nothing, nothing, nothing

a friend of mine (i think he could be called) asked me, how's life?

oh, horrible, i said. i mean, horrible.

and this fine gentleman came back to me with the following sensible questions:

you still got your job?

you still got your apartment?

you still got your violin, you didn't drop it?

of course i saw the point at which he was aiming, herding, driving. yes, i had shelter, a means to sustain it, and a means to create art, alongside. i laughed nervously and replied that i couldn't answer that question, that last, and that somebody else in the car with us knew why.

i had dropped someone else's musical instrument, earlier that week, just out of this first friend's vision, with no perception of its magnitude in my manifest embarrassment. in the end, nothing had come of it. if i hadn't made sure to apologize, nothing might ever have been said about it again. but it had happened. it had affected me, us. so of course it would be pointless to explain that.

but horrible? why horrible?

horrible because i have been begging the universe, by so many tears and howls, for a chance to show the people i love who and what and why i am. how i do things. where i came from. when i spend time with them, how elated i am.

this was the chance. this was the impossible chance. and in that way, life was not so horrible, after all. not right then and there. but i said horrible. i think i meant horrible.

horrible not because it's easy, comfortable, safe, but because it expresses something, a feeling positioned one way or the other, something other than banal, unbenign neutrality.

every time i numb over, i feel it getting worse. every time i balm the wounds in nothing, nothing, nothing.

i have to think. i have to love. i have to feel.

if i cannot explain to them who i am, then i must reimagine myself to be the bland little caricature they must see me as, because i have never been able to express to them a vision any different. because i am failing even to claw at coherence, as the tires roll mercilessly by. i am withering, atrophying, not even plainly digestible.

but who could do any of that, in that car traveling its usual route with no variance, nothing but sirens in the distance characterizing what it was we'd set out to do?

who could expect their friend to relent, and turn around and ask what they mean? who could expect the walls to fall down, by the same blunt and bitter technique?

it's not my place to stop time. it's not my allowance, to distract them. i fit in where the space is allotted. i iterate unsubtly, each day.

there are more dramatic tactics available to me, but even those prove impotent, uninspired. don't fuck with me! i can behave in weirder and more off-putting ways that affect you not at all. i can isolate myself, and stand at the periphery, and gaze in like an automaton unwound.

but then i will return, as i am obligated to, and there will be no comment made. there never is.

who are these people? who are you?

i am trying. dear god, am i trying.