December 18 2018

I am indecisive about my journaling. I don’t like seeing my apathy reflected back so cooly. I tape all the mirrors in my house again. I have three and they are all covered with sheets. It’s hard to look at yourself. I tell myself after tonight’s walk I will take more serious measures to ensure I do not, in fact, become myself again. But I will not journal tonight.

Tomorrow, I tell the cat. Tomorrow i will begin a severe monitoring of nefariousness. Send it to the trash. Learn to love. I want to sabotage you. 

No we aren’t doing that.

I wish people could just read my thoughts. I smoked three bowl hits and am too paranoid to leave the house so I pace the living room a while before heading out into the 45 degree weather. I am grateful for its warmth even though it’s night.

I am sore about us not talking but I hate you.

December 17 2018

In which our comrades are betrayed, we freeze
And marvel at the smashing nonchalance
Of nature: what better way to test taut fiber
–sylvia plath

Maybe I will just write a quote down and leave it at that. I told my therapist I was trying to make a daily journal and she thought it was a good idea. I’m constantly perseverating around the way out. It will either be me jumping off a bridge and falling to the bottom of a river or it’s going to be more theatrical than that.

I’ve eaten three bananas
three and a half cups of coffee w vanilla almond milk
a handful of raw green beans
two bowls of popcorn

three mason jar glasses of water
some rice and left over dal
two packages of ramen with sriracha and peanut butter
about five grapes but will probably eat more.

I can’t get settled tonight and want to keep consuming. We are not even talking anymore and I am on fire. I don’t know how to get through these things without lying. I begin the big lie. 

I miss you.
I miss you.
I miss you.
I miss you.

In which our comrades are betrayed, we freeze
And marvel at the smashing nonchalance
Of nature: what better way to test taut fiber
–sylvia plath

december 14 2018

I keep feeling this strength in unconditional love but also seeing the world reflect its weakness back to me. The bellows that call on me to wear my armadillo suit: the daily news, the man that followed me for thirty feet whispering “slut,” the recent sleet. I want to be even softer.

Dec 12 2018
What am I missing?

Nothing. But I don’t believe it so I go outside every day to check it out. I need to walk, observe,be a part of. I carry my cup everywhere I go asking for coffee, some reason to be here and skeptical but full of energy. I squint when I’m pretending to think so no one talks to me. I have a way of avoiding people that invites them to look at me first and I’m changing. I decide this is the year I keep a journal so I stop forgetting everything. Mostly i want to remember the way it felt when it all coalesced into what it would actually look like. I remember starts and finishes but centers become fuzzy. 

I’ve been dreaming of the soft ground again; propping myself up with my hands and staring straight up at the moon. Winter feels like an open grave. 

I step on a large stone and begin to rub it back and forth underneath my sneaker. Consider taking it for my altar but ultimately walk away, not kicking it either. I feel like it is set there for a reason: a child or anyone feeling scathed or unsafe. I can see it in my mind hitting a skull.

I laugh out loud but I don’t mean to and then I pull a straw out of my pocket. I can feel the beginning devolution at the first brush with rejection, the thing I am currently avoiding today. I feel abandoned in every situation so I clutch this disposable plastic and wish to throw people away.

I understood the tenets of harm reduction before I really knew what that meant. That is, I understood things without academia’s interference by being the rum soaked gerbil not the man with the microscope. My carpal tunnel sort of gripped my forearm forcing me to take the pen and sign up for a monthly membership to Massage Philly. Harm reduction is not dropping the straw but the way you spread your fingers sometimes with it tucked into your waistband or bra to wash your hands or to stretch or to pet a stray cat.. Harm reduction isn’t throwing away the headphones, it is keeping them in your bookbag for as long as you can. Harm reduction isn’t stopping the walks, it is fitted Nikes, hydration, knee exercises and trying to breathe without turning the volume up, or on a good day, there is nothing in your hand or on your back. You don’t wear the bookbag that day. You put some cash in your pocket.  You are not purchasing that day. You are smiling at dogs. You are friendly to children. You are feeling the weather. It is the way you craft each playlist to be disposable after a certain amount of use. It is not the deactivation or deletion but the constant removal of the phone from hand, or the removal of the headphones
“I have never relaxed,” I tell the technician.
I am not embarrassed or ashamed of the things my body holds or the way I wear my fright honestly and boldly. I never tell a lie. I don’t think it is possible for me to do this. Due to my submission to truth in this way, I become more wiley.
“The trick is you can’t get caught,” I tell her confidently walking into the store. I turn around to grin, “You know me.”
I push the double doors open with my back.
“I just may confess everything”
If there’s anything I placed too much value on it’s an external locus of control, i.e. luck. He tells me to lay down face up to start.
“We will start with your neck.”
That’s where everyone always starts. With my throat, my neck, my jaw line.
“I have dysphagia,” I say to someone else filling out paperwork.
They always start with the throat.
“Swallow.”
But it’s hard. Not hard like sore or stiff but hard like a small bouncy ball is stuck in there and shrunk a little so you can’t see it but things get caught on top sometimes and
“How much water do you drink?”
“With meals, I try to drink at least three small glasses.”
The doctor looks at me, discerning. I do not tell lies.
“Ok, here comes the lavender.”
I feel some light pressure at the base of my skull where every thought got caught in webbing.

