limited life

Chapter 01: something poetic
Chapter 02: something pathetic

i can't speak for the general notion that the current generation of young adults are image-obsessed, neutral-narcissistic, vessels and vassals of vanity. i'd posit that the internet is perfectly feasible as a lynchpoint of blame. constant comparison, that devilish thief of joy.

but does every youth who points the camera in a mirror and prays do so because they're afraid - petrified - of losing it all, of waking up ugly the next morning just as surely as their hair will get tousled during the night?

preservation. the lens portals to preservation.

don't you know i want to be perfect? don't you know i want to last forever, or else just die right now?

haircuts grow, of course. fuzzy buzzes relax to mullets and sharpest jaws dull. eternal youth is not promised but snatched, these wandering curves teach us as they spiral on, spiral on, spiral on.

we act, thus (i act, and i molder), as though we have a limited lease on life. as though money is not for spending but saving, exclusively. as though the impetus incumbent upon a young professional life is to stock up and stand still because love is not earned but scattered, few things but security ever matter, and the face that cannot be photographed well was never breathtaking to begin with.

let me take a picture to make sure i don't lose it.

it's a professional photo, you know. i'm wearing a blazer and i'm holding an instrument; i'm cosigning my career. so that makes it alright. i'm allowed to take a picture. even in other, alternately characteristic outfits. it's a matter of skill and a matter of import.

and a matter of preservation.

it's alright, it's alright, it's alright.

tread with your vital excuse just below daily, just above documentary. because they said you should romanticize enjoy your life. you shouldn't, but you should. you can, so maybe you should. they said you're here now, so you can be a little self-centered.

thief of joy. thief of joy. let me steal myself some undeserved joy.

"a beautiful creature, inside and out" but i've my mother's face and my father's mind so i must be ugly but they were never this hot, and the hair on my legs makes me think that i'm not, because they told me, they told me, and my limited ears never listen, let me look in the mirror again.

let me look in the mirror again.

am i still there?

the nightmares come. the laundry runs. let me look in the mirror again.

am i still there?

are you still there?

everyone leaves. i'm in the business of leaving myself. apart from my retirement fund, i'm allergic to investment.

pack it up. pack it in. we've done all we can, we can't do it again.

how could i ever possibly do it again?

let me take a picture before i lose my mind.

don't you know i have to get it all right right now, or die tomorrow of a sympathetic cause?

i'm not sure when it started, but for a while now i've been taking a picture of my bed every morning.

every morning? most mornings. i've been making my bed, getting on and off repeatedly in order to align the bedskirt, tuck the comforter on the side of the bed that adjoins the wall, fold the flat sheet, smooth the pillowcases...

and then walking to my desk, picking up my phone, and taking a picture. seeing something off, readjusting, and taking another picture.

i don't reference back to these images. i'm not doing a hotel-style box corner or anything else particularly elaborate. but these pictures sit on my phone's external storage card, altering the layout of the day's other pictures, which must not be split unevenly within the four-across layout, or else...

or else i'll become preoccupied. i've been preoccupied for probably ten years now. maybe eight. certainly five. definitely the last one.

i run on limited brainpower, compulsed as i am to dedicate what might seem to others - and even me, sometimes - to be excess resources to ruminating over the past, obsessing over the present, and boiling apprehension towards the future.

there is no sense in any of this. there is no order in these lethally constricted channels through which i operate. there is only a quivering attempt at control, because i have not been able to control anything for so long that i refuse to take control of anything that matters ever again.

i didn't take a picture of my bedspread today. but i stayed in it well past noon, so. i guess that's why.