ghost song

entries from journals, the notes app, etc. from august 26th to august 29th

Entry titled “ADVICE?”, 8/26/2023, 8:12 a.m. On loose leaf lined paper.

• Be cautious with money

• Don’t become addicted to your solitude, no matter how tempting

• Buy yr mom a fucking present and PLEASE try not to be a bitch

• Making the right choice sucks but it’ll always free you a bit more

• Freedom doesn’t always look like what you think it does… maybe you want financial freedom, which means less free time, but that’s all just checks and balances

• Healing is important but don’t be one of those “I protect my peace at all costs” people. Totally ungroovy

• You’d be happier if you stopped acting entitled out of spite

• Maybe you should get a job

• There’s a world waiting for you if you’re bold enough to grab ahold of it— get out of yr head and into the world

• Be patient or face the aftermath of another failed relationship

• Put at least a little effort into correcting your bad habits

• Fantasies are fun but you should try to work towards them instead of just thinking about them and rotting

• You’re your own worst enemy, especially when it comes to saving money

• Dye yr hair again. It’s time

• Have a nice fucking day :-)
  

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Entry titled “SHOES”, 8/27/2023, 10:37 p.m. In a notebook.

I wore new-ish shoes on my walk today— I say -ish because I’ve had these low rise Docs for over a year now and just never got around to breaking them in (partially because I didn’t have good socks for them, partially because they’re incredibly uncomfortable from not being broken in). But I got the fucking socks and I wore them to get a soda and read some of whatever book was nearest to my bedroom door when I was on my way out, dressed in white and black like a tuxedo cat. The first half was alright— I got blackberry juice on my shirt, people stared at me (a guaranteed side effect of dressing a little more extravagantly than everyone else in this city), and the guy manning the gas station counter pulled out my exact change when I walked in because I always pay with eleven quarters. I go to the spot where I usually sit. It’s a bit chilly out with the wind. I drink my Coke, I read my book, I listen to a 60s girl group compilation, I underline a few passages. It’s breezy enough to make me begin to collect my things, intent on heading back to my bedroom. Unbeknownst to me, a neat little blister has formed on my right heel. The knowledge of the blister is immediate once I stand— not sharp, not dull, just the scrape of pain and the promise of progressive intensity.

You don’t know how wide your peripheral vision opens the world for you until it disappears. My sight went from a domed bubble to the 1.618:1 ratio of a camera— sepia tint— suddenly vibrancy— the sidewalk, the trees, the empty can in my hand all go two dimensional. The stakes are high. The screen is still black for the viewer, but I can hear the narrator saying the intro before the camera cuts to my sullen, sunglass’d face. This is a horror movie. I just can’t figure out if I’m the monster, or the only survivor… they say, and here come the cameras like a cavalry of angels, and there’s the face shot (Narrator: Sometimes, you can be both) and next we have the shot where the sunny sidewalk stretches out before me and my shadow is a gray stain in the light. It’s all stains, really. Any light or non-light is just a stain.

Here is what happens— I stand, I clench and then relax my jaw, and I begin to ricochet forwards in a fashion claiming that “NO, I DO NOT HAVE A BLISTER” with funeral solemnity. I am drawn to the flame. My entire being makes off for my heel. It’s the only part of my body that’s properly lit up right now— picnic, lightning; ankle, shoe (inconvenience). I am inside the blister. I am the blister. The blister has defied classification as a surface level abrasion and goes bone deep, leaving shredded flesh in its wake. The blister is imaginary. The blister is an absence and therefore a presence. The blister is nothing but loose skin on my body.

Slowly, in the blocks between my spot and the house that contains my bedroom, the bedroom I need to clean, the bedroom that I should be in right now because its windy and I’m cold and oh my God there’s literally a jar of piss on my floor hello, my limp gets worse and worse. This is a war movie. I am a motherfucking patriot carrying a dead guy on my back through a massacre we instigated. I am getting the Purple Heart for being so brave right now. After block one, the blister— previously cycling through a thousand reincarnations— becomes God and stays God. I consider going around the block a few more times to spend some extra time with God. I consider taking off my shoes. I consider, very grimly (explosion and screaming in distance), that if I keep walking on the blister it might begin to bleed and I would really like to not have to spend time on trying to scrub blood out of my brand new socks. It’d be a terrible nuisance. This is the first time I’ve worn them. They are white. Besides, God will come back when God decides to come back— no use in holding onto something when everything that made it special has already left.

I reckon I might never see God in a blister on my right heel again, though so I try to walk a bit slower. Not too slow. Think of the laundry— oh, the horror!

I limp home. The wind continues. I’m sure it’s just pushing more wildfire smoke into the city. I am trying my hardest to take small steps so my ankle won’t bend and the shoe won’t rub. The muscles banded across my right shin begin to get stiff from tensing my ankle. The incline of the hills make the rubbing worse— here is where I give up on pain reduction and start shuddering towards home as fast as I can. I’m around the corner. I’m on the porch, standing on my tiptoes for a few seconds to say goodbye to God. I’m at the door. I yank off the bastard shoes as quickly as possible, and just like that, the pain is gone. The light goes out, divinity leaves. I notice, with some sort of dim dismay, that my sock didn’t even get bloody.

It’s really very important to me, I’ll have you know. It really is.