If a man breathes near me, I tense so I begin to list things. Things I have to do when I get home. Things I have to get from the store. The next section of the house to clean. Things that I can no longer swallow. How much money I have in my bank account. Ways to double my bank account. Seven alternative endings to an  email. The time I shouldn’t have said anything but did so now I am reneging or backtracking, but only internally.
“Ok, I am going to stretch your neck.”
Things I need to remember, like memories. Things I am supposed to let go of. Open your palm.
“Good,” he whispers and I do let my neck drop to the table and lift up with his hands without him even saying relax.
When a man touches me, I tense. What men don’t believe is anything and I have a plan to prove it. I begin to list the ways that men have traumatized me. I put my thumb up so he knows I’m serious.
1. When I was five years old, my babysitter’s brother raped me.
2. My older brother terrorized me as a child, bullying me as a form of affection but also physically crossing boundaries while teaching me how destructive boys could be.
3. My dad’s friend used to comment on my appearance all the time.
4. My dad forgot to pick me up at the pool one time.
5. My dad forgot many things.
6. A kid kissed me on the school bus without me agreeing to it once. My brother taught me how to punch a guy in the chest so hard he loses his breath after that. He also taught me how to kick their nuts.

He begins to work on my forearm and we both hear it pop.
“Unfold your palm.”
I walk with a bit of a stalk and tall but I do always carry something. I sleep with a grinding jaw and clenched fist. We both feel the pop near the thumb.
“Wow,” is all he can say.
I continue to list things but the fox interrupts me. We go to see the bear and I know what that means.
I don’t want to see the king.
But you’ve been asking to see the king.
I am scared.
I fall through the water anyway and when I emerge backwards through time, I see him on the island in his red and white garb, smiling. Time for favor. Yes, bear, you are right. I have begged.
“You have one wish.”
Let that rage go.
I feel him in my shoulders.
“This is a tricky spot,” he says.
I feel it like a black misty armor. It’s on my right side.
“Your right side is tighter.”
My right side is barbed and ready and dark. A viscous fog wraps my back, bicep and shoulder. You know how it may feel to carry a shield all day?
“Oh yeah,” and I jump a little
Let that rage go.
“I want whole body healing,” I say to the man on the beach.
But then I stammer, panic, is that right? I am doubting although arrogant in public. Should I say freedom? Yes of course. I get it. He waits.
“I want whole body healing.”
“Ok, sit here, rest and take your time getting up. I will be out front when you are ready.”
I do take my time in the room with the pink light that day. Even if  I lay only a minute longer, it is a minute longer than usual. He gives me chocolate and water and some ideas. I promise to come back and remind him of the contract. I walk outside without fixing my hair. The sunlight is bright. It is hot and I am an infant. Pausing for a moment, I find my feet.
“Veruca Salt!”
It’s always like this. Not the incessant male interruption, although it
is
literally
always
like
that
too

 but the synthesis. The way the stories come in three folds and I can’t keep up. It’s like this. I want to list the things they’ve done and I also want the king. I begin to walk away when I feel him grab my arm.
Let that rage go, Catarina.

  If I had more time, I’d scrub my house daily. from bottom to top.  I’d do nothing but sweep and mop the floors as I tracked in dirty from my long walks. I go nowhere, I just walk the city. Sometimes to get things. Mostly to gaze at the cracks in the walls or the litter in the curb. i see syringes every time and i find spiders scurrying across or I am also obsessed with windows, even if they don’t reflect back. broken or taped, I always feel drawn by them.
I love sparrows. My house is always surrounded by them no matter where I live. I knew I’d missed the stained glass windows. unsure if i’d miss the house itself; it’s mold or my pacing thoughts. also i did too many rituals in that place and needed a fresh start. i didn’t trust the infrastructure. when i moved, i took what i needed. i was not going to leave suddenly but with care.
I am speaking out loud as I round Pine Street unaware of how far I walked and with so much to do. If it were up to me, I’d make the bed neat. Pillows to match. The toilet, tub and sink would be porcelain white and the smell of citrus and bergamot throughout my house. Pine-Sol when I am out of town. Incense. The basement would be organized into perfect squares with everything labeled.
Then I decide it’s more honest about my time and my journaling as I succumb to the urge to confess anyway. asunder. I’m always thinking of words I’ve read used and heard as a means to encapsulate me. i am also mendacious and just dissected the reckless driver in me. Everytime the moon is dark again, I’m ready to set the best saintly intention but then I just fall back into myself. here are my notes in no particular order. 

