exorcise
I love how this weblog page is so neat and organized. The words so well groomed. Lovely complementary colors that I chose but don't know why. Fonts and links deliberated and orderly. Clean and shiny, albeit virus-laden misbehaving, glowing box.

No one can see how the page is slashed and cut-up and gouged, the words ripped and strewn, stained, wrinkled, and dripping. The holes betraying some other twilight zone dimension that you stand at the threshold and have second, third, fourth thoughts about wanting to go into, knowing you won't. I'm in there, watching you, knowing you won't.

Me and my sword and armor. Battle again? I never even wanted to win. I don't ever recall winning.

High school
They take you out and the light burns your eyes
To the talking room - it's no surprise
Loaded questions from clean white coats
Their eyes are all as hidden as their Hippocratic Oath
They tell you how to behave, behave as their guest
You want to resist them, you do your best
They take you to your limits, they take you beyond
For all that they are doing there's no way to respond
Hold on . . .
"Wallflower" - Peter Gabriel

I remember college; Luyen, I tried. All I could do was be there, and I tried to be whenever you needed and didn't let you walk away. And you were me. Where I had been. I was on the outside and I knew what you saw from the inside – that I was on the outside.

San Francisco? Remember Lake Merced and John Muir Drive? Josephine? Haha, of course not, how could I? Between the hallucinating and waking up in the back of that pickup truck and apparently face-diving into a patch of poison oak?

The doctor said it looked like poison oak contact dermatitis. He let it slide that I had no idea how it got all over my face and neck. If only hallucinogens were involved that night. There weren't. Just a bottle of sleeping pills and a bottle of gin. I never even got near the ocean. I couldn't even find it.

How I got home or avoided getting picked up by police is beyond me. I do remember scraps, though, shreds, all after the sky got light. Pissing buckets down an embankment by the police shooting range. I vaguely remember the hallucination when I was in the back of the pickup truck. It makes me laugh now, I don't know why. And I remember the feeling as clearly as if it were right now.

I'm not letting this pain in my head or this nausea go away. I found out how to maintain it. I want it for now. I went out again today. I was even at the ballpark again when Bonds hit his 661st homerun. I saw it go into the water. I'm making sure I get out every day. I know how to still look normal to other people. I still know how to make sure that things no one else knows stays things that no one else knows.