heart brain hygiene

THE HUG GOODBYE FOR THE BREAKUP WE NEVER HAD

For the entire subway ride home in silence under the East River crammed in by others - did anything ever make this much sense? I tell you no. We won’t kiss. And holding you was like holding a part of myself that I had not spoken to in a long time, a part I’ve forgotten about or brushed off my shoulder. Like dirt. Because I had no other option. My only other option was staring into the moon and spend the coming eternity guessing. 

And this was what I was hoping for, somehow, when I came back. When I touched ground. From high up in the sky, straight down to under these dirty masses of water, surrounded by bodis dead and alive, the workers and the population of our generation and I feel like I belong in these arms more than anywhere else. Only I do not and that is also the point. The point being that there’s no, was never, will not be for the remains of this eternity, any point defining it, is what I think you were saying, is what I’m thinking now. I can only be glad that this is no longer a question mark forever etched, but that we did share if not any other moment of truth, well then at least this moment.

Sitting on my bed I cancel being trapped by myself in one simple click and I gather the courage to explore. To lay down on these new, still warm, ashes and collect what I thought was being denied. This final stage of this current eternity for me for now was us. This eclipse is packaging history and sealing it tight. I will sleep a deep sleep on these ashes and I will wake up knowing for what it’s worth, that there was nothing more valuable at this moment then the hypothetical love that does not exist solely in our minds. No further comments. The momentary silence of morning.

SOMETHING ON YOUR MIND

Maybe you just need to let go. Maybe you just need to not even try to think about what you feel anymore.

We kick the ground hard as if it was responsible for the heartache we can only blame ourselves for. Her feet are aching but she doesn’t seem to notice. As long as she doesn’t understand the ground she stands upon she will keep kicking it. I try stroking it to soften it, flatten it. On my knees, in the dirt. Maybe we need to not -

There are so many things yet to be done and we are in fact destroying people’s life’s on an everyday basis. The purple of his eyes makes me feel less guilty, less self-accused. If he can be logical, so can I.

And yet I feel like I need to shut-up. I feel like you should do the talking now. Without thinking. Just talk. Just tell me what’s on your mind.

Why or when or where

When the sun sets over these fields they will transform, we will be swallowed and fall into a hole deeper than our shadows. Step, step, step. I’m so in love with him, he’s pale face as he tells me he thinks he’s probably sick, very sick, and I say no, no I’m sure you’re not, cause I don’t want him to be. Although. I’ve dreamt so many times about him with cancer, him in pain, him in the hospital. In one dream he’s white as the sheets, lying staring on his back, the curtains just waving to him, breathing in the early spring air. I’m a nurse and I slowly enter the room and the look he gives me is the look of final realization. I lie down on top of him as he falls asleep. 

The early spring air passes us right by and goes direct into summer. As if time never passed. As if it’s two years ago, only I don’t feel attractive anymore and him using the term “girlfriend” means something completely else. However he was never referring to me. I want to tell him I’m seeing someone. I want to kiss him. I’m confused. Is he my friend or my family or the love of my life. We’re standing in line at a sports store and I tell him being in love is still being just as lonely as being alone, and he says yes, and suddenly he’s the optimist and I’m the cynic and it’s all reversed. And I’m so stupid too, I haven’t read any books and why oh why does he have to shout “hey!” after me as he gets into the cab and “thank you” and I’m not sure for what but I want it to be for loving him although I have no idea how or why or when or where. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR aka DO THE RIGHT THING

What I need to do is meditate. We are looking out the window like two Cinderellas and she’s in white, I’m in flowers. This is exactly like three years ago is all I have time to think before starting to regret thinking that.

Three years ago we had sushi in the window while the sun was setting, clinking wine. I was in flowers but she was in jeans and I felt like a loser and she probably did too. It was a different she and a different window but the view was identical. I cried that night too. Same scenery same setting same city same trees.

Same view different time different lines of work. I should have said ‘look, this is weird’ or I should have kept quiet as I did and sipped the wine and then walk it off, walk it off. 

Walk it off, walk it off. As I did. I translate words that mean something to me, not that he cares, he laughs cause he thinks I’m telling a joke. I’m not, I’m only trying not to pour my heart out, but to just have a conversation. There’s no room for that. There’s only room for pouring my heart out or sexy chitchat. There’s no room for conversation. It’s the antithesis of what I want.

