I think quite possibly—that the moment I speak of, that moment of pure euphoria, since that is how I would describe it, pure momentary bliss—is a part of me dying. That I die ever so slightly, some part of my soul degrades, a grain of sand taken from a beach. And such is the source of the anxiety which plagues me. I worry the more I want—the more I experience that orgasmic second—so short that, once I realize what has occurred, it is already long over—the more I wish for moments to last forever: that beach will become tide.

I worry the emergence of that free, empty ocean of my eroded soul will not correlate to my age, and the beach will disappear before I reach the average lifespan. That my soul will entirely degrade by the time I turn, say, 40, and I will be forced to then live the latter half of my life in a malaise. Where I become incapable of enjoying anything.

Or possibly rather, and this might be the preferable option: I will kill myself when my soul reaches such a point.

I will turn 40, my last second of bliss coming as I blow out the candles on the cake my partner had purchased from a bakery near where we live. I will then die, internally, eternally, pelagic. I will sit in our kitchen, watching as my family eats the cake around me. They will talk about their days, their lives, the effect I have had on all of their decisions and outlooks, and I will feel nothing. I will have no desires except to kill myself. To prevent the body from making any change of direction for the life that my soul steered into formation.

I will go to sleep that night. Maybe my lover would try to have sex, celebratory, I will refuse. I will have to. In some way, it will be rape. Necrophilic rape. My body will not want it, it should not want it, I hope it will be aware of how wrong it would be. I pray it will not take advantage of the fact that no one will ever know—my partner believing the body is still inhabited by the person they married. Hopefully they will see the body’s vacant eyes and understand what happens next.

they stepped past glossy superstructures that jutted out from and surrounded century-old buildings, they moved with such ease. Their movements did not carry any weight and could be regarded as inconsequential. If you were to ask this person what they just did, they wouldn’t consider their steps nor their eye movements nor the thoughts they just then experienced, to be something they had done. And would rather look at you, bewildered, and storm off or ask for more clarification in their accented tones. It was because, in their mind, they hadn’t stepped anywhere. They were inside themselves actively, even as you questioned them.

Skin covers the soul.
The soul is visible at night.
Red blood.
When the bleeding fades.
The wound opens and milligrams of soul leave the body. I’m not lying.

"that absent father who always gives you money for you to buy material things but isn't there to see what you've become"

i am trying to redirect my sins. to where? idk

Sidewalk [Los Feliz 3]

Mourning a new limb, I step outside
into the latest light. They don’t chill
the iced tea in there: I think they ought
to charge less for it. Magenta in the sky,
orange creamy in the sky. I keep
thinking my phone is ringing. I recall
the film and the solemnity in the dark.
Imagining a movie theater that only
allowed couples. Not a porn theater,
though, regular movies. Now imagine
a theater only for people who have
never seen a movie. You’d only go
one time. Now imagine one for your
parents, and they tell you all about
the movie they saw but you aren’t
allowed to see it. And now imagine a
sidewalk which didn’t hurt your feet.

I am not much of a thinker, truly. I might be an unthinker, honestly. I might be incapable of true and real rumination. But I try to find it in others, and I admire them for their thinking their thoughts. I always watch from without, expectantly. I am proud to say that I have observed what I imagine are a great many thoughts thunk.

“There one goes,” I say to myself out loud on a park bench, when I see a person who appears to me to be thinking a great thought. “And there’s another!” I shout about their thinking because it gives me a sense of hope for the future, a sense of hope that I might one day think, as well?

There is always the worry that I could be praising someone who is thinking of doing horrible violence, murder, even. I try not to let that deter me from praising anyone – even if I don’t want to accidentally encourage a prospective murderer. Sometimes, if their smile is not quite right after the praise, I say, “Unless you’re thinking about hurting someone!” Their smile usually fades after Isay this, but that is not necessarily because they mean anyone harm, and perhaps because they don’t like being accused of such things.

If I’m being honest, I’ve been working on one thought, though it belies how I tend to think of myself. I’ll share it with you now. My thought for the first time anywhere: thoughts, it seems to me, are not unlike moonbeams, which you certainly find yourself in the glow of nightly, when you’re on your nightly moonlit walk, and yet they are not something you take the time to appreciate, staying with you with all the fortitude of melted snow in one’s winter coat pocket.

Not like sunbeams. Sunbeams that warm us and fill us with the temperature that allows us to function as normal.

This is how I understand sunbeams to work, or rather, this is what I would understand if I were capable of understanding any solitary thing at all.

For me, I fear, it will always be others’ thinking that brings me any real joy.

But I can hope that, in time, I’ll have one really good thought, too, can’t I?

Don’t you think?


https://somewords.boards.net/thread/46/matt-rowan