Life: some random proverbs & propositions

Life like the blue whale or some phosphorescent newt that lives at the heart of the Amazon rain forest that you've only seen on television.

Life like a subatomic particle that exists only according to the deduction of the six or seven smartest physicists in the world.

Vowing never to speak again then not five minutes later hearing yourself blather on like some tool at the U.N. lying in 11 languages at once.

Fearing that one day you'll look in the mirror & see a pile of gray laundry that someone left behind at the laundromat.

Thinking you're too old for this shit & what you mean is waking up in the morning & greeting the golden opportunity of a new day.

Life like a hamster wheel of razor blades.

Forgiving your cat in advance for eating off half your face before your corpse is finally discovered after neighbors complain of the stench.

Always fearing life but always fearing death just that crucial little bit more.

Your heart like a frozen gray lump of something found at the back of the freezer for god only knows how long that you're now afraid to thaw.

Fog of war.

Smog of bickering.

If under a tree you were hit by a fruit you'd take it as further proof the whole world was against you instead of deducing the principles of gravity.

Feeling your face splitting under the strain of congratulating someone on a new baby when all you can think is "that poor little bastard" & “how could you do something so stupid & selfish & cruel.”

You feel like you're being beaten to death with a fork after your final request to be beaten to death with a fork first so you won't have to feel anything has been denied.

Every time you look in the mirror the feeling that someone is looking over your shoulder saying, no, that's not you, try again.

Life like swimming underwater & you can't hold your breath a moment longer.

Feeling it as inappropriate to say "Happy Birthday!" as it would be to say "Happy Holocaust Day!"

Imagining that two crazy, evil micro trolls have crept inside your head & their demented conversation are all your thoughts.

Nodding to fire hydrants on your walk to work because they seem like shorter, sturdier, more dependable versions of the people you'll meet when you get there.

You're so sure that you've always been and always will be wrong about everything that you're afraid to even finish this sentence

When you look at your hands you can easily picture them holding a murder weapon.

When you look at your hands you can easily picture them around your own throat.

Opening a dresser drawer & each time half-expecting to see a family of miniature blue deer picking its way daintily across the landscape of your panties.

Life like a book you remember liking a long time ago but don't understand how now that you're re-reading it.

Life like being forced into the family business.

Life without the possibility of parole.

Life like a nail gun firing one nail a second into alternate ears for however long they want to.

Starving yourself as a way to reduce the amount of you there is to hate.

Starving yourself as a way to become an angel.

Hunger re-interpreted as the pain necessary to grow wings to escape Hell.

Anorexia on general principle.

Feeling like you can never get enough of something but you can't quite figure out what it is.

Convinced that you've already said everything you have to say & have just been repeating yourself since 2009.

Panic attack as allergic reaction to life.

Panic attack as logical reaction to an intolerable existential position.

Panic attack as protest.

Life as the ugly dress you didn't want but have to pretend you like & even go on wearing so you don't hurt anyone's feelings.

Life as the lesser of two evils, probably.

Life as Clinton vs. Trump

Always too late for your first choice: not to have been born at all.

Your feet on the floor without shoes are an enigma to you.

Your feet on the floor with shoes look more familiar but are still an enigma.

Afraid one day you'll look in the mirror & instead of a head see what looks like a giant plate of spaghetti on your shoulders—but isn't.

Hating yourself on general principles.

Hating yourself because it feels good.

Hating yourself as emotional shorthand for all of it.

Hating yourself in order to cut to the chase.

Hating yourself on the good authority of people who know better than you.

Saving people time by subtracting yourself from the equation.

Let (-x) = you.

Considering suicide options like other people consider exotic vacations but lacking the energy to actually get up off your lazy ass & go.

Thinking that if people only got to know you better they'd like you but if they really knew you they'd hate you again.

And if they knew you as well as you know yourself they'd drive you out of town at the end of pointed sticks for the sick monster you are.

Wearing drugstore reading glasses all the time because the world looks better out of focus.

Apologizing when people step on your toes.

Apologizing when the plumber can't fix your pipes.

Apologizing to your executioner.

Saying you’re not going to try anymore even as you’re trying.

Feeling like the victim of a purse-snatching except it was your sanity not a purse & the snatcher running off with it is you.

No matter how fast you go objects in the mirror are always closer than they appear.

Hope as a guy kicking his own hat down the street.

Life as an interminable countdown to something that never happens.

The sound of one hand clapping is you trying to knock some sense into your skull.

Walking down the street as if it were thin ice stretched across a deep lake swarming with flesh-eating bacteria.

Because it is.

Because that’s what life & death are.

Walking across your kitchen floor the same way.

Clinging to your bed like a life raft on rough seas with sharks all around you & no island in sight.

Praying for helicopters.

And getting an albatross.

That shits on your head.

Laughter as a socially acceptable alternative to trembling uncontrollably in the corner & periodically screaming.

Every once in a while feeling relatively normal just so you can pull the rug out from under yourself again.

People as obstacles in a race with no finish line.

Every man an island but not appearing on any chart.

Objects in the mirror have overtaken you.

No matter how fast you go you can't catch up to them.

Practicing your inevitable collapse in slow motion.

Spending a lot of time on the floor so you won't have far to fall.

Trying to think of your inevitable collapse as a welcome relief from the unnatural strain of maintaining the upright position.

Never forgetting that it was human beings that operated the concentration camps not vampires & werewolves.

