Excerpt from “The Colony”

I stared at the faucet for five heartbeats, my eyes focusing on the
empty socket where the regulator was supposed to be. A stream of
uninterrupted sweet water fell to the insatiable dirt underneath.

“We are the smallest planet,” I said softly as I turned my head to the
women standing guilty. “We are on the smallest planet in the known
universe.”

I faced them and my eyes burned with frustration.

“We are on the smallest planet, and we have these few oceans of water.
What do you think will happen if another species visits us – one that
is malicious, violent. We have no ships to fight them off with or
escape. We have no guns, no weapons to defend ourselves. Everything we
have has been converted into life-supporting
mechanisms; and you think it’s acceptable to waste our resources like
THIS?!” I point to the faucet, the water spilling forth and shining
like silver in the sun.

I am yelling now, screeching at the top of my lungs.

“If another species visits us, full of wrath and evil in their hearts,
we will surely die. But to have one of our own be responsible for the
entire human race dying of thirst….. ” I paused, trying not to cry,
trying to keep the tears from showing any weakness in their appointed
leader. I continued in a more even voice. “If all the water is gone,
and the last human disappears from the universe, it will be on your
head.”       It will be on my head.

---

Thing Not to Do if You’re a Suicidal Manic Depressive #2:

Spy on ex-classmates, ex-boyfriends, current coworkers, etc on Myspace.com.
It’s a strangely abysmal realization that everyone knows everyone else and you’ve been kept out of the loop.

I hate this medication. I hate being on this medication…. I hate the
fact that Beau knows if I’ve missed a dose and makes me take it,
holding those fucking pills in his hand and standing there until I
swallow another day of dreaminess. I suppose it’s good in the long run,
being carried through the week in a cloud of impenetrable mental fog. I
care for nothing.         And
all is Good.

But things suffer. I become….. apathetic towards that which gives no
immediate pleasure. I think that this medication…. it makes me
hollow. It eats away from the inside until I’m a walking husk of
brittle skin. It makes me impatient – things are slow and redundant and
pain and frustration can be solved by shutting things out, shutting
myself in, shutting up and consuming a pack of cigarettes. Beau thinks
I’m smoking less, but actually I’m accumulating a pile of empty Camel
boxes with the intent to build something out of it – maybe a solar
powered car….

I have friends that I care about deeply, but I keep them at an obscene
distance. Everyone thinks something different of me, and yet, I bluntly
speak my mind and blindly speak the truth. Finding these small nuggets
of gold, they stubbornly keep digging, thinking that the next shovelful
of silence will unearth the vein of my essence, the river of my
thoughts.

But what else can I say when asked how my day was or what I’m feeling?
Should I reveal the darkness lining my superficial emotions? If I
paused and examined the stories unfolding within me and said:
<Sometimes it hurts to be alive> Would you understand what I
meant, or would you hear: [Today was an ok day at work.]

And this alone should answer the questions of {Why do you work so hard,
why do you have so much, why do you play video games, why do you watch
the same movies over and over}. The answer, as always, is that I’m my
own arch nemesis, and I can think of nothing that would please me more
than my own destruction, and if left alone with my Self, will probably
Self combust and the world will witness its first documented example of
what happens when matter and anti-matter meet – except there would be
no world left…. at least, not to me.

Her name was Indulgence and her brother’s name was Coeur de la Monde.

The rain had been falling for months now, and rather than wash away the
city’s grime and sin, the rain brought them to the surface like oil.
Roofs were starting to dissolve. At first, citizens tried repairs, but
they were cosmetic; replacing soaked floors with tiles, repainting
moldy walls, but the rain had fallen for so long that cares about the
superficial beauty of the domicile dissipated.

The children, Indy and Monde, ran through the city streets, slipping on
the slick pavement. Their strides spoke of urgency – of running away
rather than towards. Breaking through the door into a public bath
house, they paused to catch their breath. The adults paused in their
meeting and, seeing the fear that electrified the children’s faces,
knew what they feared had happened.

“Turn on all the showers!” yelled Senick. “Turn them all on to the hottest setting!”

The roar of showers coming to life and the fog of steam that smothered
them was overwhelming, disorienting. Indy stumbled but strong hands
caught her, pushed her in one direction and then another.

