506. Scarring Childhood Memory Department... A Sketch.... Maybe a Poem Someday: The Greatest Love is the Greatest Sting (Live Twice!)

Today is the first day of mental recuperation from about a week... no... about a month of self-exploration of internal landscapes... in order to truly figure out where I was at before my intellectual-life-or-death-committee-meeting (which ended up being not that bad after all... more later!).

I found myself waking up to a horrible nightmare I had around 7am this morning... pertaining to my mother who messed up my room... as she did when I was around 11-12 year old, when me and my sister were bad girls... for whatever reasons.... I also found my mother upset because I was taking out student loans... that's where the argument laid... nevertheless, modern problems were overlaid with traumatic childhood experiences.

I called my mother around 9am at work and said, "I had a bad dream and it was about you messing my room when I was a child. And I wanted to say I love you because hey, I can laugh this off, and many other children were physically beaten, but you were very good at indirect psychological drama. So, thanks." My mother told me that when she was a teenager, she was slapped by her mother for no apparent reason--she was trying to help her mother, but her mother misinterpreted as back-stabbing of sorts--and my mother was permanently scarred, so when she was angry and frustrated with me and my sister, she really tried very hard to minimize her impact on us. Hence the Psychological Trauma Department of Mother-Hurricane's-Children's-Room! So, when I sing, "It takes one rock to make me, one rock to make me, one rock to take me, far far away. The very rock that holds me, can be the rock that harms me, the very rock that leads me, back on my way," this song is devoted to my mother primarily, and a couple of other individuals in my life who have been the same. The greatest, most visceral, instinctive love of mother and child... can also and ultimately be the greatest sting.

I had a conversation with a fisherman about subliminal childhood memories... and we had discussed childhood abuse.... Why? Well, because apparently he was at this shopping mall and there was this little girl who was shrieking and screaming and yelping so loud that you could hear her across a parking lot the size of 5-6 football fields (it's funny how the "football field" is the standard metaphorical SI unit of scale for Joe American). Her bawling wailed across the entirety of IKEA. That child was a mess-up, a failed biological art project. The mother had no control over the kid. The fisherman suggested a good smack for reinforcement. It was so loud, I would probably suggest the same. Duct tape as well? One way or another, that child was a nuisance to about 10,000 people at a shopping mall all at once. That kid was no good news to society... and the sad thing is that she was only 4 year old.

Many children have to deal with physical beatings, and that leaves detrimental, permanent scars for life. I told him about what my mother did to me and my sister. I only remember my mom spanking my sister once in our entire childhood (I think I was around 4 or 5 year old)... not much to speak of.... I remember my father whippin' my face once at a tennis tournament when I was ten years old... I wouldn't stop crying... but I don't blame him... my mother was this fanatic tennis mother who created this entire familial tension such that all of our weekends for about 4 years were filled with tennis tournaments, subliminal arguments, and overt family fights.

One of the most horrifying memories was the early morning (winter-time, it was dark outside) argument behind closed doors between my mother and father. I was outside the door in the dark hallway, crying, listening as to what was happening inside. My father had the most threatening tone-of-voice I had ever heard in my life, and my mother was shrieking. I heard bangs and shoves... I felt so helpless.

The worst part is that they were arguing over me. That's the very worst part. I was preparing for some STUPID exam on World History for my second grade class with 6'4" Ms. Christoffers and history was something I wasn't very good at remembering the facts, and so I had written in tiny words on my hand the answers to the questions (which actually helped me remember what I was supposed to learn!), and so my mother was testing me during breakfast, and she found out that I had written the answers on my hand... and she started excessively scolding me for cheating... it was so excessive that it became abusive and that's when my father intervened... and then the whole shebang of the dark hallway-behind-closed-doors-drama. I went to school that day partly in tears, and so my surprise my mother came to visit me around 1pm in the afternoon and she gave me a very big hug and said sorry, sorry, sorry. I was worried about my mother and father staying together... and of course they stayed together... but man... the beauty of emotions are that sometimes they just blow up out of no-where... accumulated suppression... but after a while... the emotions ware off.... about three days for me.... They say "wounds" heal with time... I do agree.... but there are permanent scars in memory.... This was one of my most vivid childhood memories... and it was negative.... The positive ones, I'm sure I'm full of those... but thankfully my "Collecting Bin of Negative Childhood Memories" is very small, finite, and quite containable....

I don't know how I got into this whole Obama-America-Helpless-Mother-Screaming-Child-metaphor, but here it goes....

