This time, last year...

or was it two years ago?

i wish sleep was the only thing i had to fight.
i wish the shards of broken dishes weren't here to witness how far i've fallen along a cursed downwards spiral-a descent into my own hell- and this day of all days- on my own birthday, i wish i was back in my old room, fighting sleep and watching snowflakes falling quietly, wishing me a happy birthday...


[2 am
And again I am desperately fighting the desire to sleep. Ahhh sleep— so tempting, so inviting, it appears as a perfect vision of rest and peace, opening its arms to take me to that land of bright colors and light and it’s hard to resist, yet there’s always that voice, that same voice louder than ever before, drumming in my temples with its “You must not sleep, you must Not sleep. Must not, must not sleep.”

I am tired. I am so tired. An overwhelming, over consuming exhaustion that makes my body sag in its own heaviness, and my eyes seem to be made of lead, and even closed they hurt, they burn and my brain presses hard against the back of my skull that’s like an iron cage where voices ring. Those voices, too many of them all speaking at once… and I can’t, I can’t listen to them anymore… and from their chaotic hum emerges the one, that one that gets louder in the stillness of the night, telling me to open my eyes, wider and wider… you must not sleep, you must not…

*
Dropping into sleep to come back again. I wonder what this night holds for me. I sit here, waiting for that sign, a falling star in a dark sky…

**
Awake, restless with fever, writing in fury trying to recapture a moment, a vision, an evasive thought… trying to write it out, find its outline, draw it on paper. But the pen scratches the smooth surface of the page,  leaving a dull echo…

I find it difficult to separate the beginning from an end. I find it difficult to give shape and order to this jumbled mess that’s been swirling in my mind for oh so long…

I suffer from reminiscences that leave me with regret and I want to cry out over all that’s gone, and I feel old and today I turn twenty two— and for the first time I am afraid, and that’s the fear of aging, the fear of time slipping away, a feeling of losing the stable ground, of losing the firm grip of moments that don’t belong to me anymore and it becomes unbearable to hear the clock ticking seconds away, further into the dread…

Disruption.
A life that seems disrupted, somewhere along the way it has given a crack, an unnatural, brutal interruption that excludes continuity of any kind and the cleft swallows up the future while the past is lost in a haze… I remember how I used to think that if I kept writing I would let the events continue, smoothly flow from one to another… Now I wish I could draw - I would draw a life, my own life, in little sketches and find a place for every detail that has been left out…

I lack completion. I seem to have lost my sense of cohesion, the integrity and wholeness of the self that could be me...

Now I am too tired. I have grown tired of living, a dangerous state of being neither here and there that leaves me feeling utterly uprooted and displaced… And I am aware of the danger of growing too used to this numbness, that is pleasant and soothing… almost like sleep, perhaps even better.

Almost like sleep…

Sleep….
I seem to have dozed off. With a start I wake. How long has it been? A minute or ten? An hour?

It’s dark and cold behind my window, the light in my room leaves long shadows on white …In the dark you can see white on white against the black starless sky…

It’s snowing.
Millions of little diamonds fall from above and if I listen close enough, I can hear the sound of those finest splinters of crystal touching the ice… Beautiful. It’s a beautiful night…

Happy birthday.]

December 18, 2002

The apartment

Picture a room, an entirely white room.

A white couch in the corner, a glass table, shelves built in the wall. A large picture on the wall. A white living room in a white apartment on the top of an old building in a nameless city of no geographical location...

The apartment is my safe place. In the beginning there was light, out of the light i created this space and a place to dwell. Slowly, one detail at a time I created this place, designing each and every detail, slowly, carefully, lingering on every object as if breathing life to it, before giving it its own place. A fresh coat of paint, white on white, the very few pieces of furniture, that single painting on the wall. Every object placed for a sole purpose to enhance the space, the vast, unlimited space to be filled with whatever I choose to bring into it.


I moved into that space. Slowly first, a few minutes every day, to simply lay down on the floor, eyes wide open, drinking in the light and whiteness, feeling the touch of solitude against my skin, soothing, warm, filling me with peace and tranquility... I started coming here more and more often, each time reluctant to leave, spending hours, then days surrounded by this whiteness, this silence and peace...

Here in this room I am happy. Alone and at peace with myself. This room, in the white apartment, in a building on a nameless street in a nameless city that has no place on the map...

Prelude

I feel very happy now. Very calm and happy. And airy. As if I’m made of some kind of cottony substance, all fuzzy and soft, and it feels good, so so good. Fall is finally here. The air is thin and chilly- I love waking up in the morning and going outside to smell the air and feel the milky light raw on my skin… I have a longing, some kind of a craving for fall, for real fall with colors and dry leaves and smell of chestnuts and wet soil. It’s never like this in Florida.

Last night, sitting outside smoking a cigarette I suddenly had a kind of a revelation, a realization about how much I had let my life run out of control…I thought about plans. Plans that would require long term commitment and hard work. I thought about future with its endless possibilities. I am finally thinking about facing what everyone around me seems to be struggling with these days-the human condition with its hopelessness and finality, and helpless despair… and for the first time I am facing it as it comes to me, without the despair. Perhaps I could change it somehow? Perhaps it’s not how it is, you know? All my life I’ve been feeling helpless and trapped in circumstances not of my choosing,  feeling claustrophobic in my limitations and limitations imposed by circumstances. And suddenly I realize that it wasn’t because of these circumstances- it’s because of how I chose to see them that made me feel trapped and hopeless… for surely there’s a way out, for surely every day is a chance to try and change something about these damn circumstances… for every day it’s another day where I get to push the limits of my own reach...

Then I think about the whole creativity concept. Creating a life like you’d create art… how different would it feel if we treated our lives as we treat art? Or rather, as an artist treats his lifetime creation? These are not my thoughts, although they resonate with me so strongly now...

It’s almost that time of the year… a cycle is coming to an end... A phase is coming to a gradual end, the way circumstances have played themselves out, my mindset and emotional state all indicate a logical ending of the old me, and the emergence of a new me. I feel in some sort of metamorphosis. A state of transformation.  As if I were a caterpillar going into a cocoon. I don’t know how long till it’s time for me to emerge as a butterfly, but I know that I am no longer the ugly greedy shapeless caterpillar I once used to be.

I feel change in the air. I feel this change within me. I am very happy at this point. I have never been so calm and so happy in my life before. I am growing up. This blog is a project of recording of the process, one small step at a time, one day at a time, a day in a world of wonderful, amazing possibilities...