Introspecticus
by Michael Sherrillo

Writing becomes an addiction. When you spend all your time reading books and writing, it becomes an escape, a freedom. You just start writing one day and you feel the freedom of it, it’s something you can’t find in conversation, because there are so many things you can’t say when you talk to other people. I can’t say what do you mean you don’t have enough money for rent, I gave you 550$, you only had to save 225$ out of the 400$ you’ve made these last 2 weeks! You wanted responsibility and now the choices you made effect not just you, but me, and pat, and all our lives, because you couldn’t wait till after you had made sure you had enough money for rent to by a plane ticket, or a sack, or go out. That I hope you figure something out because otherwise you have just screwed everyone. And I don’t know why you think that would be different if you moved out, because whoever you lived with would be screwed and responsible for your actions just like me and Pat are right now. The only difference is that you would owe much more and have much less. And they wouldn’t be nearly as forgiving. Not that we really can be if we end up being evicted. I mean, I could say that, but…

But I can’t. There is no freedom there. Not like here, where I can rant and rave and scream and do whatever I want, where I can escape my parents and my prison and my life. It’s better than reading, it’s more existentially real. In reading, I just hide from myself and the world, but in writing I’m channeled, I’m proactive. Even when I just sitting down pounding out pages of crap, like my last posting. It just came to me and I wrote it, and its crap. But it’s something, it’s real because in some way it’s me, me acting and doing and being. Even if the words and sentences strung together mean nothing, it’s the act of doing that gives the emotionally and mentally orgasmic release of everything I’ve been holding inside. I hit keys like a punching bag. And that lifts me and my mind away from the ground and the gravity of depression which I feel like is pulling and choking me so often. No one to silence me with words or feelings, because no one is here to feel this but myself. It is my guilty pleasure.

At some point I started to think like I write, my inner monologue becomes words flashing across my mind and joining together into paragraphs of thought. In that sense I do nothing but write. I feel myself wishing there were some device which could save the text of my thoughts, which seems so much better… better worded, better written, than when I finally get to sit in front of the keyboard and have to try to reconstruct all the text that has been running through me. That’s why this is crap too. If there was some way I could recapture that moment which existed no less than 10 minutes ago, when all these things first came, and as I ran to the computer lab to try to capture the final ephemeral fragments as they drifted away… if only.

It was in the fourth grade, around the ripe old age of ten years old, that I first began my true studies. We were sitting in the Jacuzzi in my back yard, the lid was on so it was only us, cooking in the hot water and it swirled with jets and currents around our bodies. With only a foot between the water and the lid, it felt like we were breathing the same air. The fumes of chlorine filled our lungs as the steam transformed the space between us into a hazy dream, a world all our own. It was with that first kiss with the neighbor girl that I began, what Cynthia Shearer once described as, “the serious lifelong study of the lady female member of the species homo sapiens human beings”.

That’s been stuck in my head for the past two hours. I had to get it out. And now I don’t know what to say. I guess that makes this a good a place to end as any. It doesn’t matter than none of it makes sense to anyone, because there is no one to hear this, it doesn't exist (if a tree falls in the forest...). And so, I am purged. I am clean again, my soul renewed.
I am free.

Strange Bedfellows
by Michael Sherrillo

The easiest way to turn friends into enemies is to ask them abut their politics. Only the rare individual can listen to your views and calmly explain why they disagree and what their own are. I often imagine myself to be one of those few, but in the reality of the moment, sometimes objectivity can get thrown out the window as the argumentative heat rises.

Take last night. There is a kindly old gent who I have taken to chatting with these past few nights, who is an avid reader and seems to genuinely enjoy going out of his way to do nice things for the people around him. He is white, 62, and a very successful realty/mortgage business owner. If your Republican-dar isn't pinging, then get it checked. I should have assumed he was republican. I usually consider myself a savvy enough individual to be able to guess a persons left/right leaning just by spending a few minutes chatting with them. Maybe it was his niceness which made me relax and forget myself for a moment, but as we joked about the job our wonderful "Gubernator" is doing, I let slip some comment about our new chief justice, something along the lines of the supreme court sending American society back to the 1950's "golden age" of repressed patriarchal domination which was only "Golden" in the minds of WASPey old republicans and southern hicks who had never left the inbred small towns they were born into and haven't had a science class beyond the 6th grade. Okay, maybe I could have been a little more sensitive about it, but like I said, my guard was down.

The building tension filling the pause in the air was palatable, I saw his lips move and before his words could reach my ears my republican-dar was pinging like crazy to the tune of "shit shit shit shit shit shit". I was floored. For five minutes I was laid flat by the ranting monologue about how our democratic senator had refused to support Roberts nomination, despite the fact that she though he was brilliant and that she couldn't think of a better man, because she wanted a woman on the court. Or, as my friend was so eloquently putting it, she wouldn't nominate him because he didn't have a cunt.

While I disagree with her reasons for refusing to vote for him, as the flood of words began to slow, I took the opportunity to try to mention a few that his records were being kept hidden for a reason, and the there are several documents which illustrate that he is completely against women in the workplace and all the civil liberties not endorsed by the Bush party. That gave him his second wind. After a few more minutes, I realized that I wasn't going to have the opportunity to get a word in edgewise until her remembered to breathe or completely passed out, so making up an important something I suddenly remembered I had to do, I politely excused myself.

