Transcript from sometime in the future. Location unknown. Names redacted.
Q.
A. The grayness comes without rhyme or reason and it comes, if we personify, as visitors of all sorts, shapes, sizes. Like the knock at the door, it comes of its own accord, a time of its choosing. And, for the record, weather has nothing to do with it.
Q.
A. What I mean is, the grayness is seldom the same. The feel, the texture if you will, changes and I cannot say that this grayness is like that grayness, that today resembles yesterday.
Q.
A. Today? Today is an odd grayness, a flavor I've not sampled before. The sky is blue, the weather near perfect, the house quiet and my emotions calm like the surface of a lake at dawn. Yet, there is always a yet, the sun rises quietly. The quiet is the first sign that all is not as it should be. I feel apart. The dawn, the awakening of the day is experienced as something separate. I don't feel a part of it. The feeling is somewhat like, how do I say it, like when you leave a thing, a job, a relationship, and the thing you are leaving is still in view, still warm, yet, you are no longer troubled with the issues attached to that job or that relationship. The troubles are still there, nothing is better, you can still see them, but you are no longer involved, the troubles are no longer yours. That is how it feels, as if one is in limbo, between this and that, an odd nether-land.
Q.
A. These are the days that scare me the most. The absence of emotion. You see, anger, as much as we diss it, is like a guard rail. It keeps us from going over the edge, for anger wants to express, to act, to be. So anger, in a strange way, keeps us in the game. I may do bad things when angry, but the ultimate is out of bounds. So you see, when I'm angry, I'm protected. But when anger is absent, and the grayness rolls in, then the game is very different, as different as swimming in a lake and swimming in a river flowing before a waterfall.
Q.
A. Anger is like the fist holding the rope tight. With apathy, you just let go, and the letting go is without care, without an opinion one way or the other. In short, you just don't care anymore. Imagine it this way. Let's say you no longer became hungry and let's also say you could not taste anymore either. Would you eat?
Q.
A. Well, that would be logical and if logic had any part in what I was describing, would I be here?
A. The grayness comes without rhyme or reason and it comes, if we personify, as visitors of all sorts, shapes, sizes. Like the knock at the door, it comes of its own accord, a time of its choosing. And, for the record, weather has nothing to do with it.
Q.
A. What I mean is, the grayness is seldom the same. The feel, the texture if you will, changes and I cannot say that this grayness is like that grayness, that today resembles yesterday.
Q.
A. Today? Today is an odd grayness, a flavor I've not sampled before. The sky is blue, the weather near perfect, the house quiet and my emotions calm like the surface of a lake at dawn. Yet, there is always a yet, the sun rises quietly. The quiet is the first sign that all is not as it should be. I feel apart. The dawn, the awakening of the day is experienced as something separate. I don't feel a part of it. The feeling is somewhat like, how do I say it, like when you leave a thing, a job, a relationship, and the thing you are leaving is still in view, still warm, yet, you are no longer troubled with the issues attached to that job or that relationship. The troubles are still there, nothing is better, you can still see them, but you are no longer involved, the troubles are no longer yours. That is how it feels, as if one is in limbo, between this and that, an odd nether-land.
Q.
A. These are the days that scare me the most. The absence of emotion. You see, anger, as much as we diss it, is like a guard rail. It keeps us from going over the edge, for anger wants to express, to act, to be. So anger, in a strange way, keeps us in the game. I may do bad things when angry, but the ultimate is out of bounds. So you see, when I'm angry, I'm protected. But when anger is absent, and the grayness rolls in, then the game is very different, as different as swimming in a lake and swimming in a river flowing before a waterfall.
Q.
A. Anger is like the fist holding the rope tight. With apathy, you just let go, and the letting go is without care, without an opinion one way or the other. In short, you just don't care anymore. Imagine it this way. Let's say you no longer became hungry and let's also say you could not taste anymore either. Would you eat?
Q.
A. Well, that would be logical and if logic had any part in what I was describing, would I be here?
Q.
A. Voices sound like so much noise. I hear them, other people. I know they are talking, sometimes to me although it seems more like at me. I know the words but when I try to put them all together the only thought that comes to mind is, what the frail are they saying and why do they need me to say it because it certainly seems as if they are going to say what they are going to say with or without me.
Q.
A. (raucous laughter) You're shiotting me, right?
Q.
A. Look, I don't even know what that would feel like anymore. And memories of what it once felt like fade by the day. And then I ask myself, am I even capable of doing what I accuse other people of not doing. Do I remember myself?
Q.
A. I don't know. But I like the metaphor. I do feel like I'm floating away, into the sky and all I know is getting more and more distant. So, I suppose, in answer to your question, I feel no connection, to anyone. Nothing. No thing. Just a drifting away and the sense of distance, of fading away, doesn't need physical distance. The distance is something other. But I think explaining it as a lack of connection is apt. Not connected. Not fitting. A plug without a socket.
Q.
