The Jam Files #7 — “The Void is Abysmal”

The Void is Abysmal

My fatigued mind creates conversations from snippets I hear from the fuzzy TV.

“Loneliness. Guaranteed. Who can you trust? Catheter. I just want to go home. Death toll.”

Every word caresses a nerve ending, sparks electricity that flows through me. I’m caught up in memories, webbed in itchy threads of autumnal nostalgia. My mind won’t stop flickering and it makes my body twitch constantly. I’m having an affair with silence. I’m flirting with peace.

Visiting creatures raise my anxiety level. I’ve been so alone that I’ve got to get used to the animal kingdom again. Slithering things, howling wolves, a screeching bat. It’s going to get colder eventually. They’ll all want to burrow or hover around my porch for safety. Don’t they know it’s not safe anywhere? Especially not in here.

I’ve tiptoed out of the world. I’m even wading out past the digital barriers. I keep an eye on the scrolling shores. I don’t want to, but they keep calling to me. There’s people on them. They say they’re human, anyway. I don’t know what that means anymore. I don’t know if I ever did. You hear a lot about humanity and its state nowadays. Every pair of eyes with half of a mind has a different view of it. We all have our “how things should be according to me” ideas. Some assert their agendas. Some are downright militant about them. Others would rather protect dreams. Keep things sacred and secret. Keep the beyond in the forefront because that which we can clearly see is awful. That which we wish everyone could see keeps us tossing and turning at night.

I’ve given a lot away in my life and I don’t want any of it back, but I’d like to conserve a little energy now for me to hear better. At some point, I stopped listening. I guess drowning in the noise was easier. Now the rustling in every breeze whispers something. I understand things in song. I realize I don’t wake up like others do. I don’t think of who or what I want to fight the moment I open my eyes. I don’t want to pick and choose people. I don’t want to change anyone’s mind about anything. I want all the paths and the mysteries alongside and at the end of them to be respected. I want a day where judgment just does not exist.

When I’m out here, looking in, I can see the dark and the light, but I focus on where those blend. I see the process and events in which they do. I see how one thing just bleeds into another. Sometimes it’s an infectious thing. Something takes over. Sometimes it’s welcomed. Sometimes it’s not. There’s a balance but it’s so finely printed. I squint a lot. Brightness overwhelms me. Darkness soothes. Then sometimes it’s the opposite. Heavy burdens smother in shadow. Discovering releasement in the ray of dawn.

I swirl these grey spots with a fingertip sometimes. I blow clouds around and sometimes I deep breathe the smog right into me. I don’t understand every purpose but I just know that purpose exists. How could anything be happening otherwise?

This decision I’ve made,–the one to stay, to continue doing whatever this work is, to keep going, to allow some things to fade away–it’s been a good one. The misery and the beauty equally consume me. I can be comfortably uncomfortable in this body anywhere. There is no time. The place is the one I’m taking up space in.

“Gruesome find. Epiphany. Where was he? Monster.”

There’s a hypnagogic hilltop with my name on it.
I just have to find the energy to make the climb.