seeing too much.

I am walking along, and I am
thinking, "How to envisage myself smaller? How to see the little, tapestry-fine
needlework, when my eyes are already too ....big and blurry. Something is surely
going on: Shadowy shapes form themselves at the periphery of my vision. They
draw to them: downwards! Top the side! And upwards, too! –––––––– but by the
moment I am looking at them, I realise that a full on stare cannot hold them in
focus––––––––only the peripheral vision will. I am walking along and I am almost
thinking: there is something I am missing. I dare not think this thought, as I
am feeling numb. Numbness is a relief. I need to feel myself small and
nimble––––––––so I visualise something small and nimble, but my imagination is
sluggish, due to being holstered into something that it never wanted any part
in. Because of its resistance to the situation, my imagination has shut down. I
walk along––––––––and I am a robot. I am a cold robot––––––––for the wind is
gusty, but I’m dressed quite warm. I am a solemn robot –––––––– for I have a
mission to perform. I walk along–––––––– my body is a walking pole. I walk
along, after I am dead. By rights, I should not be walking here –––––––– it is
too stark. Birds are the only sign of life and nobody notices them. It is the
schoolyard, grey before dawn. I smile at people –––––––– the cleaners. But, they
seem like machines, to me, and I cannot imagine what motivates them. I smile
because they are the rules. Because nothing makes sense, I show ‘professional
courtesy’, because I am professional. Consciously I eliminate a frown; smoothed
out brow, and courtesy, intact. The crows know that I am. They are the only
truly living people, in cackling fits, in the sky -- here -- who know that I am
visiting a cemetery here, filled only with dead hopes and things that cannot be
expressed. Smiling, smiling, smiling, through the professional courtesies. If I
express non-machine like tendencies they are translated into a sequence of
whispering fits, which have consequences which never end. Like a zit under a
magnifying glass, the private moment of distress becomes a public catastrophe,
in no time. The public good has to be taken care of, always, so that nothing
must go unreported. Every bit of information caught is ‘shared’. And so: I feel
myself being sucked up into half formed feelings and ideas of cannibalism. I am
chewing on my own flesh and the poisons are coming out of my fat. I am chewing
my own muscle fibre and I feel bad. There is a warm, sick feeling of my own
being as a child, whirring -- plaintively -- around my head like a spotted,
psychedelic, sick, phantasm. It fills the sky, and blocks out everything, except
the crows. I feel like I am now devouring it. I am eating my life bit by bit,
minced, raw, and without form. A sickening ooze of warm blood develops around my
mouth –––––––– and encrusts there. I feel I am bobbing around on an ocean, and
I’m short of nourishment, but I have a life raft. For the first time I am
grateful to ‘professional courtesy’ for not noticing, or registering my
distress. Consequently, I am overly grateful and loquacious in extolling the
many and wondrous virtues of ‘professionalism’. "It is a great thing!" I say.
"And, a truly magnificent thing!" I extol the virtues of my "would-be rescuers"
who condescend to me because I cannot kill them, just because I do not have the
nerve, nor energy, to obliterate them.

and ever, amen!

"Dialogue" with my father who drops in, impromptu:

[after a very long interaction with Mike about sports..}

"So, Jen, what are you up to these days? Did you ever get going with that course you were going to do?"

Me: Yes. I've made a lot of progress with it, actually.

"Oh. The last time I heard you were waiting for something to start."

Me: Yes, it's like that in academia. Always waiting for something...

"I know all about that! My work blah blah blah blah blah."

Me: gets up and walks off to the kitchen. Looks for something to eat. Comes back, at a leisurely pace and sits down again after 5 minutes.

"So, what was the course you were doing anyway?"

Me: Have a guess!

"It was, er...Masters or something wasn't it?"

Me: No. Try again.

"...er..."

Me: You get two more guesses. If you fail both, you're out!"

Mike: I'll give you a clue: It's a doctorate.

"Oh, a doctorate! What is it in?"

Me: English and communication studies.

"Ah I see."

Me: Yes, I didn't expect you to already have this information, due to my small female brain!"

"[softening tone as if to acknowledge the implicit truth of a self-deprecating statement]... Yes, well. [As if to imply, "but what can anybody really do?"] So!..... MIKE.....!."