Nuh Cry

Here it goes again

Heels hitting hard on pavement

This backwards direction I'm headed in

These bricks walls controlling

every movement

Can't be lost without direction

Here I go again
Places once seen before
Bumming change to make a call
Sewer steam provides the heat
rolling down the empty street
The avenue of broken dreams

Here we go again
The same story gets rewritten
the script is ripped and dog eared
A decade ago we could have cared
but that sentiment expired sometime last year

Here I go again
backseat driver of my own mind
Here we go again
Lessons unlearned, progress hits rewind
Here it goes again
Just like every other time

The dusk settles discretely

with free ignorance
Discovered every way

to become indifferent
Just by making masters

out of petty experience
standing on the precipice

of a life away from this

History repeats perpetually

crunch of earth beneath the wheel

Gagged and bound

The spokes go round

Until I've been right side down

Right and wrong start blending in

with every revolutions spin

the end result is always one

the knots that tie

they come undone.

A gramme is better than a damn

Periodically, reading a work of fiction is a way in which to reset the buzz of frenzied thoughts. Few things better than an escape into the land of literature; a time to be alone in the quiet of the mind. Sometimes I feel as if I'm drowning in a sea of dry text. Reference books the size of cinder blocks anchoring me in the deep, leaving it up to the imagination to speculate what the surface might be like. I can only guess how the weather is up there, through the scattered transmission of light to the bottom. Like shadows on the cave wall, the world outside is just impressions on the ocean floor. So I read to pass the time, since I'll be stuck here for some time.

Finished Brave New World by Aldous Huxley early this morning, around 8 am. I realized while I was writing this that I subconsciously select books that reflect the environment I'm in. While I was working in the neuro lab with paraplegic rats, I read Misery by Stephan King. I didn't even make the connection in Brave New Word until 4 chapters worth of oh-my-Ford's. Maybe it's a magic trick and if I read more books about where I want to be, I'll end up there.

Mid way into Brave New Word, there was almost a complete agreement with their new world thought. It sounds like a perfect place to exist. No parents, no children, no family. Isn't that where most our problems stem from? The nuclear family is breeding ground for mental monsters, a place where defense mechanisms are built - assembly line style. In a world where "everyone belongs to everyone" there would be no lonely nights suffering the betrayal of a trusted lover. Pain in any form is terminated with a soma. How splendid.

Take in account the control over population growth. The end of poverty, starvation, war. A world in which we not only accept but have pride in our station, wherever it might be in the caste system. All that has to happen is an exchange of free thought for social security. On a good day, I might not agree with the forfeit of my individual. However, today is not that day. On days, weeks, months, like today. I'd gladly give it all away.

Huzzah!

Commencement was yesterday and the expected feelings that accompany this kind of accomplishment kind of came and went all too quickly. If my graduation was a transcendental wind then my sentiment for it was just a discarded paper bag (that once held a 40 oz) blowing down Woodward. I played the part decently. When my name was called I stepped forward, paused for a picture with the dean and my diploma, and shook hands with the president all the while smiling bright. While in my head I reminded myself to mind those steps to avoid tripping and breaking my nose in front of everyone.

On this day of accomplishment and celebration, I was not at all mentally present. It had nothing to do with being hung over. Although being a little hung over would explain the way I dressed myself. For the whole prelude before we actually walked, I was doing voice overs in my head. Making my own captions for the faculty sitting on stage, pretending this was Hogwarts graduation, and trying to chronologically remember the events of the night previous. Oh God, I was losing myself to boredom and I had to make my escape. But the college of social work and nursing still had to walk and if I waited for them to have their moment, I'd never get my lunch!

Call me selfish, call me rude, I won't mind it. Not for a second longer could I sit through any more and I knew my parents wouldn't want to either. I had to make my escape. The only part of that day I will hold any semblance of reverence towards is when I saw my dad. He came at me with open arms and gave me an affectionate hug. He said he had been waiting for this day. I'm going to take that moment and put it in my lock box of feelings. My family is not particularly a touchy family, unless you're getting hit. So anything more than a pat on the back is as rare as finding a deep sea angler on the shore.

Do you ever feel like life is a funnel and time is some kind of liquid being poured into it? I'm just riding the currents that become swifter as the diameter narrows and who knows what waits for me upon my exit. I have tentative measurements for how my time will be allocated to finally get where I've been wanting to go. Excitement time! I'm moving along at a steady pace, getting things done day by day. I'm going to mark this milestone with some ink!

Help me, I'm hit.

I almost died yesterday. Internal, visceral, combustion of the heart, it almost happened. It suddenly dropped in my chest and almost ripped from it's aortic support. The grim reaper came in the form of an e-mail that informed me of a final grade posted; a final grade of incomplete.

I read this e-mail on my break before I was due to take my final practical in blood bank. Lord, I almost died. Getting an incomplete means I don't graduate and commencement is in one week. My grandmother flew in from California to watch her oldest walk. The shame and guilt of having to confess I tripped one step from the finish line would have done me in. It also means I would have to wait until this time next year to redo my rotation in chemistry, my most dreaded subject.

Be like water my friends, but sometimes you only achieve rock status. When something like this comes around and knocks the wind out of me the only way to keep forward momentum is to put it away. Push it all the way down and vacuum seal the bitch to reduce it's volume in your mind. Because my life is busy and I have no time for emotions that hinder my industry.

But to be honest, I had trouble doing that this time. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes as I wrote down my results and gave my interpretation of the data. I wanted to find a quiet place where I could just cry into my knees - but there was no time for that. After my practical I had to go straight into work and be there for the next six hours. There was no time to cry, thus there was no time to feel. Be a stone cold slab of rock my friend.

Even after I got an email back from my professor saying not to worry, I was still left in this state of shell shock. The grade was only a technicality, since our semester runs differently because of the program, a grade had to be submitted to the university before actual completion. Although I knew I was alright, I no longer felt alright because with chemistry I only aimed to pass. It made me question the strength of my foundation. In the subjects I hate, I lower the bar for myself. As if getting pass it was good enough. With that kind of mentality, what degree of confidence could I claim when declaring my ability to complete the task I set for myself?

My father didn't raise me that way, to only do a job just good enough. So because I know better than to make excuses for myself, I've let myself down. I go through these cycles of being a socialite only to recede into the hermits shell when I feel I'm not working up to par. I think it's time to find some balance, some harmony. It'd do a world of good for my sanity.

Despite whatever gets in my way I will achieve what I say I will. Even If I have to drag myself bloody and broken, I will get myself there. Nothing in the world is easy and if it were I wouldn't want something so cheap. An easy conquest is nothing to write home about and I've been away for so long that when I come home, I will have so many words to live up to.