They were being lead through the bathhouse towards the back room, and
all she could see were the feet of the adults around her. She
recognized Senick’s sandals, trimmed with braids of leather and human
hair. Following those feet, the shock of the cold, outside air was like
a sharp wall.

As the door closed behind her, she could hear screams and struggles.

Whatever those people were after, they were willing to kill for it.

Bullshit, that’s what I say.

Full sunlight for about 8 hours a day.

This tank cost less than $200 to set up and maintain for over one year.

Some people have posters of movie stars on their walls. I like to look at plants.

Cabomba

Cryptocoryne Wendtii

Limnophilia Aromatica: this plant produces a lovely fragrance when crushed.

Dwarf Lobelia

Potomageton Gayii (with a cherry shrimp)

Hemianthus Micranthemoides

Proserpinaca (aka Mermaid Weed – submersed growth)

Emperor Tetras.

I want to book one of these tours. The only thing I don’t like about it is the restriction to one large bag (aka backpack) and one daypack (aka purse).

For Mickey,

Hope you like it.

You asked me once what I meant about getting between the two of you.
It’s complicated. And by complicated, I mean that it’s a personal
problem I have, and no one else can help ,e with it. I don’t like it
when you two fight. And by fight, I mean a few days after when Beau
inexplicably gets moody and it’s because of something you said or did.
Eh…. it’s hard to explain. Let me just say that I once made a list of
what I want most in the world, and at the top of the list was that we’d
be friends forever.

I know, I know, people throw that word – forever – around like an
ultimate frisbee, ricocheting against the walls we put up to protect
ourselves, reciprocating only when we feel the conditions of our
“unconditional” feelings met.

Anyway, that’s all I meant. It was mostly me thinking out loud, partly me nailing down feelings with words…. but wholely me.

---

Our boss has been at a conference the past week. He left us with a new
assistant manager, and the powers that be in Corporate decided to
transfer our old assistant manager to another store. So here we are,
mice playing while the cat’s away… or at least, everyone else playing
while I’m working overtime to keep the new assistant manager from going
completely off the deep end with the boatload of responsibilities he
was left with. Actually, more like a truckload – we barely finished
getting the new inventory on the shelves today and the boss gets back
tomorrow morning.

To top it all off, there was a grooming incident, and I went to bat for
the poor groomer, telling her we would use some petty cash to pay for
her to solve the problem. I mean, for crying out loud, her clipper
blades stopped working halfway through a golden retriever. The dog,
bless her heart, didn’t care what she looked like, galloping around the
grooming room like a demented pony on crack, slipping on the linoleum
and whomping against the walls. The family didn’t mind either, but the
poor groomer was in tears about leaving the job half done. Think: A
lion cut on a big gold dog.

Anyway, it cost $50 to sharpen all her grooming blades, and IMHO, it’s
worth it in order to avoid canceling an entire weekend of grooming
appointments – or the grooming appointments for the next month or so.

The ability to lose yourself is both a blessing and a curse.

There are people who pay thousands of dollars – if not millions – for
drugs to alter their reality, to open their doors of perception. They
sacrifice precious neurons to feel something that eludes their grasp.
Now, some people are born slightly askew and medication levels them
out, closing those doors for temporary moments of peace. Funny lil
world….

I am in the second group of people.

I went back to my psychiatrist a few weeks ago to get back on my meds.
She asked me how I was, and I told her I was ok. I think she was
slightly disappointed that I didn’t have another juicy problem for her
to solve. But anyway, back on my meds. I didn’t ramp up the dosage like
I’m supposed to – I just started taking the full dosage right away. And
boy has that been fun. Apart from the nausea, I have trouble sleeping
past 5:30 in the morning. Wouldn’t be so bad if I could actually focus
on a task that I could get done, but I spend the rest of the morning
puttering around the apartment, starting projects that distract me from
other projects until mountains of unfinishedment grow around me.

I am thankful, though, for the reprieve from those shadows that hover
in the periphery. But it is ironic that I have to lose myself to find
myself again.