While I walked away, I was imagining myself at the senate interviewing Roberts. The things I would like to say to him. That "liberal judges" are what have saved American society from racism, from sexism, from prohibition. That precedent weights an institution in it's past, but not all pasts are good, that this country was build on a wonderful ideology which ended up expressing itself with slavery, with denying women the right to vote, with trying to prevent workers from unionizing, with policies which hurt immigrants (and everyone but the American Indians are immigrants from one generation or another), which tried to extend the "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" to only rich white conservative Christian males. That is the precedent of American judges. We need more than someone who is mired by the past obligations of tradition to help guide America into a new future. One where people have the freedom to choose the lives that they wish to have, to choose their own happiness, instead of those prescribed by some dogmatic documents of Do's and Don'ts erected in front of a southern courthouse. We need activist judges to see that distant goal and dream, that equality which exists in all people and the ability for each of us as individuals to choose a life and happiness which is decided by us alone. Let gay men marry, let pot smokers toke, let women earn comparable wages! The goals of America should be to right the wrongs of our past and break from tradition to create a better future for us all.

That's what I would say to Mr. Roberts. Your precious precedent can kiss my red-blooded, patriotic, individual, free ass. Let liberty ring.

My Catharsis

Heard this song, and lame as I usually think it is, on the freeway alone, cigarette dangling out the open window at night while I drove away, it was awesome to just rock out and vent a little with.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Drunk and I'm feeling down
And I just wanna be alone
I'm pissed cause you came around
Why don't you just go home
Cause you channel all your pain
And I can't help to fix myself
Your making me insane
All I can say is

I tried to help you once
A kiss will only vise
I saw you going down
But you never realized
That your drowning in the water
So I offered you my hand
Compassions in my nature
Tonight is our last dance

I'm drunk and I'm feeling down
And I just wanna be alone
You shouldn't ever came around
Why don't you just go home?
Cause your drowning in the water
And I tried to grab your hand
And I left my heart open
But you didn't understand
But you didn't understand
You fix yourself

I can't help you fix yourself
But at least I can say I tried
I'm sorry but I gotta move on with my own life
I can't help you fix yourself
But at least I can say I tried
I'm sorry but I gotta move on with my own life

“Moving Out, Moving On”
by Michael Sherrillo

I don’t associate my relationships with a loss of identity. I feel like I have some comfort in who I am, I feel confident in myself and my “identity”. Maybe it’s because I grew up as an only child, and never had tons of friends. Maybe it’s because I’ve always been very independent and been able to do my own thing on my own terms. I lived on my own for two years, and while not being financially independent, I worked and was busy and had a large amount of freedom and time for self discovery. What I have always loathed is not being able to share that life with others, individualism and independence are great, but I was always haunted by a terrible shadow of isolation. Since the GF is planning on moving out in the next few months though (in pursuit of her lost identity and responsibility) I am having a great sense of freedom. The loneliness and isolation had all but disappeared. However, in sharing my life so intimately, I did have to make a lot of compromises in my own personal desires. Not that I feel any bitterness about it, because being able to make someone you love happy often gives a greater sense of joy and personal satisfaction than simply making yourself happy. But since the news, I have been feeling the faint stirrings of whimsy for the things which I do sometimes miss. When I’m alone, I’m don’t have to wait for anybody to want to do what I want, and I don’t have the excuse of codependency, so I’m forced to hold only myself responsible.

Maybe it’s due to my views of relationships, where you enter into an emotional contract as partners to share your lives, and while you expect to make some compromises, you also expect them to make some as well. Example, if you want to exercise, you don’t expect them to go with you every time, this might threaten your feelings of being an individual, but you would like them to want to share something together that makes you happy and thereby grow as a couple, i.e. she goes jogging with you a few times a week, you go to some concerts you don’t want to for her, and so you both grow, as a person experiencing new things, and as a relationship by sharing things with someone else.

But that is a balance I haven’t felt for some time. Actually, I don’t really know if I ever have, aside from deciding which TV stations to watch (I get a little discovery channel, she gets a little Springer and cheaters, and we both are happy and a little more worldly for it). So I’m looking forward to my “new life”, I have enough financial security with my various jobs and have learned enough budgeting responsibility to know exactly the life I want and enjoy. Surfing a few times a week, going to the movies and theatre hopping for a whole day, singing karaoke at the local bar, going hiking, and sitting around debating and drinking with my friends…

I’ve learned what it takes to make me happy. And I look forward to being able to think about just me for a change. Especially since I feel like I’ve compromised and worked and worried and strived for that balance and cooperation in this relationship, and since she isn’t happy, it feels sort of wasted, since that was the whole goal, for us to share ourselves, our lives, to compromise, and through that, grow as individuals, and grow together. But I guess that’s something I’ve known about this for a long time.

Happiness and freedom has its price: responsibility. I hope she figures herself out and learns from all this without us growing to far apart or something happening with her where she in financially screwed and on her own; responsibility is scary and can be devastating. And then maybe someday, a little older and wiser and more sure of herself, we can share our lives again, and start growing together instead of growing apart.

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.

You are alive to me. And I will make sure you stay that way.

"Dead at such a young age"
by Vance

What a crying shame. It seems this site is completely dead. Perhaps it will rise again in the form of a rhyme-busting zombie with incredible grammar. One can only hope.