sublingua

The heart with a mind of its own.

(Be present.)

The mind with a heart of its own.

(It's past.)

The dream that is your waking life.

(Go there now.)

The Demon Who Says What She Means
Friday, Jan. 02, 2004

I am aware, of course, that what I don't say reveals as much and sometimes more than what I do say.

"Solanka soon learned the value of working, like the great matadors, closer to the bull; that is, using the materials of his own life and immediate surroundings and, by the alchemy of art, making it strange." --Salman Rushdie, Fury

Stopped by the studio today. It was about what you'd expect. The new pieces were out of the kiln, but none of them truly excited me. I need to go in and just play around for a long while and just see what happens, but I'm feeling unable to slow down enough to do this. I am still trying to move in too quickly, trying to think too quickly about what needs to be done.

And yet, a lot of my time this break has been spent writing and reading. I've been able to slow down enough to read for pleasure, which has been something that I resign myself to being unable to do during the semester. I can sit for hours and do nothing, the brain going a million miles an hour, but when I try to slow down the thinking to the speed of the written word, things go haywire. I end up taking big bites of words and then nothing makes sense. It sometimes helps to reread something that I've already read--books from my childhood, trash books that I still enjoy--but my apartment is devoid of these kinds of books really and so I haven't been able to resort to these tricks.

Not that it matters.

I can't concentrate too well on the present. Partly it's the period. Partly it's the lack of sleep due to the noise that emanates from the Apartment of Sin. And the rest?

And as night falls, it gets bad. As the day comes to an end, as the sun sets and the sky goes dark, all the extrasensory stuff starts going off in me like car alarms in bad neighborhoods and I know it makes me sound a bit crazy to say that, but I don't actually care what it sounds like. Let me tell you instead what it feels like: It's a dropping feeling, a sullen, angry feeling that hangs in layers like smoke in a closed room. It makes me feel anxious and hurt and sometimes forgotten. I can think my way through it, know that it is something from outside me, but I can't not feel it. (I know, I know. I sound crazier by the minute.)

So I come here to Max's office and try to write my way through it, try to know that I am not very successful, know that it sounds crazy. I sometimes wonder if I'm not crazy for believing what I believe. And if it's only faith getting me through this, then how could that ever be discerned from instability, mental health-wise?

What am I not saying? What does what I'm not saying say what I mean?

retreat or surrender

More lies:
Waking Sleeping Demons II - Sunday, Oct. 30, 2011
Waking Sleeping Demons - Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011
time - Friday, May. 20, 2011
- - Wednesday, Oct. 06, 2010
The Return - Tuesday, Oct. 05, 2010

� sublingua sublingua.diaryland.com.