I have no idea how I got to this post, but it seemed interesting and I wanted to share it with fellow addicts.

http://www.xanga.com/FATP

So I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning. I really,
reeeeeeally hope I remember to go because I’ve run out of meds. I’ve
been off them for 2 days now, and I don’t really notice anything
different, but Beau does. He sez I’m extra spazzy and emotional. I
think it’s cuz I’m on my period, but whatever. I took half a vicodin
cuz the cramps were making me pukey and I didn’t want to smoke any pot
this afternoon because I already slept the whole day yesterday.
We managed to squeeze the old futon frame out of the upstairs bedroom -
which is now Beau’s music studio. However, in the fracass, I managed to
snag a teensy piece of leather off the leg of Beau’s new thousand
dollar massage chair (sorry, Mickey! please don’t be mad!!!) The futon
was a lil bigger than I thought it would be when I put it in my room,
but it’s a nice little place to sit and watch my tv.

Captain Nemo and Spartacus were livid when we brought the mattress
downstairs though. They were using it as a cat tree, and the morning we
moved it, they attacked each other, as if blaming each other for the
mattress’s sudden rehoming. We don’t know if we’ll dump it, but I want
to put it under the current mattress so we’ll have an ultra high bed. I
like ultra high beds….

But last night, we laid on the bare mattress at the foot of the
projection screen and watched an episode of 6 feet under. It freaks me
out to watch old people having sex…..

Is it because I cause trouble that trouble follows me like a murderous shadow?

Because I have been in the middle of things for a while now. Did you
ever read that book: The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo?

I don’t know what’s supposed to happen, Mickey. What am I supposed to
do – be doing? I mean, I know what I’m here for, why I’m alive. Unlike
most people, I already know the meaning of life. But what am I doing here???

In the middle of things.

Because I like to think we’re friends, Mickey. I mean, good friends.
And I know you compare how people are in the midwest and how people are
here, on the west coast, but I like to think you know me better, at
least now, and that you know I hold you as a close friend, as a confidant, as a fellow mischief maker and crack addict.

So I’ll tell you this right now, and it could be a whole lot of messy
trouble, but don’t take it as such. I know I talk too much about how I
feel, but I need to tell you that I don’t like being in the middle when
it comes to you and Beau. You prolly don’t even see it seeing as how
I’m all pets and giggles when you’re here, but when you’re not, which
is most of the time, I’m in the middle.

And what happens to things that are in the middle of opposite forces?
They get squeezed into a tiny cube of metal and become an annoying
piece of clutter, a paper weight on someone’s desk. Or else, they get
torn apart, trying to hold on to both sides until cracks and fissures
start beneath the veneer, beneath the flaw-fixing finish, and it seems
like without warning, the porcelain cracks in two, or else a seemingly
insignificant mote of dust causes it to shatter into a trillion pieces.

Anyway, I just had to say that……

For Leo

The bathing suit, the swim suit…..Clothing in general reminds me of
AP Bio in High School. We had this teacher – and I had a raging crush
on her deliciously tantalizing mind – once told us that a thesis should
be “Like a woman’s skirt. Long enough to cover the subject, but short
enough to be interesting.”

I see this philosophy echo in how I dress years later. I don’t
consciously put forth the effort of holding control over my center of
power, but it manifests in the way I choose clothing that Feels Good.
Clothing that Feels Comfortable. I don’t go through the mall looking
for what’s In Style – I make my own style. I don’t leaf through
magazines to see Who is wearing What. I see something that Is Mine.

Do I miss wearing high heels and power suits to work? Sometimes – but
it’s because that’s a part of my life that is now over, and it is
natural to grieve for it. Do I feel shameful wearing pajamas and
walking barefoot to the mailbox kiosk? No, because the sun feels good
on my shoulders, and the pavement feels alive under my feet.

Then does it really reflect how I interact with men – you know, the way
I dress. Does it show that I am independent, sloppy, childish
sometimes, selfish; or does it simply mean I am comfortable in my own
skin – that appearances are not paramount in the relationship, that
time spent together over breakfast wouldn’t be wasted on me nagging
about crooked ties?

Don’t get me wrong, I value the appearance I put forth to the world. It
is, after all, the first line of defense. But if you think about it
that way then, wouldn’t you want to keep your secret weapons secret?

Ah, don’t mind me….. I think I’ve had too much ice cream for the my brain.