Considering poking yourself in the back of the hand with a pin to remind you that you’re alive & to be fully aware of each moment.

Then thinking why would you want to keep reminding yourself of the worst thing that ever happened to you.

Then just forgetting the whole thing.

Thinking it's all so terrible that your mouth should fall open & you should see a toy parade of pink plush elephants march out to compensate for how terrible it is, but you don't.

Fearing that one day you'll look into the mirror & recognize yourself & what you'll see is a shiny six-slice toaster.

Fearing that one day you'll look in the mirror & recognize yourself as the hand with the fork that you once begged to beat you to death before beating you to death & refused.

Hoping one day to look in the mirror & see nothing at all.

Thinking how you'd like to brick up your mouth leaving the voice inside walled up to die like in that story by Poe, the sound of tiny fists growing weaker & weaker.

But the air should have been used up a long time ago by now yet you still hear those tiny fists knocking inside your skull.

And the voice, that annoying voice, still chattering away.

Or are you just imagining that you still hear it?

Or does it even matter?

The intense shame you feel at the fantasies that trigger your orgasm & thinking how you can never tell anyone for fear of the implications they might draw which are totally unfounded but how can you ever convince them  of that when it shocks & sickens & even scares you a little?

Making a list of everyone you'd like to apologize to & realizing you've already apologized to all of them & they still haven't forgiven you.

Wanting to be the most talked about, sought after, popular person at the party without the pressure of actually having to be at the party.

Feeling the same way about life.

Proving everyone who ever said they loved you that you were right all along & they didn't really.

Your hands are an enigma to you.

Your hands always look guilty of something.

When you look at your hands they look like a stranger's hands.

You ask your hands what they're doing & they lie there in your lap trying to look innocent & that scares you even more because you know they’re hiding something.

When you see your hands doing anything it scares you, like maybe they're plotting against you, like maybe they doing something to kill you.

Your hands have tiny little smiles hidden away in their wrinkly little palms.

Smiles like shards of jagged glass.

Where have your feet gotten off to now, do you think?

You're certain that you'd take perfect care of a houseplant, making sure it was fed & fertilized & properly watered if when it bloomed it bloomed ice cream sundaes & you wouldn’t let it go dry & turn gray & die forgotten in a corner but deep down you suspect that's not true, that you'd grow tired of it just like you've grown tired of everything else no matter how spectacular it seemed at first.

I almost hate to ask, but what are your hands doing now, do you suppose?

I think therefore I am always struck you as one of the stupidest things ever said because most of the time you aren't thinking anything at all.

And where are you then?

When a thought does come to you it’s not like you planned it or even wanted it or even understand it & a lot of the time it’s something weird & fucked up & nothing you’d even want to think about in a thousand years & you’re sick & upset by it & besides even when you’re not thinking anything at all, which is most times, if someone were to sneak up behind you & stick an ice-pick in the back of your neck who do you think would do the screaming?

Maybe it would be better to say I hurt therefore I am.

If you were Dictator of the World your first and only decree would be that everyone should leave everyone else the fuck alone & you most of all.

If a team of reporters with open notebook were dispatched to follow you around & record every word that came out of your mouth, would you be more circumspect about what you said, choosing your words wisely when you did speak, or would you just blab out any old thing with barely a forethought just like you do now?

Getting up to pee in the middle of the night & always half-expecting to see you mother at the end of the hall in a tattered nightgown holding a bloody claw-hammer.

Whatever became of the blue giraffe you slept with as a baby?

Feeling like you can never get enough of something but you can’t figure out what it is.

Laughter as a substitute for collapse.

Laughter as a way of raising the white flag.

Laughter as a way of saying “no mas.”

You cum therefore I am as a way of saying you need people, too.

Remembering it was human beings who exterminated the Native Americans, not the walking dead.

Finding no comfort at all in the phrase, H/She’s only human.

Coming to the conclusion that “human being” is a concept similar to “Leavenworth,’ “San Quentin,” “Alcatraz,” and “Supermax.”

Wondering if you can report cutting yourself as an act of homegrown terrorism.

Remembering it was human beings that destroyed the planet not a hostile race of extraterrestrials.

Repeatedly making yourself a laughingstock but not once in a way that enabled you to laugh all the way to the bank.

Always waiting at the door long enough to double your humiliation when no one calls out “Wait!”

And still afraid you left a moment too soon.

And emailing the next day to make sure you didn’t.

And tripling your humiliation.

Wonder what people could possibly mean by the phrase “the precious gift of life.”

Crippled by stage fright in any situation that could be said to require a “genuine human response.”

Finding that whenever anyone asks “why can’t you act like a  normal human being?” the first thing that flashes to mind are Hiroshima & Nagasaki & wanting to answer back "isn't that fucking reason enough?"

No longer disagreeing when people say there’s something wrong with you but feeling a kind of quiet, satisfied pride.

Considering the theory that that cockroaches will inherit the earth as close to scientific proof as we can expect that there’s justice in the world after all.

Especially after wiping the remains of one off the bottom of your slipper at 3 a.m.

Always puzzled by the note of melancholy in the observation that you can’t go home again.

Coming to the generous conclusion that everyone has just as much a right to hate you as you do.

Wondering if breathing weren’t involuntary & took active effort if a lot of people would just lose interest between breaths.

Starting to wonder if suicide is just one of the many things you’ll never get around to doing, like cleaning out the walk-in closet.