Je t'aime.

I was attempting to write an email without having to shape my thoughts in a definitive way that would spell out the truth and hand forth the hideous. My words were all no good though. The problem was that I was trying so hard to convey a large amount of beauty. I was strangling what it was I did as a form of therapy. For me the plot was never important; the small moments that I let wash over in a sudden atmospheric collision, were what made the most sense and did the most talking. The documentation of this came easy. And the elaborate infatuation with that which was absurd, came naturally. It was never something I analyzed or studied before. It was an inner force that spit fire.

After failing at communicating in a universal sort of way, there was the translation of static. I snuck into the kitchen and made myself a bowl of cereal. It was thoughtless of me. The food went in the mouth, but had no taste. I was merely filling time. People do this a lot. Ideas fall out blankly and get tossed into that ocean of the existent. It is in this same way that ideas are lost. They are merely patted and caressed and laughed at. Crying doesn’t help.

I went to the bathroom to cover up the red splotches on my face. Mimi knocked on the door and asked if I had plans for the evening. My immediate reaction was to say yes, but there was something soft forming at her mouth; her lips were something smooth. I was curious so I raised the eyebrows and let my body speak. She responded well to this and told me about a Korean boy named Albert. He was twenty three and the loving parent of a dog named Hercules. The dog apparently saved his life. I was told this while laughter intermingled enough that I was charmed. I was convinced to attend a dinner. I saw the immediacy of friendship and nodded off the discovery of self-hatred.

“He’s not very articulate, but he’s got a good sense of humor. He’s a little naive though. And well, you strike me as someone that’s got an old soul.”

This was what was said after being introduced to a big sesame seed bagel with lox cream cheese plastered all across its middle. I kept the fact that I just ate cereal a secret for some reason. I didn’t get shameful and grabbed the bagel with an eagerness that bled. There was something in its taste that remained in the mouth several hours afterwards. It wasn’t something disagreeable though. It just served as a reminder. A very pleasant one at that.

After this, I fell asleep for a half an hour and had a dream about the city. The streets were different, in that they were covered with hordes of people to an intense degree, and there was the fear of getting slaughtered. The bourgeois with weaponry, didn’t seem too forgiving either. What’s silly is that I ended up walking into a museum to escape the smoky violence. It was there that a large photograph was seen flashing on a white screen. It was of my family sitting on board my father’s sail boat. It was the type of detail that doesn’t seem to resonate well with all else. It was the splinter of something chaotic. 

When I woke up, I decided to take a train down to 23rd Street. The Chelsea Hotel looked very naked. Groups of kids with cameras in hand, walked in and out. This bothered me for some reason. I felt under-dressed and starved in a neighborhood that had a history of catering to those with a vision. My art wasn’t good enough then. I walked over to the nearby cinema and spent ten minutes looking at the poster for Martha Marcy May Marlene. I remembered seeing a preview for the movie and thought it might be worth watching.

Heading into the cinema was difficult. I spent thirteen bucks on a ticket and felt like it was some grand mistake. By the time I sat down and found a seat, I was sure that my day was ruined. It is easy to feel this way. It takes one abnormal idiosyncrasy to mess up routine and destroy all else. I’m fragile when it comes to this. My mood is very dependent on the projected elements that take form around me. This is where fear infiltrates and destroys. It’s something that kills.

The character Marcy in the film knew this. Everything was kept sombre, but this paralleled the true spirit of who it is that I am and try to hide being. I panicked when Marcy panicked. I knew what it was to panic. I knew what it was to not understand what it is that scares you. I knew the colors being passed back and forth. I knew what it felt like to be caught in an illness that is bigger than you are. It’s a disease that runs deep and haunts forever.

The scene that made me cry though, was something most would pass without showing any significant emotion. Marcy was sitting at a window looking outward, when her fingers brushed up against the glass, dictating to the cold surface, her desire to abolish the fragile world that she was quick to suffocate in. There trapped, were fruit flies. They were small and probably never intended to cross over into that of the cinematic, but I felt their presence. It all reminded me of a story a friend once wrote, that I felt so painfully attached to, that I have since carried a printed version around with me everywhere I go.

Part of that story reads as follows, but you can read the rest here: 

“She trapped a fly against the window screen. The little fly fought and fought until it slowed and fell, in the vocabulary of a balloon, or the snow in a globe. It didn’t snow there but she recognized something in the basic vibration and decline—the small, visible chemical exchanges between a complete system of breathing and a vacuum. Through the window she could see the hillside, flowers growing there. She needed to see a terror that wasn’t small.”

Nothing could more perfectly describe that moment, except perhaps William Blake’s poem Little Fly or that small verse from Elliott Smith’s Condor Avenue. You all know what I’m talking about. That thoughtless hand that brushes away the weaknesses that describe best our fears. It’s all eventual. It’s all there. 

In the movie you see how fear snaps Marcy towards destruction in terms of depression and anxiety. We all become different monsters, when we give in to that side of ourself. We imagine that the voices in our head, are something of real life, and we find it easier to let the illness rule all else. This is when we taste death early. This is when we drink a hell that exists because we make it.

Most films are made to be an escape, but this one was perhaps intended to be just the opposite. Instead, like a germ, you felt pain build up within you. There was no way to abscond that either. What was the most shocking however, is that although Marcy was referred to as being “crazy”, I identified parts of her eccentricity buried within. Her acting out, was something I lived before. I felt like I was looking in a mirror. Was it possible we shared the same scars?

John Hawke’s version of Marcy’s Song, was something I’m glad they included. The words were a slab of honey, when all you wanted to do was bend over and offer your body at some alter for the gods. The cult following and the way things were just done, was easy to fall into and understand. When I closed my eyes, I could see my favorite author in the wild, living that dream he had convinced himself was the quickest way to saunter the bad blood of the mechanical clouds. Blindly, Richard Brautigan is my Charles Manson.

When I left the theater, I was reminded of that two hour periodical I had watched once in an eighth grade health class. The documentary was one about anorexia, and I got sick watching it. I was made so uncomfortable, I started scratching at my limbs and had to ask the instructor, if I could please be excused. I’d never felt so defeated and disgusting before. And it wasn’t because I had harbored feelings of inclined interest, but rather, I knew what it was to be that psychologically lost. I’m a fly that way. It’s sad, but I am.

But then again — Feeling lost, is really just another way of feeling dead.