comes to expressing feelings. As an example, he uses my friend Jason, who once kissed Jenny McCarthy. He says it is okay that Jason told us this because Jenny McCarthy is famous. I explain to him that Jason often tells me about other girls he kisses that aren't famous.

"Your ignorance is shocking!" I say, stunned. "People are often more willing to say they are hooking up, but not that they are in a relationship. A relationship is a heavy word, and some people don't like all the ramifications it has. They may feel that if they say they have a boyfriend, the boy they are interested in might think the girl is commitment obsessed, clingy, or worse. And vice versa. It is generally something that both people decide," I say.
"There are a lot of things that can't be labeled," I persist.

"You are talking about a generation gap," he says. "If you look inappropriately it is sexual harassment and what I say is completely ordinary. Saying I don't like to talk about liking a girl is in the spirit of American laws."

"It shows a complete misunderstanding of what it is to be American," I say.

"Anything emotional or sexual is not American," he says.

"Unwelcome in who's mind, yours? Maybe yours. But everybody? No. No way!"

This conversation is really beginning to irritate me. Forget my love of brilliant mathematicians in general. This is one fucked up boy who needs to admit his mommy molested him. He needs to go around telling every stranger he meets on the highway. But he thinks that if he even says that he likes a girl, he will be sued for sexual harassment. And furthermore, he believes that this is proof of the beauty of American Patriotism.

"Sexual harassment laws, terrible history, fragility, not even emotionally, but saying I am careful about expressing my feelings is not anything anybody would think is anything strange," he says.

I long ago noticed that the beginnings of a lot of his sentences make no sense.

"Most people do think it's strange," I say. This is, after all, a fact. Everybody I know think that Ignatovan is strange. And if they were hard-pressed to make a list of the details of what is most strange, they would mention how fake-polite he acts at all times, and how he never lets loose, and how he preaches incessantly about topics that do not tie together, and how most people cannot relate to him, and that they find him to look and act like a freaky Martian.

Ignatovan honestly thinks he can live in a world without comparisons. He thinks comparisons are sinful. In desperation for some humanity, even if bleak, I scold him. I tell him that what he thinks of as separations are rules. He believes that he categorizes ideas. Blueprints graphing which idea belongs to which area. His rules are arbitrary, I tell him. Finally, the truth. He makes up new rules as fast as he can come up with them in response to random stimuli around him.

Most dangerously, his are the rules of his existence alone, for they pertain to nobody but himself.

"Your head is a very interesting place to visit but you should get out of it more," I finish, and put the phone back in its receiver. I like the physicality of this gesture, and I can't help but appreciate old fashioned phones and old-fashioned answering machines that you can listen in on and interrupt. It's a much more preferable way of screening calls than caller ID.

I'm not angry at Ignatovan for who he is. I'm angry at him for thinking that he is a "normal" example of what all Americans are like. How can he miss so much? Right now, I finally get why he talks on and on to the irritation of the person on the receiving end. Since he can't empathize or relate, he has to make up experimental theories about the smallest minutia so he can explain away why people respond to him the way they do. Or why they don't respond to him the way his sets of rules insist that they should. He must constantly make up new shoulds and ifs to compensate for his tilted world view. If I believed that my genes came from a rabbit, and that my life was based on Alice and Wonderland, I would spend most of my time generating thoughts to explain why people did not see the similarities to Alice, or why people did not recognize my rabbit genes. I could create any theory at all. Perhaps this is why he is forced to be so creative with something as rigorous as math. With people, he must bend rules all the time to make room for his noncomplying nature. He is so uninsightful, he has to over-compensate, as most geniuses do. Most people who are extremely talented in one field are not balanced, but disproportionate.



NOTES:


"You can take the man out of Russia but you can't take the Russia out of man.

cultural divide.

america is a much more open society and have a high iq and not relate to other people socially
total different concept of private and public in Russia and America
the fact that it is so important for him to fit in and be american and fit in is not american.
personal problem- can't say he likes Maria.

hates feelings- the fact that somebody would like him and tell somebody about it or the communication itself?

cultural divide, growing up in Russia and being educated there.

moraldivide- how can he be friends with some of the wierd OPEN people he is friends with>?

the truth

Right now I am trying to write stories based on the truth, but from the other person's side of view. Unfortunately, they are turning out a little flat-sided.. Who said the truth was interesting? I suppose my next step should be to change reality when I feel like it, but that is going to be painful for a creative realist obsessed with getting every detail of reality down realistically.

Haunted

Is this prose too contrived?
PS. I'm moving away from Seattle, getting another masters but in something else. Hopefully New York. I have to get away so badly I'm willing to use a knife to sever a limb to get out of the restraints tying me, preventing me from moving. Too much movement, and I'll suffocate myself. So i have to be careful how I escape.
Creative Writing is the new major. I already have the references and the book and stories. Now I'm writing again. I'd stopped for a long time. So be patient. This is the opposite of the free-flowing stuff that used to betray me.

Haunted

I'd like to sustain a pristine apartment, but in truth my apartment is nothing less that trashy. Like our culture, its need was to earn the name, then discard it. Lots of 13 year old girls listen to bands called Garbage, Filth, or Smut. But when these glorified titles are directed towards the same adolescent girls that carry their band stickers on their notebooks, it's taken personally. Parents are notified, tears are stifled, and clothes, friends, crooked teeth are all carefully re-examined. These girls have been around. Oh, sure, call my place cluttered. It's no virgin. Survey it closer, and it's frayed on the edges, scattered, but at least there's no unwanted leakage. And even though the word infect creates such a potent thrill with stainless steel countertops and hygienic equipment stored away carefully, sterile antibiotic hand cleanser at your every disposal. Those houses can be a little daunting to enter. Like watching a girl so perfect you can't even daydream about her sweat. You want to measure her imperfections, the little things that make you churn at night, turning your sheets into a heap of trapped heat. Instead, you wake up with the taste of your nightmare, a dream about a guy you knew twenty years ago. His face disappears as you kick off your comforter.
My sheets are changed every so often. My laundry is clean, and the smudges of dirt on the kitchen counters is relatively new but deep. The right kind of dirt is only a storehouse of nutrients. But looking at anything as less than radioactive now is as unlikely as it is to find a clique that does not exclude. My items are not covered in dust, as they are clearly picked up and strewn across the room every once and a while, but they are not maintained properly. The proof is in the way my features slacken when I bother to chronicle my possessions.
My gaze is defiant. I'm being held inside a police station with the mirror posing as a window for the cops to study my facial expressions, and I know it. It's amazing to me how rehearsed a few equations are, while the rest is reckless, trying to make you forget that you ever could memorize anything. The place feels unfamiliar because I'm entering my own brain. I want to get out, even though I think I used to belong here. My moods change, but every time I unlock room 406 a new book is left unfinished. Note the lack of restraint, heavy air flow, an anchor pulling a leg into the sea, an ambiance making my room interfuse. There is too much stuff. None of it goes where it belongs. Efficiency is the last rule that applies to this place. It's clear there's a rare sense of an aesthetic talent having thrown back too many shots of vodka, and there is always the ghost of a child crying. "Daddy, where are you?"
Perhaps I hide my potential to keep myself safe from prospective buyers. People take advantage of me enough as it is, but I get the feeling they don't really understand the price tag put on my head.