I feel like I'm hearing these songs for the first time. I’ve listened to them a million times before, but in the last few days, they have brought me to tears. Nothing I could ever write could explain my feelings right now better than this. But no one visits this site, so no one will ever know.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Am I loud and clear, or am I breaking up?
Am I still your charm, or am I just bad luck?
Are we getting closer, or are we just getting more lost?

I'll show you mine if you show me yours first
Let's compare scars, I'll tell you whose is worse
Let's unwrite these pages and replace them with our own words

We live on front porches and swing life away,
We get by just fine here on minimum wage
If love is a labor I'll slave till the end,
I won't cross these streets until you hold my hand

I've been here so long, I think that it's time to move
The winter's so cold, summer's over too soon
Let's pack our bags and settle down where palm trees grow

I've got some friends, some that I hardly know
But we've had some times, I wouldn't trade for the world
We chase these days down with talks of the places that we will go

We live on front porches and swing life away,
We get by just fine here on minimum wage
If love is a labor I'll slave till the end,
I won't cross these streets until you hold my hand....until you hold my hand

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Coming out of my cage
And I've been doing just fine
Gotta gotta be down
Because I want it all

It started out with a kiss
How did it end up like this?
It was only a kiss
It was only a kiss

Now I'm falling asleep
And she's calling a cab
While he's having a smoke
And she's taking a drag

Now they're going to bed
And my stomach is sick
And its all in my head
But she's touching his chest now

He takes off her dress now
Let me go
And I just can't look its killing me
And taking control

Jealousy turning saints into the sea
Swimming through sick lullabye
Choking on your alibis
But its just the price I pay
Destiny is calling me
Open up my eager eyes
'Cos I'm Mr Brightside

"The Sublimation of Vices"
by Michael Sherrillo

I should be starting my paper right now. I should also be in class. Unfortunately, I’m doing neither. I left the folder for class in my car, and I haven’t had enough cigarettes yet to begin writing.

This could be called my warm up. My body, alive and humming like a car puttering in idle in the cool morning fog, my tank is filled with caffeine but I’m still waiting for that special nicotine boost to send me off into the roads of my “creative” mind.

I feel something especially literary about my vices, and I cultivate them as much as I do the writing they fuel. The sweet taste of cool beer, the harsh bitter intake of a slow burning Camel, the joy of wake-and-bake… Without their insight, their criticism, their torture and love (and what is love without torture?) I don’t think I could write a coherent post-it note, let alone a paper.

Pushing your body to it’s brink, fueled by stimulants, hunger, and a lack of sleep, the creative process becomes a liquid, art rolling of your fingertips as if they had a mind of their own. The cognitive disconnect between thoughts, feelings, fingers, and words disappears into a haze where one is instantly sublimated into all.

Sublimated is a good word for it. That’s what writing should be. That’s what real writing to me is. That’s the zone. It’s not agonizing over sentence structure or syntax, not caring about grammar or spelling (and aren’t those what computer where invented for, after all?).

I recently read about a woman who wrote only a handful of novels and short stories in her 50 year career, she didn’t even receive recognition of her writing until she was 40! She was known for her very methodical and time consuming construction of her stories and characters. Everything had to be perfect. (Anal retentive much?)

Something tells me she wrote sober. And from the few short stories of hers I read, I think she suffered from it. The talent was there… but there was that disconnect. The passion was a passion she had to create, the characters where constructed and the plot elaborately planned and fabricated. Good writer. Good stories. But no sublimation… Nothing raw or real or spontaneous or authentic. She is famous now… but she is also dead.

I need another cigarette.

Growing

In class, a teacher mentioned that, I believe the paraphrased quote was from T.S. Elliot, a person is allowed to write personal poetry until they are 25. After that, to be a true poet, they should write about society and troubles/concerns of the times which are greater than themselves.
I think there is some degree of truth in that. So I am making an effort to begin trying to channel my feelings into the greater social construct of the world in which I live. After all, history is nothing but the present seen from the future. =) Blog on.

Still Waters Run Deep

I want to disappear. I feel so alone right now, and all I want to do is be alone. I'm surrounded by people, and I feel so much resentment and anger towards them, bitterness for being where I am, for taking my moments away from me. But I want to be social, I want recognition and admiration, but nobody sees the silent boy. I am invisible and I hate them for that as well, or do I hate myself? I'm not sure anymore.
I feel so responsible for maintaining everything, the happiness of Mary, my "social network", like it's always on my shoulders to make the effort, to make them happy, to make them like me. But it all feels forced, and it makes me, the me inside, feel even more alone because I am responsible. I can't bring anyone down, so I bring down myself. I sink farther and farther... I don't know how much farther I can go. I feel so lost, so completely lost in everything. Every day is like a switch between mania and depression, and I never know which is which. The smallest things just cause this swing of severe emotions.
All I want to be is home. To go inside my room alone and curl up alone and just disappear forever. I don't want to kill myself; I just don't want to exist anymore. I want to sink into the shadows and fade away into oblivion surrounded by the place that exists now only in my memory. Hate, rage and anger boil up and spill over onto everyone around me, and it is only through great effort that I keep these things bottled up, because I don't want to hurt people who don't deserve to be hurt. But I just want to break things, I want to destroy and kill and raze the entire world around me. Fantasies of sex and violence, though never together, fill my mind now. It makes me want to cry, because everything I though about myself doesn’t seem to exist anymore. I felt so together and in control, and now I feel like I'm struggling to float over and deep and dark sea and the temptation to sink into it, into the violence and anger and hatred and depression and nothingness that lies beneath them all.
Maybe I'm wrong, I do want to kill myself. But I am responsible for the emotions of my family, my girlfriend... I can make them happy or sad with a few lies or truths... or actions.
I don't know what to do but just try to float, try to rise above it all, or push it all below, it's all the same thing. But I have no outlet, I study and read and then go to class and then work and then study and sleep. That’s all I have now.
I want to run forever. From myself, from the world, from society. I want to lose myself on an endless beach and in the arms and sheets of endless women. In something eternally new, where I am reinvented and reborn and there is nothing behind me but the memories I choose. I don't want a history or a past. Just the ecstasy of the moment multiplied and played out into infinity of imperfect and amazing reflections.
But responsibility, society, pulls and tugs and forces itself onto my mind and my consciousness. My superego is strangling me, and I hate myself for it. I hate myself for hating it, for wanting what I want, for wanting what is... is wrong. I don't want to hurt, myself or others. Hurt involves a past, and memories. But in the constant paradise of my fantasies, in the constant newness, there is nothing but the now.
I am completely miserable, and it is my own doing. And I fear that I will be my undoing as well. Unless I take myself and my life into my own hands, into my own control, and end it on the term I choose, instead of the ones the world, and society, and my past will cause and choose for me.