heaven

Why do people say hell is red and fiery? When really it is gray and icy with each person held alone under a cold metal bell. Pumped full of pain medication, they breath, feel no pain and think thoughts of their own well being. They are glad the bell protects them. They have 100,000 dollars plus a gold brick and they are glad no one will steal it. They know no one can lift the heavy bell to find them. They have won the game of life. Every day tasty meals are dropped into the bell. Anything they choose. They eat with relish. Winning! When they relieve themselves, the byproducts magically disappear. Hell is sanitary. People never cry there. They think they are smiling and maybe they are. Who knows? No one can see them.

Pain is when you go to Heaven. Looking down, you see everything you missed. St Fanci compared entering heaven to having both your legs sawed off with a rusty blade. Pain is the price of admission.

Stabbed in the chest by remorse. You never saw the beauty of everything until it was too late. And now in heaven you’re face to face with everything you wanted to avoid.

The people you least want to see are your greeting committee, standing there waiting in white robes. Those you wanted to impress stand behind you, noticing how you’ve shit your white pants.

Everyone you ghosted, neglected, abandoned, wait for you there with arms outstretched. They hug you and the memories of how you hurt them return. The clarity is excruciating because in heaven there are no clouds, fog or shadows.

And why did you do it? Why were you such an asshole?

Because there was some wound you didn’t want to feel and now it is probed with a million forceps and scalpels. Your mind explodes in an infinite sun of pain. In heaven there are no pain killers.

I finally got this poster I really wanted. It means so much to me I just don’t know what or why.

What is the relevance of this? I don’t know. In life, I am hanging in there. I got a job as a phone psychic and felt I was really in my element. Then I got fired. I was keeping people on the line for an average of 22 minutes rather than 35 minutes like they wanted. There is a bell that rings at 20 minutes and you’re sposed to keep people on for a while after that, because the rates get jacked up. But the callers want to hang up once they hear the bell so they don’t end up with a huge bill.

My psychic hotline name was Isabel Harlon. I’m gonna start my own psychic reading business now.

So money is hard.

And love is hard too because I don’t understand it. I feel like a retard in math class. A bunch of squiggles on the board and I have no idea what anything means. I was good at math but could never understand it which drove me nuts. I couldn’t figure out what numbers WERE. What the fuck is a one? A zero? Are they things themselves or ways of seeing things? The more I thought about it, the less sense it made.

Slippers in her new cage. I am cage training her so she will be calm when I leave the house. To my surprise, she loves it!

Sometimes I read books about love and it makes things worse because there are always more and more things you aren’t supposed to do because they will emasculate men. Words you aren’t supposed to say- like can would but. Tenses you aren’t supposed to use. If you follow the rules he will love you forever! But if you can’t…. well, no one to blame but yourself for what happens next.

And I don’t want to emasculate anyone. Rip off their dick and leave them with a bloody stump. But following all these rules feels impossible, especially when one of the rules is to be yourself. And you are supposed to be vulnerable and show your emotions, the problem is there’s only one emotion you are supposed to feel- pleased. But the more bound up I feel the harder this mild & flavorless state is to achieve.

Somewhere I must find the strength to take a solemn vow that I won’t abandon myself for love anymore. Because I love romance so much. But romance comes from being yourself and feeling the chemical reaction of self touching the world. Romance comes from the beauty of your own emotions welling up to surprise you. If men need you to be completely colorless and drained of life just to be in their presence then what is the point? Money? Or just avoiding a wound- the infinite pain of being abandoned? Love is one of the bells of hell. Blocking the pain while keeping you dead inside.

I need to find the strength to choose myself but I don’t know how. I don’t feel that strength anywhere.

Slippers at an open mic. Until I train her to be okay at home, I have to take her everywhere.

The face Slippers makes when she wants a snack.

Dear Diary,

Hi! How are you? Sorry I haven’t written in a while. I’ve been fine, thanks. I decided to write this blog post to you, because I can’t think of anyone else to write to. Usually, I write with a person in mind, someone I feel the need to connect with. But recently, I haven’t been able to envision anyone. No one seems real to me. A world full of paper dolls.

Paper dolls only on the surface, though. Underneath, people who are busy, engaged, trying to better themselves or take care of their families. Not people who need to know my feelings about the color gold. I can’t envision anyone in the whole world who needs to know my feelings about the color gold.

