cerberus' head unfurls in the smoke plumes
��������� �����i sat on the stoop, smoking. this tiny smokestack of death twirls in my fingers. i stare at it, fascinated.the moon hangs heavy, bloated. gibbous, fattened, in the sky. clouds are luminescent all around it. i am dressed in a hooded sweater. jeans. hurried attire, nothing special, but somehow fitting to the grimy moment. hunched over this object, a thin rolled up collection of miscoloured papers, which is thusly set ablaze. you know the process.
"mike would say you smoke like a girl," josie explained to me once. i looked at her. "he smokes like this." she placed the cigarette between her forefinger and middle finger, and looked contemplative before inhaling, as usual.
i did that. and held it that way, for a long time, hand cupped over my mouth. i looked like i was suffocating myself - and probably, by all literal means, was. i never hold the smoke in for too long, though. afraid of the curling gray menace which might infiltrate down to my lungs. the more i think about it, the more i feel this deep ache in the very tissues when i breathe -
"paranoia is reality, only on a finer scale." - from some script i read tonight. i suppose hypochondria is sort of a physical paranoia ... i suppose ...
very far removed. jason, massaging my neck, suddenly says, "you're so loose ... very calm?" when it was the furthest from the truth. although it shocked me, too.
i remember that i started this journal with the thought in my mind "i will not use this to speak indirectly to the people i know. i will instead make an effort to talk to said people."
and that's continuing. but it's extremely difficult to talk when i hate the sound of my own voice, hate how when i start to explain what's wrong the world magnifies a thousand times and i feel like i'm speaking through a microphone thrust too closely to my mouth - everything folds and unfolds, and i get a panicking feeling not unlike being shoved around inside a kaleidoscope of shadows, gripped, tossed, gripped, tossed --
the way my emotions unfurl, like sinister flags of a strange, shifting war, conquering-being conquered-conquering-vanquishing -- on some vast, unspeakable landscape replete with thunder & lightning, lightning like cool analytical scalpels peeling apart the cortex of my thoughts...
and the worst thought of all. needing to get out, needing to drive, imagining driving very fast, smashing the car, waking up in the ER.
everyone i know is standing around the bedside, looking concerned, frightened, sad .. someone reaches out for me.
i smile, and then everything fades to black