Thank you, Dashwood...

cigarettes and chocolate milk
these are just a couple of my cravings
everything it seems i like's a little bit stronger
a little bit thicker, a little bit harmful for me

if i should buy jellybeans
have to eat them all in just one sitting
everything it seems i like's a little bit sweeter
a little bit fatter, a little bit harmful for me

and then there's those other thing
which for several reasons we won't mention
everything about them is a little bit stranger, a little bit harder
a little bit deadly

it isn't very smart
tends to make one part
so brokenhearted

sitting here remembering me
always been a shoe made for the city
go ahead accuse me of just singing about places
where scrappy boy's faces have general run of the town

playing with prodigal sons
takes a lot of sentimental valiums
can't expect the world to be your raggedy andy
while running on empty,
you little old doll with a frown

you got to keep in the game
retaining mystique while facing forward
i suggest a reading of a lesson in tightropes
or surfing your high hopes of adios kansas

it isn't very smart
tends to make one part
so brokenhearted

still there's not a show on my back
holes or a friendly intervention
i'm just a little bit heiress,
a little bit irish
a little bit tower of pisa
whenever i see ya
so please be kind if i'm a mess

cigarettes and chocolate milk
cigarettes and chocolate milk

"Cigarettes And Chocolate Milk" by Rufus Wainwright... and now, as I promised, the meat. These are actually several things I've written over the last few days, and I am posting them now while I have a minute.

---

I'm not entirely sure why I torture myself like this - writing when I know I won't be able to post it immediately, for example. I rant, and instead of purging, it sits around, glaring at me, until I can send it out into the ether and release it.

I used to be able to write, rant, and forget about it. I've gotten spoiled by the 'net, spoiled by my journal. Part of me, the illogical part, is tempted to try going a month without the diary, to see what happens... but I know that a) I'd hate it, b) too many people would assume I was dead, and c) I'd get really damned bored.

*sigh*

I'm listening to music - big surprise there, right? - and wondering if I'm going to be able to make it through class tonight. It's the introductory computer class tonight (photoshop is on Wednesdays) and although I've taught it before with Caleb, today I am worrying about it. Admittedly, the worry is at least in part 'cos I've already thrown up once today and am out of anti-nausia medication.

I wonder how much of the nausia is stress-related? I know that stress affects my stomach, and it's my stomach that is protesting... ehh. I'll try not to think about it, at least not today.

I feel... I feel as if I'm falling. Falling fast and hard, down a slope that's so slick, so smooth, that I can't find a single hand-hold. Every time my fingers catch on anything, every time, I have that tiny flicker of hope, it's just a new blob of grease, something else to make me slide faster.

What is at the bottom?

Oh, that's an easy one: depression. Frustration. Rage. Hopelessness. Perhaps worse... but we won't talk about that, will we? Can't talk about it, can't talk about anything important. My brain is still pretty fixed on that whole anti-trust thing and although I am ranting, it's holding part of me back. This would be fine except for the fact that the part it's holding back is the part I want OUT, gone, done with. *shrug*

Lit - "Over My Head"

Damned good song. And currently playing loud enough that the windows are rattling. "They want to try and fill me up / so they can tear me down / I wish that I could be back there / but I'm right here, right now / they've taken everything that I've had to give them / they say it's over but I'm still here living / I don't know what to do / I think that maybe / I'm in over my head..."

Over my head.

That, oh reader, is what I feel.

I really am in over my head. I am S-C-R-E-W-E-D and I did it to myself, that's the rub. Ok, no, I didn't choose to have a body that produces kidney stones the way most people produce carbon dioxide. I certainly didn't ask my parents to decide that helping with college, or helping with bloody ANYTHING, was Right Out since I don't go to their church or believe what they believe. And I know I didn't plan to end up loving people who are so damned far away that they might as well be on another planet.

But I DID choose to move in with Caleb. I DID choose to try to live like a normal person rather than a whore. I DID choose to give up being a Dominatrix. I DID choose to believe differently than my parents. I wouldn't be here if I had thought differently. If I had done things differently.