I'm writing this and come to understand how stressful it is to raise a child... and I honestly don't know what people are thinking when they choose to have a kid in such a society as today. Raising a kid or running the United States of America? The problems of governance are equally as bad. I feel so horrible for Obama. I think the system right now is so massive and so inert that Obama is more so a puppet to the system, than a player. Just like that mother and that screaming child. America is the screaming child, and Obama is the helpless mother who can't rear or control the child, no matter how hard he tries. Obama didn't create the problems.... He inherited them. That screaming child embodies the rapid inheritance of a suite of American problems. The cart is running the horse... the horse has no control of the cart. I am not an anarchist, but I am a disastrologist. I am a perpetrator of the Phoenix; it's stage right now is that it needs to collapse into ashes. I feel that renewal in this global system will come bottom up, through disaster. Disaster speaks louder than dollar bills (thankfully the Supreme Court doesn't have to write that in the laws). It's just a matter of when, where, and how. Earthquakes and volcanoes are my friends... even though they may have the risk of taking my life... they will be good for society. Enough of my Jesxs Chrxst-kill-myself-save-society mentality.... It's not very evolutionarily... common.

Back on topic here... so my mother was the Master of Indirect Psychological Trauma. She didn't destroy and bruise our physical bodies, but she did destroy our "bowers," hence that being our "array of toys and clothes and tools" in our rooms. If my sister and I were bad for some reason... like for example, I was 12-years-old, I delt with my "friends" Marie and Jyoti who were making fun of me because I was probably the only person in class being nice (respectful) to this geeky dude with excessively huge glasses named "Andrew Wannemaker" in my middle school Algebra 2 math class. I came home crying to my mother, who told me to get a life and focus on "real" problems, which was superb advice, but at the same time, I was being abused by my miscro-cosmal suite of "friends," and so through the mechanism of psychological displacement, I would have these subliminal agendas around the household, like "dump unwanted toys in my sister's room without her knowing" and "putting water in the salt shaker to make all the salt sticky-stuck." And I would call my sister bad names for no reason (poor Jen Jen, she was such a cute wittle girl I wished I could have recognized what a cute little kid she was, I wouldn't have been so mean to her, I might devote a cartoon to Jen Jen to make up for all of my misbehaviors). So, if my mother was fed up with me or my sister, she would go into our rooms and be "Madame Hurricane:" she would tear a part our rooms, throw around everything until nearly ever element of the room was misplaced, and then she would command us, as we watched her devastation in horror, to clean up our rooms that day... which was a multi-hour ordeal. For one stretch of time, my mother threatened us that she would rip up some of our dolls or stuffed animals in to pieces. And then one time she did. She ripped my sister's Rosa Doll in two, and all this cottonish polyester fell our of the middle, and both of us were shrieking horrified, because our stuffed animals were our lives.... We would spend hours upon hours animating these stuff-teed animals and create fantasy worlds in our minds about how they interacted with each other... and for one of them to be ripped in two and see her insides? What was polyester to everyone else was our soulful, emotional blood and guts spewing on the floor.... I think after that super-angry moment, my mother was even appalled with herself, just as we were in shell-shock... talk about childhood shock doctrine. That afternoon my mother took the Rosa Doll and sewed her up very good, and said sorry to me and Jenny, and Rosa was back in business in our self-constructed stuffed-animal-ecosystem. I kind of wished real-life surgery were that simple, one day you get split in two by an act of violence, and then you get sewed up back together again... maybe grafting for plants... but not us megacorporate multicellular organisms of bloody, intricate interdependence of our bodily ecosystems.

The worst case situation of my mother tearing up our rooms is when I evolved such a lowly sense of self-worth that I ended up ripping all of my 6-year accumulation of awards and accomplishements in school (not to mention stamps and smelly-stickers of approval), from kindergarten to 5th grade, all in a few minutes... and now it's recycled, dispersed as whatever materials somewhere and everywhere in the world.... Three days later my mother had been very nice to me and my fickle confidence restored. I was sad that my trash can was emptied... I regretted that I ripped up my awards, and I wished I had kept them to this day... not because they were awards... but because they were memories of school, accumulated 6 years destroyed in 3 minutes....

