when doing something
‘cringe’
as an 18 year old,
i was so stressed out
that i wasn’t acting like an immediate adult
in every way
but when pondering those
‘cringe’
moments now, 10+ years later,
i am struck with how much of a gosh-darn baby
i still was.
[and ‘cringe’ is a social construct anyway]
[like gender]
[and time]
concentration
is a little lax
may the fourth
(be with you)
and waiting for
cookies for breakfast
(should we get real cookie trays at some point?)
(probably yes)
it feels both like 5 am
and 10 already
but it’s only 7:15
and my brain feels disheveled
like my childhood bedroom i never cleaned,
but if i need
there’s coffee on my right side
and a puppy nestled into the couch
and a kip for conversations
distractions
cuddles
and sillies besides
so i suppose i should actually partake in this
morning ritual;
get some caffeine in my veins,
listen to this silly music,
and get on with my day.
time
sure is
a measurement
of
whatever
that was
and whatever
this will be.
i’d like to know
how
people do it:
accept the cycles of the earth
without resistance;
the changing of the seasons,
the darkening of days,
the yearly reminders
of time.
i try,
and i understand
logically
that this is how it goes;
there is no stopping
or halting
or pausing
or slowing
or adjusting
but still…
cycles make me sick.
i’ve never been able to accept them
internally,
so i’m certainly not going to be passive
about them passing
externally…
(i feel like i have a better way of explaining this
somewhere up my sleeve,
but right now
“cycles make me sick”
is the only thing i can register
as really getting across
what i have to say,
so i’ll stop here
and try to remind myself
that even the planet needs rest time,
and while time may not be
linear,
humans’ experiences of it is pretty near,
and maybe the problem is
i was simply built for another planet,
or at least another climate…)
two weeks till my birthday
one week-ish till Sagittarius season
(which, to be honest, i don’t necessarily understand what that means)
but
now
here come all the feels:
the past
the present
the future
all combining
all narrowing in
(am i ever truly on the precipice of ‘something big,’
or am i simply in tune with the entire universe
and how there are big things happening
everywhere
for everyone?)
i often think about a tumblr post i saw once
where, in the afterlife, a person learns
that they have been every creature on the earth
through every lifetime.
so everyone they were mean to,
they were mean to themselves,
everyone they were kind to,
it was also towards themselves,
and from the tiniest ant
to the biggest trillionaire
through a [non-linear] time frame
they had been
everyone.
and to me, it is both a wildly self-centered,
and truly altruistic view
of life.
if the Universe is something that we share,
then perhaps we are not all one entity
bumping around/into each other
for all eternity,
but we are at least putting forth the energy we receive…
…and if we are like an apple
(keep up, i’ve moved on to referencing a tiktok video)
who exists in the third dimension
but can only find awareness of self
in the second dimension,
is there really a fourth dimension that we (as humans) exist in,
though we only have reference to ourselves in the third?
(or fifth and fourth, respectively;
i always forget where we are
and where our awareness ends.)
then my feeling of déjà vu,
and sensation of being too much for a physical human body,
was that simply a shadow of awareness
of my whole self
within the dimension of time
as it actually is,
not this linear strand
masquerading as time
as we mortals have constructed
(time IS a mortal construction)
and then, am i getting somewhere
in my thoughts
rather than feeling
so incredibly
stuck
as a human?
when
will we close on the house?
when
will i feel like i’ve started my acting career?
when
will i feel like i’m actually doing morning pages right?
when
will the inevitability of time stop crushing me
and instead harbor in a newfound sense
of comfort with my own mortality?
i don’t know how
i knew it was approaching
the end of july
but somehow didn’t remember
next comes august,
because as soon as i see the date
my stomach turns
and my heart palpitates
and i start worrying about the summer reading i only half finished
and the schedule i need to complete
and the downhill roller coaster snowball out of control truck
that is
School.
even though it was only public school that started in august,
and i haven’t even been enrolled in a school for eight and a half years,
there’s a trauma that’s associated with
the educational system here
and it teaches us more
about how to be uncomplaining drone workers
than anything critical thinking
enjoyment of learning
sort of thing
and any amount of years of higher education
won’t help us recover
from 12+ years
of…that…
and i do call it a trauma,
though nothing about it was grossly traumatic,
because if your body reacts to a thing as a trauma
it is.