Nursing home massacre; choking on peanut butter sandwiches, an aid just kills them all by giving them peanut butter sandwiches and no water. 

Dream maze. touch the shower walls. 

Next: childhood of violence dirty and bullying other kids. introduction of the con you present to him a con artist am I who I say I am and so you trust me

 A large crowd had gathered waiting for brunch. I thought this place had rats I exclaim out loud in front of green eggs cafe.But I actually didn’t know

i would just walk behind men, peacocking sometimes for a whole mile or for however long I could away with it. But i wanted to rob them. More than that, I wanted them to feel frightened of the stature I held calmly and only two feet behind them rounding every corner with them. I just began following different men around town. as I felt called to when one passed by me. it is with no regret I write anything i say. 

Electric sentience joins music.

my therapist has asked me to keep a more accurate daily journal. she suggested a food log but that doesn’t work for me. i do actually eat what my body needs, it’s more about choking but I decide to do what she asks. 

I begin to feel some remorse for my actions but also deeply puzzled by how that could be. i also have ignored some more disturbing thoughts and visions of me leaping to my death and me smiling covered in oil but walking out as if it was just a splash of water. It feels like I have just touched something spongy and it has spit something out. It’s damp and breathing like a black coral or something deeper and it’s porous.
I never celebrate I just see it. there is an overturned rat under the bridge off third street and my friend says it’s been there for days. 

I have begun memorizing the street signs again and which direction I am walking.  I begin today with mendacious. I mean for memorizing words. this is why i don’t keep journals to keep track of circular thoughts. it’s sort of a spiraling of information . this is how cerebrals may dance through life, fascinated by both synthesis in electricity, musical ensembles, cadence, an unrehearsed togetherness in packs that travel  and how they hunt, the jaws of an alligator. I mean the sheer strength of an alligator. 

I have not booked my ticket to my grandmother’s house because an alligator lives on her property. I’m in awe of this dinosaur and am far too young at heart to ignore it. I am scared of my clumsiness but I want to see it hiss and back up jaws open and I think,
I will go to Mallorca but I will not tempt a shark.

My therapist wants me to keep an honest daily journal, a toll of things and this is it:

mendacious: men·da·cious

adjective

1. not telling the truth; lying.
   “mendacious propaganda”

I’m in bed by ten now and it feels familiar; waking up at dawn to clean the house. I suddenly feel the urge to organize my spices, my basement, wanting everything labeled. I have hoards of things and drawers become full of batteries, rubber bands, paper clips and safety pins, closets full of blankets, sufficiency in motion, but first i give up and re-take up caffeine. Also, almost choking to death but actively repressing it.  I sort of skulk down the street hidden by a hat and scarf and sunglasses. My spine pulsating with distant light, or today mushrooms and marijuana, to re-experience the way sun felt the first time I managed to look up and revel. I’m surrounded by birds and their noises. After asking an Amazon Prime shopper if they were in line for the bathroom, I turned to the mirror, the camera, and pocketed the banana I was holding. I stretched my legs and checked my phone. 

I start the morning eating three tiny mushrooms and packing a very small bowl of marijuana after testing the strength of the shrooms on my walk to get coffee. Also drinking water, blowing my nose, taking care of the cats.
I love pushing the line of absurd and mendacious to seeing suddenly the line beneath my feet as a practiced reality. I am lucid but also sidestepping the edges of trees underneath the concrete but somewhere else, not here. I have no music in my head. There is nothing in my hand. The staff member holds the bathroom door for me. I leave without paying for the banana and satisfied at how well I operate in crowds. Prouder now of the ability to document it as factual as possible. I prepare my stories to my therapist leaving room for sudden emotional burst. But mostly I am cerebral learning how to pronounce things perfectly.
en-can-ta-da
“I do everything at once, “ I say.
Because I have done drugs my wrists are covered with tiny black hearts.
‘I can keep track of every hour, if I mark it. Then I can look back. “
I’ve only eaten bananas today. I am covered in Raven anointing oil, a gift from a friend. It is rare I follow rules or directions or advice but I heard my cats ask for mice and they are both sitting peacefully.. I begin eating an avocado and I prepare my throat for the dal I made. i don’t do well under pressure or with too much time so I jump off a bridge one day hoping to land perfectly in the center of a patch of ice and wishing. I was actively wishing as I fell that perhaps I would make it out alive. 

this is a more honest look. 

i begin to draw the queen of cups in the corner in blue marker and i also decide to actively burn any bridge left between us.