More evidence of my mother being a master of psychological trauma.... She was very, very good at making me (and my sister, but more so me) feel guilty into continuing to play tennis even though I was philosophically resisting the game from the very start (the first time I ever played a tournament at age 9, I was crying non-stop for 1.5 hours; I felt bad for winning, I felt bad for losing, I am a win-win person and not a win-lose person, I had no incentive to beat people). My mother would threaten us not to going fun places... and she thought that getting sponsorships and tickets to Disneyland was going to convince us to perform... I think not. She threatened us to quitting but never gave us any other options... like volleyball or soccer or track or swimming or whatever sport.... Tunneling us into tennis without providing options. It was a classic situation in which my mother was trying to live her dreams through her puppet children. I sometimes call my mother the Stern Dictator of the Household (the need for regimentality) and my father the Gentle Advisor... he exposed me and my sister to stuff and made everything fun. He gave us options but no pressure to go one direction or another. He expected us to skin our knees and learn from our mistakes, but he would always be there for a hug and a wiping of tears. Obviously this characterization of my parents is different: my mother no longer holds this "Dictatorship" role, more so now a Gentle Advisor as well... but nevertheless the psychological turmoil was intense, and placed my mind in a Box of Good Child Obedience.

The external trauma of the household toned down toward the end of high school when around 16 I started to subconsciously impose trauma on myself during my studies... throwing away food... not eating... excessive OCD-type behaviors with exercising in my room... banging my head against the wall... on the floor.... Inside it was that horrible cannibalistic collectively-induced manslaughter when people passed through the Event Horizon (remember that film?). That was my interior for a while... suppressed interior for a while... only revealed ONCE through my teenage years... in art class... as "The Mask." (refer to Blogs "The Mask" and key words "Live Twice").

Well, what can I say? This is great material for an eventual poem. Woohoo! I had started a poem a while ago entitled "Scars to the Mind" referring to these past childhood memories... but somehow this bad dream I had this morning made this narrative thread of childhood traumas come to full life in emotional landscapes. I might as well capture it as it's fresh. I'm lucky to say that my childhood was benign, and nearly all negativity quarantined. Like I mentioned before, I'm called my mother to say "I love you, and thank you for only messing up my room, because I'm only laughing now."

366. Cleaning My Mind's Room: Version 2, Continued, Christmas Eve Present Foraging Rush, Industrial Ecology of Vic's Life, Two Brothers-Sisters

There is nothing better than Christmas shopping the day before. The only stores that were still open for my foraging were CVS drugs, Stater Brothers, and the 99 cent store. I purchased most everything from the 99 cent store--most predictably.

The two "most stupidest things" that you could ever do--according to grandpa Ray--are (1) run out of gas and (2) rob a bank. I had the pleasure of experiencing the notion of "running out of gas," and to my great fortunate, I coasted / and was towed into a gas station... right across the street from the incident of puttering out. The second notion of robbing a bank is absurd. It would be more suitable to mention "robbing a 99-cent store."

The experience of Christmas shopping is mind-numbing and silly, so it's best to perform operations in a mind-numbing, sleep deprived state. I deprive myself of sleep. Other people take drugs. Whatever works.

I didn't have enough time to notice that the last remaining Christmas shoppers were predominantly male. I was too pre-occupied with the health and overall state of my sister, who is dealing with a "non-optimal" addictive, relationship. So, it was hard to focus.
My cousin Mike says that I dress like a crack addict who just had her first day on the streets. Sloppy clothing, but you can't really tell that there's something wrong with them yet. They can still be passed off as "normal," or... "blending in."

All memories dissassociated with most coffee cups. They are so generic in properties, they could come from close to anywhere. Came home to show my parents some ridiculous generic coffee cup collection. 7-11 Coffee Chemistry Lab. The illusion of choice. None of it is real coffee. Just powder plus water from a machine. And more liquified powders to pump int your coffee. Ironically they have a "thank heaven" on their 7-11 coffee cups with a halo on top--the coffee is so unhealthy, your consumption of it will send you to heaven sooner than you'd like! Enough coffee bean "sleeves"! I only go there because there is a Coffee Bean right next to the Kinkos in Goleta. Been using Q-tips for cleaning of the ears. Ran out and was borrowing my housemate's materials. Supposedly bad to clean your ears with Q-tips, my aunt says. Need more! Coffeebean recently acquired the state of "free internet" for customers. So it's okay for me to pay an extra time or twenty cents for my coffee. No problem!