~~~
don’t know if i want to be so dramatic as to post that
implication and bias and only a half-way understanding of how our american educational system was actually built
but i do believe my therapist when she tells me that if something feels like trauma in your body, it is,
because our bodies often know more about what’s happening than our brains
which is why sometimes it’s an easy coping mechanism
to divide ourselves from our physical selves
to avoid that confrontation, that knowing,
in order to simply survive one day, one hour, one minute, one second at a time…
~~~
i would watch a movie/tv show
about a villain
who truly believes they’re the hero
and everyone around them insists they are,
they have state of the art gadgets and mentors
[which my autocorrect changed to monsters]
telling them where to fight, and whom,
and they go about their time fully believes they are doing good,
for a solid 7-8 years they feel they’ve done such good
and then, for whatever reason, they have all their gadgets and things taken away,
as well as a fair amount of their people,
but with less people insisting on their heroism,
and more interaction with the world as it really is,
they start to suspect they’ve been the villain all along,
and they get into an artistic expression as a form of therapy
to understand the awful things they’ve done
and they begin to represent the people they’ve hurt
in said artistic endeavor
as a healing,
and though they don’t expect their own personal healing will help the families of those they’re representing,
they try to raise money
(as they are still in the public eye)
to help those families.
a roller coaster ride of a hero/villain/citizen story
a true story of redemption
a cautionary tale of only listening to those on your side
(and of blindly going into the ‘family business’)
and obviously not inspired by any real person or story in our country or society
at all.
thirty days have september,
april,
june,
and november
all the rest have thirty-one
except february which completely fucks us up and every four years gets even a little bit more complicated because time is a mortal construction and probably not as linear as people make it out to be…
i see my friends
open themselves up to the universe
to give and receive and the universe complies
sending platonic connections from years and years past,
sheltering under iridescent wingspans
and holding safe a space for baby queers;
we are the ancestors we wish we’d had
(and we do have those ancestors,
they just may not be blood)
the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb
isn’t it great how the actual saying is saying the opposite of what everyone who says it thinks they are saying?
there are a lot of things like that in this world, aren’t there?
(and do we even need to live our lives by sayings made up by humans long since dead?)
i’m still finding my way
slowly opening myself up to the universe,
trying not to ask it too greedily,
as i’m still scared it’s not real,
i’m too much of an atheist/agnostic to trust in anything outside of myself
(but, one might point out, the universe could simply be a part of ourselves that is unknown,)
and we are far more connected to one another than we think we are,
so maybe those connections are the universe
and each other are the spiritual guides,
but all of these are very ‘what if’
very potential answers
but not definites,
and it is too early for this kind of contemplation to make 100% sense
(and i was definitely up too early to be too comprehensible to others)
so we can just write this
and post it
and throw it out into the universe
and know that our place in it is constantly changing
and at times you need the guidance
and at others you are the guide
and it constantly changes
and change is good
scary
but good.
what is with
these weeks of summer
streaming by in the goddamn blink of an eye?
(and how many more will i have have have to endure
until i finally find it in me to accept
the inevitability of time?)
the first
of any month
scares the crap out of me
i’m so much more able to ignore
the steady, streaming, passage of time
if the dates just keep flowing.
but the reset,
the sudden jump back to single digits,
the shock to my system as i readjust…
write new dates,
set new goals,
pay new bills,
(does it never end?)
~~~
you’d think
for someone who has new years in their top favorite holidays
new beginnings wouldn’t hurt so damn badly
~~~
poetry about something real
(kind of like prose)
flows out of me smoothly,
effortlessly,
the words coming even without me pondering them
the appearance on the document
pristine
and as i go
i think more and more
and harder and harder
and second guess
and try to have a nice ending
(are poems made for tidy endings?)
and i fizzle,
or overanalyze,
and what started as a journey
ends in near virtual reality
can my poems ever truly reflect
what’s happening
in my brain?
kipventures 