Journal -minimalism vs hoarders

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I’ve been taking time off work and clearing out my back room, previously the place for crap, soon to be reborn as a cute office. Looks like I’m not so good at the updating when my schedule breaks down. But I’ll learn how to keep up… eventually…

 

 

Cleaning up my room

Eliminating excess

Why does it feel so good

To get rid of stuff

And why do so many people not feel the same way?

Here is an item

Every time I saw it

I thought how ugly it was

A relief to not have it polluting my sight.

This thing

Itchy, uncomfortable

Thank God it’s being given away.

And here

A depressing reminder of abandoned ambitions

There

Grief-inducing mementos of lost loved ones

Old magazines? Guess what? I’m off the hook

I don’t have to read them.

They’re full of garbage and I can live without that data in my head.

I’m never using this warranty

I don’t like that photo

This drawing always bothered me

Who am I keeping it for? Posterity?

Nobody gives a shit about this shit painting.

I shouldn’t curse the future with such light-lacking things.

Nobody wants my garbage

Even I don’t want it.

 

How can anyone delight in having so much stuff?

They fill their houses with it

They get bigger houses so they can make room for more stuff

They are afraid to part with a single item

And if they do

They don’t forget about it

They really regret it forever.

Perhaps they are so beholden to their own identities

So shackled by the past

They cannot release a single newspaper.

The thing that makes me feel so free

Makes them feel unstable, lost

Freedom is instability

I suppose they can’t handle freedom

Because they have no faith in their own ability to handle it.

I don’t know much about hoarding

I’m a reverse hoarder

I’m a minimalist.

But I have a strong support network

And I have confidence

And I am lucky to not have

Such consuming fears.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dos and Don’ts with Turkey

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This was written by my friend Liz and me when we were in 7th grade, so about 12 years old? We spent all day at school just passing stories back and forth and giggling insanely. I’m surprised we didn’t get into more trouble, really.

This was an early one so it’s extra random. We hadn’t honed our process yet… haha

 

 

 

 

The boy was killed.  Then Suzy came and buried him. Bob killed Suzy and a horse ate Bob.  The horse was the one who originally killed the Boy because he was eaten by a thawed-out turkey.

Does this make sense to you?

The horse killed the boy first, then was eaten by the thawed-out turkey.

Then Albert caned the turkey. Albert told the turkey as he caned him, “Don’t make friends!”

The turkey screamed.

Albert jumped back.  Did it just scream?  He was terrified!  Then… did its wing twitch?  What was going on?

Albert felt his heart pumping harder and faster.  He started breathing faster.

The turkey’s leg moved.  There was no mistaking.  This thawed-out turkey was still alive.  Albert’s cane slipped out of his sweaty palms.  It clattered on the ground.  He stared at the turkey.  He couldn’t move his eyes off of it to find his cane.  He started shaking.  Was he crazy?  Was this all a dream?  He turned to run away, but he felt a cold, clammy wing on his ankle.

 

Suzy came in the kitchen.  Where was Albert?  Oh, well.  She cooked the turkey for dinner.

She put the oven on 3,500°F and °C and after 3 hours the oven was on fire.

But the turkey was still alive.  It burst out of the oven.  It was flaming.  It ran toward Suzy. She screamed.

Grandma came in.  Where was Suzy?  Oh, well.  She cooked the turkey again.  Then her granddaughter ran in and said, “I love turkey!  Where did I come from?”  Grandma said, “You came from a Sears box with instructions on how to put you together.”  Then the turkey was gone.  It had run across the street and gotten hit by a car.

Sarah looks like a turkey.

The driver drove a new Mercury Villager.  He cleaned the guts off his car and drove away.

Sarah still looks like a turkey.

Liz looks like a buffalo.

Then the turkey was still alive.  It gobbled its way to its death at the dining room table.

Liz still looks like a buffalo.

Sarah stopped looking like a turkey.

The End

PS  Liz stopped looking like a buffalo.

James is now an unmentionable fat creature with tentacles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earthworms

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Earth elemental

Fleshy segments

Burrow through the power of patience, appetite, numbers

Tiny grains of life

 

Life devours lower life

So things which creep close to the ground

Fishes, snakes, toads

Things which live under rocks

And have gaping senseless maws

Prey upon earthworms.

Nothing lives lower than a worm

But everything relies

On the foundation they lay

With their mindless, relentless drive

To consume earth

Pass earth

Be earth

 

They are blanks

Dirt passes through them

Moistened black

Richer for their contact

They gulp, gulp

Like vacuums

Like straws

Pulsing their way up and down the avenues they have created

A megalopolis underground

Utterly vast

Interconnected

 

Sometimes, being too blind to see

And too empty to resist

The vital impetus

Pushes them through the soil

Beyond the boundaries of their amniotic grit

Into the open air

Where, cut from contact with their animator,

The little golems shrivel

Into a line of dust

A memory of things

which should not touch light.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Journal – On Overcoming Fears

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When I was a kid

I was afraid of the dark.

I used to make myself walk down the hallways in the dead of night

With the lights off

Just to prove … I don’t remember what

Maybe it was pride.

Maybe I despised my own cowardice.

So I just looked at the light switch

Then stared down the demons in the dark.

 

I hadn’t gone to the dentist in eight years

A lost filling finally drove me to the waiting room

Where I sat, my stomach knotty with fear.

After that I kept up with my dentist visits

Through crowns and drills and fillings lost and gained

And stainless steel needles the size of Montana

Culminating in my most recent visit

A small filling restored with,

By my own request,

No numbing agent.

I found it was nothing I couldn’t handle.

Now when I go, I marvel

At my lack of fear.

 

I never allowed myself the luxury of feelings

Afraid that they would hurt others.

This has been the worst fear to overcome.

I have progressed from exploring my emotions,

To writing them out,

To showing them to the world

My family

And hardest of all, my dad.

Because I loved him the most

I hid the most from him.

Protecting him from my unhappiness

Afraid he would blame himself

Or worry about me.

Today he called me

Asked if I was feeling okay

He’d read my bleak poem

And worried.

I reassured him, the poem was old.

When I hung up the phone

I wondered

At my stability in the face

Of what had just happened.

Dad had seen one of my darkest pieces.

And he had worried.

But things are different now.

I can be honest with him.

His humanity doesn’t break me.

My own humanity doesn’t break me.

The self-loathing spiral

Never came.

 

Now I have to keep posting

As if I didn’t know he was keeping up on the blog.

Or rather, I know that he is,

But I am able to be honest now.

Sometimes I want to die

Sometimes I want to stab something

But mostly I love my life

And although I still cherish my family,

I no longer idolize them,

Or feel the need to protect them.

 

I have always considered myself uncommonly lucky

In family and friends.

Today I can feel lucky

And not feel guilty too.

I can feel grief and pain

Just as easily as I can feel love.

 

But most of all,

I can feel.

 

And I feel grateful.

And I feel free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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