A. Not always. There are moments, which I think only stand to illustrate the greater picture. If life were a highway, well, then, the station I'm listening to is mostly static with the occasion clear signal and I keep turning the knob, trying to get a clear, consistent signal, but I can't. I rock the knob back and forth, to and fro, minute adjustments and, for a second I have a signal and then, just as quickly, its gone and the static, like a steady shower, washes over me. Now imagine that its not just a ball game you can't tune in, but life, relationships. So your life, all its relationships, are just noise, static, an endless gray.
Q.
A. You reach a point where you are just tired. Morning, noon or night, doesn't matter. The tiredness is not of body and not really of mind. When you are being beat, physically beaten, you go through stages, fear, terror, pain and all the rest but then you get to a point where to pain slips away and the blows appear to slow down and you feel like a pillow, absorbing blows, cushioned by a body you no longer recognize as yourself and you realize they can't reach what they want to reach and it is at this moment you either stay or go.
11 comments:
"These are the days that scare me the most. The absence of emotion."
Yeah. Well....
Me too. Me too.
Very Much so.
Id rather FEEL SOMETHING than feel NOTHING.......
Meleah, you and me both. Give me a glass full of pain any day over nothing at all.
You sound like I imagine Hemingway felt...
((hugs))
Could be Annie. Sometimes fiction is truer than truth. :-D
Oh, Tree.
THIS IS FRAILING AMAZING.
My favourite answers are 3, 5, 10, 11 & 12.
Yeah, those last three answers feel like you're describing my own state a the moment.
Disconnected and blah, in limbo.
I'm telling you....you're in my head.
Or something.
:-D
Its not your head I'd like to be in. :-D
Awwww Tree. If you felt that then (((HUGS)))
I am reminded of an Urdu couplet:
Ranj se ho jab pareshaan dil to mit jaataa hai ranj/ Mushkilein mujh par padeein aisee ke aasaan ho gayein
( When the pain crosses its limit , such becomes the case/ that the trials & tribulations that feel upon me became easy on their own)
That is to say, when you become saturated with a particular hardship, it soon stops hurting & become a 'normalacy'
Being emotionless is nothing to be scared about. It is only the fact that you have become emotionally stronger to let it effect you.
You distance yourself from the feelings & they no longer draw upon your life energy & begin to die off, without the 'food' they get by feeding upon you.
That is actually good for you.
Gray, that is life. & that is any day better & more human than black & white.
Gray, that is maturing. And that is any day better than immaturity!
Love ya my Friend!
Mona, you always know just what to say. Thank you. :-)
I know already I will not make sense. :-D
Before I read the last two paragraphs, I knew my beginning and as I read them they seemed to say what I wanted to say. To ride an emotion at a given time, an idea that inspires a flow, something like this is how you have described the process of writing, something that comes from within, bubbles to the surface and must be written there and then for it did not exist a moment ago and if left too long may cease to once again. This is by no means a criticism, quite the opposite in fact, but one, I, get the sense that this was written as you have sometimes said that you write, early in the morning, sleep in your eyes still, coffee quota not achieved yet and so forth, it is so unrestricted for lack of a better word, as though it comes from a place that cannot be reached with clear mind, with thought, but are simply words that are allowed to spill forth as they are. The perfection of expression argues against, but the easiness of it is still very much in accordance with that theory. As with the other EE chapters there is something that I feel reading them that I have not have success with yet in expressing to my satisfaction or even coming close to at all, but it has to do with the hidden and the common, the recognizable and the unspoken. The apartness that is described, the feeling as though one is moving outside of the picture, there and yet not quite there, a part so it would seem if one were to look to others for confirmation and yet no, I cannot help wondering if this is a common condition, which is based on the presumption of course that I follow fully and that need not necessarily be the case. So too, intimate, real, truth spoken that normally is not, not spoken, and often not known, or rather understood, or too fleeting to pin down, or simply ignored, do the last paragraphs read, moments where presence is complete being rare, heightened emotion, moments of extremity, or connection, with another, with life in itself. As said, the sense may be lost, dinner and wine at my place for a conversation on this chapter I am hereby officially requesting your attendance at, for like so many other chapters the limitlessness has several reaches, and when I say that I could spend a lifetime with a single chapter as I have a time or two to understate, I honestly and truly mean it and feel it, I could spend a lifetime within this chapter, wrap myself within it like a cloak, and each time a step is taken, the swish is a mental swish, an emotional swish, a recurring, mind and heart expanding swish. You capture something very special here which in turn evokes something very special in the reader, this reader, which I cannot seem to capture, hence the very long time that it has taken to comment.
Like time, the present moment, one cannot hold it for any longer and sometimes not at all. Above all, I think one thought, you are brilliant. And this, as I said something about on the sketch above, all of it, the story, the art, which are all just parts of a whole that is you (that could be said with eloquence but let's just pretend I decided against that) the specialness of it, of you, is too wide and too far and too bright to see how it could be broken down into mere words. You could, and were this a Freaky Friday, I would swap with you for a day so that you could see how bright you shine to the world as she watches.
Sweetest, these chapters (EEs) are truly snapshots in time. They can only be written when they are written and not before or after that very tight window of time. Usually I feel as if I could simple watch my fingers moving on the keyboard as words appear as I would if I were watching someone else typing. Not sure how else to explain it.
As always, your comments thrill me to no end. Thank you. :-)
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