I don't know if that's good or bad.

I mean, a lot of the things about my life, they're not so bad. I've had excellent friends. I've seen a lot, done a lot. I've created some things that I'm pretty proud of, writing and art and music. I've actually loved, and been loved.

*sighs*

My mind is circling around to a pawful of names.

Michael.

David.

Angel.

Andre'.

Rhett.

Scott.

Caleb.

Nick.

Kadin.

Daris.

Arrasto.

That's a damned long list, really. Lots of people. I do not exist in a vacuum, and I think I'm glad of that... I think... but then I re-read that list and a few of those names, they leave a taste in my mouth that's so bitter, so hateful, it makes me want to curl up and die. People that if I could, I would kill them. People that if I could, I would break them. People that if I could, I would spend my life with them. And some of them, it's hard to tell from day to day which category they fall in.

I don't understand myself. I've come to this conclusion after quite a bit of thought. I certainlytry to understand myself. I write, I think, I talk, I do everything I can to see past my tricks, my habits, my self-protection. I want to understand, because if I understand myself, I have this feeling that maybe I can improve myself, I can find out where I'm going wrong and FIX it.

"Johnny, Angry Johnny, this is Jezebel in hell..."

Music. Gotta love it.

"I can do it in a church / I can do it any time and place / I can do it like an angel / to quiet down your rage / but either way / either way / I wanna kill you / I wanna blow you / away..."

Yep.

Every now and then, when I'm daydreaming, I imagine assassination. Lots of money, the chance to kill, to destroy, to HURT... and the skills, the tools, to do it well. Money to live, money to survive, power and strength to keep myself safe, and the sweetness of my boy's eyes when I'm curled around him, stroking his hair, kissing his ear, and whispering to him all the horrible little details of how the latest one died... frightening him, terrifying him, and then reasurring him all over again, letting him see that I could never, NEVER, do that to him, that I need him and want him and that he is precious.

But always... always, there would be blood on my hands...

...and oddly enough, that's not an unpleasant thought. It's actually rather soothing. The thought that finally, there would be a REASON for some of the bad karma I'm ending up with. That finally, I'd have a physical target for my violence, for my anger, for my hate and rage. That maybe I'd be able to have normal nightmares, the ghosts of my victims screaming at me... not the ones I have now, the twisted nightmares, sick, haunting, they leave me trembling and shaking when I wake up in the middle of the night... and right now I wake up alone. Alone.

Completely alone.

"I'm always in your heart," they say... bullshit. It's a great thought. A beautiful image. But at four in the morning when my heart is racing and my eyes are wide and every shadow is a threat, there is no one in my heart. No one in my bed. No one in my arms. No one to remind me that it's ok.

The last two nights I've woken up in cold sweats.

I don't deal well with this.

I never have.

Likely, I never will.

This rant has almost gotten off-topic (although that implies that it started out on-topic, which is something of a faulty assumption) and I'm listening to "Glory Box", and maybe it would be better if I stopped writing. 'Cos this is not going well. It's actually going rather frighteningly off.

So.

Stopping.

I wonder when I'll actually post this?

---

There's a tide... crimson, gods, it's red as fresh-spilled blood, and it's creepingly rising. The sand it covers is white, pure. Innocence, you know. But it's stained now, darkened by the gore that rises, rises, there isn't any way to turn this hateful tide. Instead it moves faster. Intent - it senses intent, and lives, exists, to flood past the barriers and the nay-sayers and destroy the crystal-white sands. It swallows them down, an endless gasping drowning maw that can never really be filled... and still it rises.

There's a mountain... jagged peaks, smoke twisting down in half-real serpentine caresses, the air, fire, all of it seducing uncaring stone, hiding paths, revealing wicked tongues of flame that dart to lick hungrily at the soot-black sky. There is no real road to the top. No simple graveled guide. Footsteps fall on soil that's dead and barren, the rocks that litter the steep slopes cut and tear, it is an inhospitable and horrible place.