Karl, before going to AGU (Tim Lyons went there too!) gave me a bunch of chain links. For back packs and potentially durable for climbing. So sweet! Rite Aid plastic bag. I guess most of my memories dissassociated from such "generic' objects. 7-11 plastic bag. Right by my house in Goleta. Gas is about 10-cents up that area. Ralphs plastic bag. They are the only place open 24-7. Rite Aid bag. Motel 6. This is my 4th day this month. I am desperate! Third time here. Another time in Carpinteria. Okay-priced. Could get more money's worth. Purple ribbon from my Aunt Jean. Associated with birthday present I picked up in September or October. Cat Kat passed away. Sophie is the new cat. She's a timid little thing. No longer "tiny" anymore. Topcare "woman's." Giant Costco trash bag spattered with coffee stains. Way too sticky to re-use. Thanks Kyle! Used it for keeping my xss dry in soggy car. Melted Werthers attracts ants, re-solidifies into the "sap" material. Lagerstatten in one day! What a break-through! Dog-days of the summer, I tell ya!

Two black sharpies. I received four on sale at a Longs Drugs early in the morning after a "lengthy" conversation with Dr. Sam Sweet. I ended up sitting in the car on a chilly morning talking to my dad and writing with a black sharpie--just bought, though I didn't need one, but was the only writing utensil on sale--on a piece of cardboard on the properties of natural selection. The feedbacks between organism and environment and the existence of Lamarckian evolution. That was a good morning. My dad helped me a lot!

I finally opened the box containing the Rubik's cube! Another metaphor. It's at home now.

Had to buy Motrin IB post Jean and Chuck at Chevron gas station. Had bad headache. Not sure how or why. CVS c-lax. So mild. Plastic bag dreamworks Madagascar from Dwight. Contained the fixed AC-DC car converter! Plastic bags from Trader Joes. Albertsons. Supersavers!

Needed to find a way to stay awake. Went to Ralphs near by Winnetka in Los Angeles and purchased Bolthouse Farms Perfectly Protein Vanilla chai Tea with Soy Protein. Supposedly organic and all natural. Blah blah blah. Anyhow it tasted VERY GOOD and was very thick. Finished the whole bottle, which equaled about 800 calories! The most important thing is that I returned to Santa Barbara late at night, but nevertheless safe!

More plastic bags inside plastic bags inside plastic bags! Memories?! I have none! They are too generic! Another Vons plastic bag! Mudd logo on a paper yanked from a belt that does NOT fit my waste. From a friend who wasted 200-dollars of my own money. Because he was a liar and said he was "minimalist" but wanted to get all this fancy bullshxt clothes for my essence to conform to American Corporate Environmentalism. Sorry, you do that! And your pair of Merrill shoes. And he was like "Fine! Dress like a geologist for the rest of your life!" As if I were a sinner. I am still angry and cannot return the clothes. It's too late. I have no desire to wear them either. Maybe read blog and got pissed off. Whatever. It's TRUE.

Typical "trashbag" full of vices consists of: one two-liter bottle of Diet Something Soda. Several bags of werthers original. Scattered aluminum-shine from lx grids. Maybe "beef jerky" plastic wrap link. Beat up CD casing. Correctxl. Splenda and pink sugar-free sugar packets. Diet mountain dew can of soda. Starbucks coffee lids and sleeves. Coffee Bean lids and sleeves. Maybe a soggy cup. Vons ripped plastic bag. Cutip. Another cutip. Trident gum wrap. Broken-handled brown Trader Joes bag. Have to decipher the receipts from the rest of the trash. Powdered coffee from Chevron--the best of all powdered coffees, but the last time was WAY too sweet! Scattered pink pills laying around! Melted werthers! Starbucks coffee napkin, still in one piece, not soggy at all. Plastic bag from Albertsons. Entire plastic bag packed with werthers, cutips, lx strips, and tictac xylitol foil.

It's as if I am a Taphonomist of My Own Trash! Welcome to Self-imposed Industrial Ecology!

There is always a trade-off in physical and mental consumption. If you consume more physical materials, it is at the sacrifice of mental consumption. So, I try to feed myself like an IV drip. As I had mentioned before at the end of high school, that I wished to be fed through a tube in my stomach. I no longer wanted to eat anymore. I don't feel that way anymore, nor do I imagine such things, especially since they have attempted to do such things to my grandfather Ray before his passing. But I am still imaginative, and when I study, I need to be a hungry lion. And I need to simulate a scenario of an IV drip to acquire sustained energy.

Now I have "too many tampons" couple of boxes from separate occassions of being without vital necessities while the female body does what it does....

Last time talked on the phone that jerk had to make commentary: "Gee, your advisor is very scatter-brained and disorganized." And who are YOU to say?

