Through the Shaking

03/27/2007 8:39 PM – 9:03 PM

And there. Why? It was a good day. One worked. One did as one’s supposed to and yet there it is, sitting in one’s mind, shivering to break the house apart. So what does one do? One does what one does. Write it down. Write it away. Write it through.

We are not our thoughts. We are not our fears. We are not our bodies. What are we? One doesn’t know. One lives and, if one’s evidence is correct, one dies. There’s nothing you can do about it. You exist. And by faith, we say, “heaven.” By faith, we say, “not hell.” Then you open your hand and let it go again. I am not my thoughts. I am not my fears. Hello, my name is Spike D, and I am slightly daft. Hello, Spike. It’s been two months since my last panic attack. Twenty minutes since my last general anxiety episode. My name is Elmer P. Fudd, millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht. All of this and you know that it goes away. All of this and you know that it will be gone in a little while. Who are you then? Anyone that isn’t afraid. No. Anyone that exists to eat the whole world in a single bite.

Happy thoughts: cross-country girls, comic books, magical realism, pictures that prove that bat-boy exists, falling asleep quickly, the ringing of the chime when the bread becomes flesh and the wine becomes blood, private detective stories, olive trees, secluded beaches that honest people can lie on, lips, maps of worlds that don’t exist, albums that you can listen to all the way through, forks, rain clouds rolling across the desert, cigarettes at two in the morning on summer nights when it’s too hot to move, cold beer, boobs, coffee, finding random golf balls, houses in the country, 8 ½, long johns, lithographs, winning, gummy erasers, cold water, comfortable couches, seeing movies at the theatre, a baby smiling, Stephen King, too many books to read, Aslan. And everything is fine, see. Everything will do. Cross-country girls are hot. Forgetting the former false state, one becomes at rest.