There's a boat... untrustworthy craft constructed of bone and sinew, pitch and pine boughs. It rocks, fragile, crossing the empty oceans to reach the purified sands at the base of hell. Room for many, but only a few would ever set foot in this tangle of death and growth. The boat is alive, always changing, always shifting. You can watch it drinking life from the cloying-sweet waters it sails across.

My world is here, caught between the words and the image, lost in the mists of speech and form that hide the truth. My world is here, here where text meets illusion and somehow forms a dream that is more real than the mocking, hurting reality that I have been told I should inhabit. My world is here, where the smoke and heat from a thousand guttering torches half-stifles screams and moans, pleasure and pain, the sounds so primal that to tell them apart would be the work of a master... or the realm of the insane.

I write, because it is here that I can form my consciousness. It is here, black and white, that my thoughts spring fully-formed from the silent void of sleep and death and existance. This is me, these words, these visions, this spinning glimpse of a universe where all rules turn to dust and ash, where all hopes crumble into nothing more than snow-white sand.

---

Yes. I know. This is not the work of someone who is... hm. Sane?

I stopped caring about sanity quite a while ago.

Right now all I care about is the gnawing ache inside of me, made worse by my own forgetfulness earlier, by the taste of heaven that a long-lost voice mixes with the purgatory he condemns me to, by the sweet rush of blood that rises almost giddily to the surface when - like this - I merely scratch the skin...

...because tonight, I don't care about much.

Tonight, I don't care about... yes. About all of them.

Tonight, I don't care about me, save that I know my needs will be met soon, one way or another. Blood. Tears. Pain. Misery. Pleasure. Food. Drugs. All of it, everything...

Arrasto, you wanted to know what it was that hurt me? I had forgotten just how blurred the lines can get between friendship, affection, and posession. I had forgotten that you are not, will not be, mine. I had forgotten that it is a waste of time, a waste of breath, to expect otherwise.

I get hurt sometimes, when I forget such basic truths.

Kadin... *shakes her head* That's a subject I shouldn't go into right now. I can't touch him. I can't talk to him. Is he mine? Is he even real?

I...

...I...

...I don't care.

Tonight, I don't care. Let him exist wherever he is, alone, shivering, miserable. Let him live, let him feel, let him exist... but I can't touch him, I can't see him, or hear him. I can't HAVE him.

You see, that's a need so central to everything I am that it's become more than a need.

Obsession.

*snickers* T'lesh.

Maybe I've been here before / I know this room, I've walked this floor / I used to live alone before I knew you / I've seen your flag on the marble arch / love is not a victory march / it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah...

So many names... names, names, gods, why did I think names were so important? Even if they mean something to me, how can I for even a moment believe that anyone else will understand, will feel, what it is I try to show and share and create?

My pen is broken, my colors faded and spilled.

I'll create no more.

I've said I'll wait. I've said "a year", "as long as there's hope", "until I know there's nothing they can do", "just a little while longer".

I've said I'll wait and I think I lied. I think the honesty I've tried so hard to cling to is falling beside the way, because on nights like this there is no reason to wait, no reason to continue. Not when it hurts like this.

Not when I know that what I want and need and exist to find is no longer something I can have.

Not mine.

Not for me.

My mind is tumbling out of control as I type this. My heart is racing, pounding so loud that I am shocked when I realize it is still silent to the rest of the world. It sounds like devils' drums, beating hot and hard and faster, ever faster. The drums ring loud, they mark the beginning of a hunt, the end of a life, the continued and dreary search for hope... when the drums fall silent, all hope is gone.

All hope is gone.

You're not above my suspicions... it's more than just superstition... it's me you'll be taking down with you... go ask your Goddess if you've served her well... she'll be climbing higher now...

And I might taste the rhythm and I might watch the redness and I might dance the rhythm of the flow of the redness of the light into darkness into shadow into nothingness....

...pure and simple...

...don't try your magic spells on me... I know you've been crystal-gazing... wherever you go I'll be waiting...

I wish I believed.

I wish I cared... do I?

No.

Not really.

The only thing I wish for tonight is a sharp knife and easy prey.

---

That's all. It's all there is. *shrug*