The hotel room is slowly shrinking in size in terms of "crxp laying around" so I suppose I am making progress. Yesterday I spent about 5.50 in drinks. Two Starbucks Doubleshots, one mocha and one vanilla, and a 50 cent refill. One refill was free. I am a sinner and waster of money. Well. It was Christmas Eve....

If I empty the dresser drawer of my mind, I will be able to see and collect new things, eh? Yes. Never fear to see something new. Once I eliminate all physical, tangible trash, then I will be able to focus on the contents of my computer. Tat is always a good thing.

I need to start using an electric toothbrush again. I bought a second green one. Bub was with me. We went to the horrid Walmart off in Oxnard. Bub brought me my Subaru Legacy, to which I am going to have to sell soon, even though the gas prices are low. The red brush has low batteries, and I could never open the bottom part to place new batteries. I am expiring this Crest brush of its services. My cousin Mike I think has 100-dollar toothbrushes in his bathroom. I saw them at Walmart for $100. You know? As long as I can brush my teeth. My friend explained to me that the vibration konks out the bacteria, not necessarily the brushing action itself. Bye bye red electric tooth brush! Live long--or not--in whatever waste bin you end up. May you be recycled, like the nutrients and gases of the plants animals and sky. My gxdzeeks, I sound NEW AGE! AAAAAHHH! I am scared of my own self.

I used a $50 Nike softball glove twice this quarter. It is tragic. I need to return it to Sportsmart--aka Sports Authority. *Sigh* Find at home the tags.

Bk childhood friend, meds. Antidepressants. Trying to get out. Re-evaluate life. Grad school or med school. I told my mother. Everyone has their own internal biological clock. It triggers certain times in their lives due to certain environmental exposures. Such is such. ALL EDUCATION IS INDIRECT. There are certain occassions in life--windows of opportunity--where kids are able to absorb things faster and more permanently--like at very young ages, but everyone has to come to their own terms in their own minds. And it happens at strange places and strange times. You never know. You never know.

Childhood Illusions...

But to think that my two childhood friends. Our parents raised us with very big dreams. With very high standards. If we worked hard, we would get far in life. If we memorized big words to spell and regurgitate their definitions. If we learned foreign languages. If we played the piano. If we were super tennis players. If we were the best writers of the school. All these dreams and competitions were just illusions to the reality of life. That society hardly operates based on merit. They were all lies. All these lovely values that were implanted in our heads--like getting perfect 1600 SAT scores--I only got a 1410 after the third try... I suck. This entire education system was one big lie. And then all these dreams implanted in your head fade into reality. And of course, your metabolism is so high from your childhood days, but where to channel it? Where to channel your energy in a world that is unjust? Where to find hope and value and meaning again? You never know where you will find it. It is hard to love the world. But perhaps you may love the world of another person.

The two brothers and sisters played Starwars on suburbian streets with tennis balls and watched fireworks on Sugarloaf Mountain. Danced along the mainways of Disneyland and cried after brutal sets of tennis on a Saturday morning, overlooked by not one, but TWO overbearing tennis parents. If there was a time in my life where I was "happy" and my baseline had been set for standards in my life, I was in between ages 10-12. I had fixated on something so beautiful and so utopia-esque that I still have barely encountered any measures or standards since. But I have gotten close. My mind has fixated on something that perhaps does not exist... or have not discovered yet.

What if you mind was implanted great dreams? Brainwashed to achieve success? And then you grew up and found out it was all a lie?

Fall in love with dogs? Or a boyfriend. Time. Give me ten years. Give a gay guy ten years.

I will say adios to an old pack of Colgate toothpaste. About three years old. Old and crusty. Most likely expired. I cannot consume the gum that T gave me. That xylitol gum. Would rather be chewing trident. Will have to return to him. Cannot. I cried in front of Jenny yesterday. I wasn't even the one who was name-called. I wasn't even the one who was dragged across the floor. But I was the one who was ignored and neglected. And that perhaps is extremely painful. That guy provides the illusion of normalcy, but is whacko. He chose to be isolated. And I fell for deep sympathy otherwise, until I found out it was his CHOICE.

Where are all the geologists? I love the geologists. Where are they?

Need to return scissors to Mama. Karl gave me a chain-link with a light on it. Will give it to Jenny. It's cool, but it bugs the shxt out of me. Can be useful though! Just keep it. Fine, I'll put it on my backpack right now.

I washed my stuffed animals. Finally! Sparky was turning into dark brown. That's not good. Tooty looked immaculate. She's (the new ty-baby elephant of the family) the new baseline of cleanliness.