He thinks I’m telling a joke. I don’t even know what I’m telling anymore. It’s getting empty, as empty as when we were sixteen and walking downtown in search of something, anything, everything. 

She misses action and a plot, as I’m dusting off. I’m dusty. Do you remember chapter fifteen? No, I do not, cause all it is to me is some sort of blur and I’m counting on you to tell me what it is. She worries too much. They all worry too much.

Happy new year. You suck. 

But we are all obliged to feel happy, and so I will, in my own sulky way, as 2013 unfolds and shows me its magic, its hidden treasures, its painfully lit operation rooms. Will I ever feel light as a feather again?  Well, let’s look at the odds. Every year gives and takes, and probably you don’t have that much to be given, considering everything you’ve been taking so far, so just wait behind that line and we’ll call your number.

But I don’t even want to be seen, I don’t need it. All I need is some comfort, some sign that I’m on the right track. 

She points with her entire hand to the crowd and asks me DO YOU EVEN KNOW THESE PEOPLE? DO YOU EVEN KNOW OF THESE PEOPLE? And I’m ashamed as I have to look down to the floor and shake my head while quietly saying no, and so I do even though my entire heart is saying actually, I don’t care.

Actually, I don’t care, or I do care but I have no time for caring, cause time is limited and mine is sucking the life out of me. What matters is what always mattered, to do your thing, to do the right thing. So do the right thing, 2013. Use your karma apparatus calculator thing and do the right thing. Happy new year.

OBLIGATION OBJECTION

We should be done by now. He puts his drink down and I escort him to the door. As he leave I can’t help the feeling of relief. I’m never sure if it’s coming from him or me, or both.

It was never any other story than coloring what was inside the lines, only the other people couldn’t see the lines until the color was already there. 

It turned out to be a big wait. We speak on the phone and I tell her I’m preparing for the worst and she tells me she’s doing exactly the same and I wish we wouldn’t. But how could we not. We’re people, human, products of our culture.

Objection. I’ve been taken advantage of. For my entire life I’ve been taken advantage of and I don’t know what to do about it. 

Suddenly I’m lying to myself. Why am I not straightening life out instead of preparing for the worst? They seem to take each other out. No one in the room knows what I’m talking about. Suddenly it’s all quiet, the music is silenced and it’s just me, in the middle of the room, stared at as the freak. 

I wish. Those were the good days. 

No one stares anymore. There’s no time, no interest. Keeping impossible choices up demands our full attention. I do want to bike along the river with you and scream for the top of my lungs but I need to feel it first, I can’t act for the look of things. I need to feel it. I’m not feeling anything. 

I’m not feeling anything because the silent practicality is covering my soul.

Soul?

We have no souls.

But you have fashion? To have fashion you must have a soul.

We don’t know what you’re talking about. You should probably leave now.

So she takes her handbag and slips out of the conference room, wander the beaches of this small greek island and forgets about the stiff air, the grey sentiments as the sand scrubs her feet. What to do, oh what to do when you feel like you’ve reached so far, you’ve come such a long way, and yet is nothing but. 

You go to sleep and hope someone will find you when the party starts. You go to sleep and hope someone will wake you up when war is over cause they wanted it. You go to sleep and you hope that they will miss you enough to want to go your way. You go to sleep and you pray to the stars that they will bring you, and everyone you love, sweet dreams of imperfection and crazy beauty of the never ending sort.

And then you wake up.

IT HAPPENED HERE

IT HAPPENED HERE. IT WAS HERE IT HAPPENED. I WAS WALKING AND SO WAS HE. AND THEN OUR PATHS CROSSED.

If I were to make a statistical analysis of life, which I’m not, I know exactly what it would look like, cause I’ve made one. It reads UNREQUITED LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT which then turns into Ouroboros followed by endless mystery of emotion and love. And sex and fear. And cats and bread. And dirt and books. And pots and pans. And plants and houses. And so forth. 

I want to tell you a story. No seriously, I really do. I vaguely know how to begin it, I have no idea how to end it and I really do not have any idea what is supposed to happen by telling you. Cause nothing really happened. To have something happen in a story you don’t need words or meaning, you don’t even need characters, but you need a form, a premise, and I’m not sure of the premise yet. I have no form. So this story is about finding the premise more than anything else. 