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Untitled entry, 8/28/2023, 2:54 a.m. In the notes app.

you realize that the fire is not going to go out because it won’t put itself out and it won’t let anyone else put it out → you have already left to come home to the fire tired aching bones sore-footed → ten sensible toes in two sensible shoes → no difference is made in realization but something small and impercetible does shift like grains of sand on a beach → it is incredibly unlikely that another grain of sand will never be in that precise same spot even again if only on an atomic level → when you go home to the fire and the fire’s burning house you are something different that has not been different before → it’s not really for other people to notice it’s just for you → when the uncalmable fire starts talking big after you come home tired you can just smile and hand it the gun yes you can → you hand it the gun and you say oh yeah big man do something about it aren’t you gonna do something about it are you gonna keep your cool → of course it doesn’t because it is a fire → you still end up on the floor either way → there is no world where you do not end up on the floor → it happens across all branches of fate → i am so sorry

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Entry titled “I CANNOT BEGIN TO EMPHASIZE HOW LITTLE ALL OF THIS MATTERS”, 8/28/2023, 4:41 p.m. In a journal.

I really don’t want to die— good! This is good. But when we add the proper appendages onto there to give it context, it all goes rotten— I really don’t want to die because I don’t want to be perfect or loved or a blessing or gone too soon or whatever we call our dead girls these days. I rewatched the Virgin Suicides recently, then Frankenhooker after that, and I’ve been thinking about the female death. More than usual, that is. Death, in my opinion, is a weapon against us because the world does not want us to be mobile or capable of expressing opinions others don’t want us to express. They only like us when we’re dead, and they like us because our thoughts and opinions are static and we cannot dissent to how they interpret us. I do not want to die because I want to dissent. I fundamentally disagree with the way most people in my life interpret me, and I want to be able to say so. So I don’t want to die.

You know what, actually? I wanna be the last motherfucker on earth just so nobody will tarnish me with their grief and guilt and opinions. Is it too much to ask to fade into the ashes I’m made of and have that be the end of it all— no posessions to deal with, no mourners, no legalities and eulogies that fuck my memory until it’s warped into someone that barely resembles me— and just make a clean break from existence? Yeah, probably. Funerals are for the living, etcetera etcetera. But it doesn’t stop me from wanting it. I want to outlive everyone on the planet out of spite, some desire to know that the lights are out before the human race leaves the room. I want to be the last awake one at the existence sleepover. I want to do it to save my soul.

(I’d only want one other person to be there, but only if she wants to be there because it would require the death of every person that they’ve ever loved, which is kind of devastating. But I want to see the sun rise and hold hands and then we’ll go, Lovers of Valdaro style. I think it could be beautiful. I think we could make it beautiful.)

I don’t think I’m scared of death, as the idea of dying is entirely neutral to me, but the idea of other peoples’ reactions to my death is enough to send a shiver down my spine. Quintessentially, the idea of simplification is terrifying to me— I don’t want to be trapped in a box, much less one that others have created— I know that logically it’s just a change in mode of existence, not an end, but others don’t know that— I wouldn’t end, but the idea of me would end in their minds and I would get turned to stone. And it doesn’t matter in the long run because it won’t matter to me when I’m dead, but it matters to me now. I suppose that’s the problem. Maybe I should go back to pretending to be dead.

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Untitled entry, 8/29/2023, 5:32 p.m. In a notebook.

It rained today— it’s raining now, actually, but more importantly, it rained earlier when I was on my walk. A bit of thunder came with it. Not the kind that rolls, but the kind that scrapes, like God is moving some dressers up in Heaven. Or maybe He was taking out the trash. I get a great amount of joy in imagining God living totally normally, tripping over His cat or fetching the newspaper or smacking the CD player in His car when it skips. The mundane divine. There’s also the idea that if capital G God can survive the ordinariness of life, I can too— see, I try my best to be good, but it’s very difficult because it’s repetitive and requires a few traits I don’t really have, like obedience. Of course there’s a difference between being good and obedient, but I could be better if I was a little more willing to follow other’s direction.

(I have this idea of me in some distant future, a good me. I do my work, keep my room tidy, have a long term job— showers and brushing my teeth and reading more and stability, and none of my plants ever die. The good me knows how to take care of myself and, as an extension of self, take care of others. The good me knows how to juggle multiple balls at once. I don’t really mind not being the good me yet— I know I should and that others want me to, but I am very young and I am still learning how to do all these things, so (as a very wise girl told me once) pish posh to that. I’m just a baby, really. Besides, I know the good me is looking back at the current me, not quite good but not bad either, with great fondness and love. She thinks I’m cool, so none of that matters.)

But back to the rain— rain rain rain rain rain (five times for luck). Rain, rain don’t go away to come again another day. I hope it’s clearing all the smoke out of the air. It certainly smells better; less of that dried-out chlorine odor and more of an ozone-y, earthy one. Beautiful day, though. I wore a swishy skirt my best friend gave me yesterday and blue eyeshadow and the red hair I haven’t quite gotten used to yet— on my walk, I got through a decent chunk of Jose Saramago’s Cain before I had to shuffle home with it tucked under my coat to stay dry.

I’ve always thought that a good rain is beneficial to both the earth and the human soul, and it really is. I feel much better. I had broth and rice for lunch and tea after and I put the heater on in my bedroom and listened to Nina Simone while I put clothes away. I am working towards goodness, I guess. It’s really all I can do— it’s all any of us can do.