Giving Jenny a lamp. Can use sparingly myself. Bought mirror and tw too for myself. Give to her. Was going to return, but never mind. I will keep a second pair of lacross tw, but unforunately is made of "pink" leather on the outside casing. Wish it were black but had no other choice of color!

Vic should have a photograph series: An Industrial Ecology of Graduate School (Vices)!

I am tired of playing "victim" in my writing! JUST DO IT!

Okay, now I am going to give eyes to Bugsy. I will need a pen more permanent than a Sharpie. I have given Bugsy eyes quite a few times. Not to mention I have done surgeries on my cartoon characters. It's tragic. At least there are no bloody guts involved. Sigh.

My father said that as soon as Ray passed, Ray was no longer there. It was just a corpse. That is a very interesting use of definition and terminology. Now Ray is in the mountains and the clouds of southern California. He's everywhere now. Not a bad deal. I have this tooth from the dentist. Kind of looks like a DPP. I looked at it and it doesn't belong in the cast of characters. I will take a pix and let the creature go. Made in China anyway. Like the rest of everything I own.

I used to love Extra cinnamon gum, but I am done. I am now converted to Trident. Trident had drastically changed the composition and texture of its gum. I used to hate it. Now I love it to bits and pieces! I chew it all the time! Maybe Trident has cinnamon! But I am for sure done with Wrigley's Extra and the like.

I am staring at two Gillette Cool Wave antiperspirants. I ran out. I tried to buy another anti-perpsirant, but what happened is that in a couple of days I developed a rash that covered my entire armpits, combined with my lower back, usually along the lines to my sportsbra. It was a horrible, red rash. I missed a heated discussion with the doctor by one week. If I had gone one week earlier I would have raised holy hxll. I went in to get a pap. That doc was pretty cool. I asked so many questions. I guess my goal this Christmas is to make sure my dad has a camera. Which means I need to finish EOT and move on. If T had his priorities straight, he would save money for digital cameras, not 120-dollar shoes. But who am I to judge with other people's values? They are just not compatible to mine. It was insulting about how he wanted to throw out all my goodwill jogging clothes. What arrogance! So much for environmentalism. Another case of Elitist Environmentalism.

Back to the Gillette, so my sister is going to give me one of her anti-perspirants.

I did some sorting of clothes in the car and I came to peace with the notion I am okay with everyone except for you know who. I am okay with Charlie, Brian, Erica, everyone. I am thankful that Erica let me have some of her very nice clothes. I have officially mentally annexed them. Are you sure you are not bisexual, he asked? Said he had a hard time, had to get over being the fact he is male and not female. Uh-huh. Okay. Strange conversations. I didn't want to do that, did I? No. You can get diseases through the mouth? Nope. For sure. I am heterosexual. I mentally checked SOOO many times. It's not even funny. That show. With the Persian clothes. It was quite classy. Lots of alcohol behind it. To get to know the details of one's lifestyle it's daunting. Found my long-lost sleeveless shirt from Old Navy. Buried in a pile for quite a while. Erika gave me Jeans that fit me snuggly. We are of optimal size. Almost the same. She does the hard work and finds the jeans. She just gets me the hand-me-downs. What was that. The blow up of leaving the house. That was all so weird. "I'm over it." The project. Taking a chill pill. Voluntarily sedentary. Angry come over. Used for emotional crutching through the surgery. Positive and negative. Uphill and downhill. What?!! Too married. No plan B. My sister and I both suffer from that. No phone calls. Didn't even attend the Christmas party at Bren. Didn't even feel like it.

These two jeans suffer from severe, traumatic memories, but they are wearable, and memorable. Erika is quite a character. I have nothing against anything of her. Quite amusing! At least I can WEAR these clothes, unlike those clothes in a bag that ended up being a waste of money. That Painted Caves. That was a beautiful birthday lecture. But then... tapped out. Record what said? Patchwork. Don't know. Fear of writing. Belched out all at once. Hide. Whatever. Sulk in your own shxt. It's just a battle, illusion in my head. Rewinding the clock to the oak trees of Mission Canyon. They are still magical, you know.

The quarter system seems to dull and erase and wipe out any form of pain, you know. Not wipe it out. But the magnification of personal pain if crushed by the bombardment of information. And once you revisit pain, the layers of time have diminished this pain and diverted and scattered the pain to a million--if not a thousand or a hundred--directions elsewhere. Pain is now diffuse--like the oxygen we breathe--not centralize--like the giant Freebirds burrito we dare to consume in one sitting.