So the story is not only hidden from you, it’s hidden from me as well, and in trying to tell it I am forced to expose how unaware of it I am. But I know this. There was a crime scene, there was another person, and there was me. Why would this interest you? Because one of us, or the scene, has a certain something, a characteristic that intrigues you. Maybe by knowing more than you, maybe by resembling you, maybe by disgusting you. I’m not sure yet why you would care.

I guess it’s because you also had your heart broken and you also wondered ‘why’ and questioned what you did wrong, why love is never yours, stuff like this.

But then there’s more to life than only this and I have no idea how to incorporate all of that into the story. All I know is that this single scene, where it happened, was not independent from the rest of our lives in any way.

I know for example that I looked very good that day, I had a stride in my step and my hair was newly washed, but not too newly washed. I was wearing my new coat. I know that the sun was up and that the leaves were falling, beautiful colors, and I know that he looked particularly good too, in the sun, with the leaves. I know we met each other, only briefly, that we hugged and said hi. Actually I saw him in the corner of my eye before really looking his way, saying hi. I doubted and thought he wouldn’t want to talk. But he kept looking. We talked for maybe 30 seconds. 

He was looking somewhat perfect and I wanted to tell him he was always very handsome but I didn’t.

It was like I’ve already overstayed that welcome, and fearless as I was always in relation to him, I did fear that it would do nothing but make me a little bit sadder even tho everything at this moment seemed perfect only because of everything that happened before this moment. I had no regrets, neither would I’ve developed any, and actually I didn’t want to say that. I didn’t want or need to say anything more than I did. But I think it and I felt like I had to burry it deep inside. The thought stroke me as a feeling, not a thought, how handsome he always was, how much I like his particular feeling for looks and style. I carried this feeling with me until I just now transformed it back to the thought it originally was.

But no.

No one said anything remarkable.

We spoke softly and there were smiles and natural pauses and eyes looking into each other. There was sun and colors and calmness. There was 30 second of relaxing in what shouldn’t be relaxed. 

We haven’t had contact since. 

I left naturally to my destination, I had a very specific one, a very tight schedule, and he left for his, also very specific, but miles apart. Or not. It could’ve been not. I was so ready to change gear, to give what I could, to make something out of this odd pairing. But we are never alone in our choices. Other people choose too. We both left the scene and messed up the leafs in our paths and between us, from the small circle where we met were the gravel had been somewhat kicked around leaped two escape routes that intended no escaping but functioned as exits plans anyway. We said bye, again. I said “see ya” and I smiled. I can’t remember exactly what he said. End of scene and nothing more to share.

And still. It happened here. The totality of life, coincidence and continuity happened here and something within changed forever.  

I MISS OR MY BRAIN IS OVERCOOKED AGAIN

I cook my brain in different dosages to keep it right, keep it straight. It cooks itself too and you know, too many cooks right. Too many cooks, too many cocks, too many books, too many locks. Murder me with orgasms.

After years and years she’s dreaming of home for the first time in years (weeks) and they’re laughing at the architecture at ground zero so loud, ridiculing men, and when they leave, they leave for sweets, and she wants to call you cause she misses, still, but then she’s drowning in friendship and friendship asks her if she can see the boats and if she’ll dare, and she dares and it’s unpleasant but still good and they’re walking around, kicking stones, in the other home. 

Too many homes. 

And you think about your life and realize some people are not missed and what does that mean. What does that mean.

He walks home from the bar while telling himself that if he just wanted to he could’ve fucked all night, really, if he just wanted to, no adjustments needed, he could’ve fucked all night, but you and I know better.

No answer. You hang-up. 

You hang up. She asks guy after guy to have beer or maybe just coffee with her until enough is enough and no one would ever have sex again. The foam is stuck in his beard and he will drown before leaving his tub of never ending brewing. And so no one at the party wanted to have sex. Not even a small kiss on the cheek.

‘Have you ever been so sure about something or someone that it doesn’t make you sad when he says ‘I don’t think it’d be a good idea’ but only frustrated because all this time is just wasting away. And you have to get there. You’ll wade through that international water to just get there. And did you ever notice the boats, how small and insufficient they seemed from above?’

