It’s funny. This blankness, this weakness, this slowness….there’s another word that could cover all those bases, really. One word that sums up how unnatural I’m feeling. I am feeling gentle. Not only in the literal sense, in that I ‘m less harsh with my environment, but in the sense conjured by the word’s sounds. The soft whispering lilt of those two syllables.
Walking, talking, everything I do this last week is done with a dirge-like delicacy that, frankly, is freaking my normally-raging self right the hell out.
I know I should try to gentle to everyone, not just the people I love best. I know that kindness is key to keeping human. But there is an unnatural seaweed-swaying-in-water vibe to this, a feverish delusion feeling that wraps itself around my shoulders. it feels gentle, but it also feels incredibly off-kilter and much like the worst of the three concussions i’ve blessed my wretched skull with.
I know that I’m afraid of my own kindness, and maybe even ashamed at the depths of care that I’m capable of. Most people who know me know that i’m often harsh, and moody, and see my own comfort and happiness as the primary task at hand. (People i’ve loved know a secret loophole in the “how to have untao be nice to me” and the trick is basically to be loved by me, so much, that you and i become a village. because at heart i am a socialist, and have absolutely no problem giving up some of *my* comfort or happiness, if it bring the village’s happiness or comfort up. if the trade off is fair, you know?) In general, though, i am selfish, and alien, and not nice.
I don’t know why, but I do not want the Me broadcast into the eyes of the world to be in a position of weakness or subservience to anyone, and isn’t that what my mind screams caring, kindness, are? My mind is wrong, I know that, but. But it’s hard to be a superman in real life. You can’t be both strong and kind…not really. Nobody’s got that kind of room inside. And I guess, selfish bitch that I am, I would rather be strong. I didn’t think that was the case, but it must be. Because this feeling of gentleness, this feather on the wind feeling, feels like I’m not even real. It doesn’t even hurt, and that is just not cool with me. I need the constant input of my senses as well as my own psychic noise, to remind me to exist.
One of my art projects involved applying several layers of tissue paper in an elaborate texturized collage. I spent hours with my hands coated in a sloughed-skin looking covering of glue, and the glue got everywhere. At one point I realized I’d glued a very important piece of the collage to another piece of stray tissue paper, and it was half-dried together, and I needed those pieces separate. Wasn’t going to go back and do more work. So I carefully spent almost ten minutes peeling the moist gluey paper apart, and picking bit of migratory blanket-fluff off of its gluey surface. the texture of glue-soaked tissue paper makes me think of the insides of lungs…this wet fragile clinging thing.
I feel very much like that piece of tissue paper, it turns out.