You shake your head, or maybe you don’t, what do I know. She just love the way it feels when he says something to her that includes the words “I love it when you” or “your legs are the best legs I’ve ever seen” and “oh yeah, yes” and so on.

And so on and so forth and so on we grew up and end of story. 

And she wanted to sleep with you real bad, kept asking with her eyes, and you kept saying ‘I’ll see you at the wedding’. You were to give the toasts. There would be people around, all watching, waiting for you two to stand up, at different points in time. 

And she would stand up.

You arrived early, as one should, and greeted and smiled guests and family, from near from far. The kind of far that doesn’t include death. She was already sort of drunk, not from alcohol, but from sadness, in the bathroom. She had guessed your answer really meant no. Seeing you happily kissing and hugging pretty cousins hello, their bossoms so new and perky, their asses so tight and juicy, their legs so long and firm. Surely you must have wanted them right then and there. 

Bathroom mirror and her tears and there’s no happy best friend with concerned eyes to hold her back or tell her ‘you look great’ all the while looking great is the one thing she knows too well won’t help her, you’ve always said ‘you look great’ but still you won’t fuck her. Sleep with her, shut her eyes and her mouth, crumble over her. But home is not for making love. Home is for waiting and observing. Home is where your untied knots are.

MY LOVE AND THE DAYS OF THE WEEK

We discuss the names of the weekdays based on his pillbox as he takes the dosage for montag with the cinnamon tea. I don’t even think about it anymore. I’m guessing the german names. He’s correcting me, explaining them. ‘So how do you say in the middle of the week without saying wednesday?’ Over dinner I’m focusing the discussion on future, he’s in the now. None of us is in any sort of know.

Doing the dishes after he’s gone I dictate a letter to his family. Asking them to put values of a judging god aside, to look forward, to for once use a different perspective. To for once use his. He never left them, which according to us would be his only responsibility. The final break-up. Goodbye god.

We both know he is channeling fear and sorrow through the daily dosage of pills and pills encore, and I flash this fake feeling of condemnation with my life coaching light. ‘Oh dear coach! It hurts so good!’ he will say and I will stop in my tracks and turn around in the dim light to look him deeply in the eyes and say as harshly as I can

‘I am not your coach I am your friend’

and then take another piece of tofu right from his plate. I wish him nothing but love and relaxation. I wish nothing but for god to plunge from his throne down on the face of his past and show him the exit light to out of there. 

EMPOWERED TO WHAT

Heterosexuality is killing me. Political discussions in Sweden are killing me. Tintin and armpit hair. I remember walking down the LES and seeing gangs of 12 year old skater girls in awesome outfits. This frustration with empowerment lost in forced discussions about “immigration” (i.e. class) and “feminism” (i.e. hate and fear) is making me loose all my faith in love. 

It’s funny. I’m not looking for love. But when I talk about it with friends it seems we’re always talking about my faults. Apparently I like guys that are too handsome, too complicated or just bad in general. These issues comes up very quickly, without me mentioning them, so they must be major. Whatever qualities I like about certain people are immediately compared to something that’s my problem. Freud is laughing in his grave.

What was I empowering myself for now again? 

I’m exhausted. All I want to do is sit at home and listen to Lady Gaga. Empowering myself to sleep. At least I’m not doing that wrong. At least we don’t hate and fear those who are sleeping.

SAVIORS ACTION

The two day hangover and the books that should be returned to the library by now but I’m in the wrong library, in the wrong city, in the wrong. We brush our hair in front of the same mirror only there are no brushes, only forks so I do my best to get rid of the overabundance. Sink covered in long black tails of me. She has so many bottles and tubes, I see where I get it from. So close to organizing them again, I can’t wait. All I want to do is throw my body back and open that package of american snus but I have to wait for the moment in the future which I know nothing about, there’s this wait happening and this speculation that I will do something which I can never be quite sure of. I protected my head with pieces of a magazine that had nothing to do with where I was living but at the same time had nothing to do with anything else. My head was safe. My head was fine. They called my name from behind and I had the feeling that it was a saviors action.

To be pulled in from the rain and protected by the fire of hands known to me, we toasted and reminisced in tea and her fingers in my hair. I talked as if water was pouring out, told her about the time we spent together and the growing pains I remembered, her airy head floating above me had lost all that information from before, she giggled at times and went on to talk about future adventures. I could only think of the past.

Because the future carries no garanties but the past is nothing but. What is more safe. Yet we have no intention on giving up on the unsafe, but every to be the savior of our own. In between wet nights and references in common there’s a void of everydayness which I wish I could clean up from being the hovering threat that it seems to be. I remember thinking that the future would be better. Now all I see is fracture in disguise. 

HAD ENOUGH

Mission to write is mission to remember. Imagining entering the hospital and being told ‘all equipment broken’ and being forced to do surgery on oneself with a four inch knife (I don’t know how long that is). And the animals running across me running, I stop breathless and watch them pass to the tones of concerts in the far behind, how can I explain it, divine. I’m running in silence to deafen the terrors of what I love. What you love. Have you told the world what you love today babe? If not you might not get it.

Rough love, tough love, terrorizing truths about humanity and human kind. But think positive. No thank you. As in the swedish saying at H’s door, friendly but firm, no thank you. I will do no positive thinking at this point. What is positive will reveal itself. To blame me for the way my brain works and who made my brain work like this, oh dearest dear? I leave it to you.

We get too inspired by what we read and nothing has changed since forever so I leave the party just when it’s starting to make sense. He follows me home while crying holding my hands up to the sky and sings in my ear ‘reach for it, just take it, bring it home with you’ and I try and I try but man, I am a woman and I am forced to be afraid. King Kong Theory aside for just one second and that second is too scary to face.

Not caring about being cool, not caring about being right, not caring about being true. Caring about the absurd and caring about you, have you heard anything so absurd? ‘So, you’re the one who does research?’ I will answer yes and look deeply into your eyes. The only boy who ever promised me anything - I looked deeply in his eyes and said yes and then I flashed my boobs. Extensions of my body. Holding signs that reads LAUGH and so I did for the appearance of laughter. I detest you postmodernism, why would anything no longer be true or real. I detest you science why would anything ever be true or real. It’s all too absurd to me.

So I wash my underwear by hand trying to get the stains out and that is purely for the aesthetics of it all, of the text, of your mind, pleasing it, begging to please your reading eyes. All for you, your reading eyes. And when it’s quiet and I’m alone I fold my hands and pray for the sky to take me to New York. Cause I’m kliché like that. No regrets.

FORCE QUIT

I refuse silence - so I dump myself. 

‘Look here. You don’t want to see me.’

He’s sorry. I’m sorry too, crouching on a mountain of red ocher, sniffing the rocks, thinking I’m so far away now. Literally? Emotionally. Geographically. Yet I’ve returned to exactly where I was one year ago - with one major difference. I want him now. Whatever the time zones, whatever the status. So I talk to him about ice. I talk to him about ice for a long time and about pushing and pulling and pressure and movement. About how the ice is melting and the polar bears have nowhere to live. About flying over Iceland, over Greenland, landing at JFK and be confused about the train, or just really excited. And the ice. Because of the heat. We used ice in so many ways. In our coffee, in our water, in front of fans, in packs against our bodies, dozing away on the couch. I talk about the couch too and I remember it all too well. Watching soccer and the touch of the hand against my knee. I guess we kissed goddbye, but I’m not sure anymore.

Dibabas sprint is out of this world and I want to kiss her dimples. Am I as strong as her? We’re strong in different ways. I sniff the red ocher rocks where the boys of my youth would piss and roll and jump and bike and skate. I talk about love relationships and feelings of self-worth. I talk about 14 year old girls. I think about standing in the cosmetic store downtown discussing waxing while the boys were pissing and rolling and jumping and biking and skating. 

To talk about emotions and relations. To be aware of the self. It got me in to philosophy. The pissing and rolling and jumping and biking and skating made me leave. Now I’m into the Pisces the Aquarius the Taurus and the Virgos and I feel like something grand is happening. I talk to him about the ice and he’s not bored. I dump myself and I’m more than happy I did. We should never be afraid to want to straighten things out. There’s nothing scary about communication. There’s nothing scary about force quiting what is lagging behind, losing control or stealing energy and crashing emotion ruining love because there is no love in that particular spot. I dumped myself for him, I ran his emotional errand though I promised to never do so again. Because I, like Dibaba, am strong. Because I, like Dibaba, know the value of ice after heat.