So why blog at all, then? Especially when all I really want to do is to redecorate my desk in shades of orange and find out what happened to Europe after the fall of Rome.

Because I have to. There is this red light that wants to flow through my body, but it will only flow if it can form a complete circuit. Right now, it is blocked in my thymus gland and will only complete itself if I open up my mouth and let words out. If I don’t do this, there will be no red for me. I will have to live out my life as a bloodless vegetable sucked dry of all it’s colors.

Still, I don’t really want to say anything. It feels like opening my mouth is just an invitation to be attacked and ridiculed. I would feel more comfortable just trying to be nice and quiet and only speaking to flatter those around me. When I was a teenager, I decided to make complement bombing one of my life strategies, which basically meant whenever I was around a mean or threatening person I would try to sing their praises in such rapid-fire speech that they would be unable to get a word in edgewise. I would spend hours before encounters imagining all of a person’s praiseworthy attributes. It could be exhausting, but was somewhat effective, like throwing a constant string of steaks at a lion. I would still get bitten, but not as frequently.

It could have been a better strategy, though, for someone like my husband James, who is adept at lying. Some people, it seems, can wear one face to themselves and another to the world without becoming confused. I admire those people. But for me, the worst part about flattering people, is that I truly hypnotize myself in the process until everyone I meet takes on a godlike magnificence in my mind. James reminds me of this sometimes, when I fawn over him with praise he feels is undeserved– “Look at the arches of your feet- they’re so beautiful, like swans. Mine are like rusted canoes.” (I usually throw in a little insult to myself for contrast. That always seemed to make my parents happy.)

But, there is definitely a price to pay for pleasing others at your own expense. It bleaches you of all your prouder colors, the reds, yellows, and golds. It makes your hands and feet cold, and turns your face into a lifeless mask. It sucks the blood from your heart and brain and eventually turns you into a catatonic moron who can neither think nor feel. That is the eventual price of being a sycophant.

On the other hand, those who do stand up for themselves also have to pay a price and sometimes it is severe. Being scorned and shunned, stabbed in the back of your hand with a fork, forced to kill your own puppy, sometimes being killed yourself… things can get sadistic when people are intent upon breaking down your will and you refuse to let them. Who can say if being a fighter or a flatterer is the better choice? Sometimes the fawners live to see another day when the fighters don’t.

The confusing thing about life is that it feels like love and goodness should be all-powerful, and yet, whose observations prove to them that this is true?

From what I can figure, Heaven is that place where love, beauty, and justice rule absolutely. Hell is the place where power and force rule absolutely. Earth is the place where the dark forces of power are blended with the shimmering forces of goodness to produce strong and durable materials that couldn’t exist otherwise. Materials like gold, which is stockpiled in Heaven, but only produced here on Earth, from the pure intentions that are constantly subjected to trials and tribulations.

On Earth we are forced to never lose sight of love and dreams, for when we do we die inside. But we are also never allowed to let go of practicality, selfishness and cunning, for when we do, we die outside. Having to keep our grasp on these two fluctuating polarities, which are sometimes in harmony and sometimes in conflict, gives rise to whole generations of strong and beautiful alloys, which, I like to think could not be created otherwise.

But it is hard work to always keep one foot in heaven and the other in hell, so sometimes we deal with life by releasing one of these poles and becoming either too good or too bad in the process. Bad people can sometimes be quite effective in a practical sense, since they can streamline all their choices to maximize personal gain and self-aggrandizement. But the trade-off is being forced to live in an internal world that is harsh, barren, and brutal. And if they ever want to leave their inner hell, there is a long road of pain and remorse in front of them.

But releasing the dark forces and aiming to be too good is equally treacherous. It is like living on a diet of jello. You end up weak and insubstantial, lacking a mind or will of your own. Eventually you become an instrument in the hand of evil-doers.

Which all comes back to why I feel I must write. Because I’m the sort of person who, under stress, lets go of the dark forces and levitates upwards into a world of unicorn fantasies. Whereas every time I open my mouth and utter words, I merge more and more with everything that is complicated, imperfect, and heavy. After all, nothing I say will be exactly true, nothing I express will quite capture what I think or feel, I will certainly end up misrepresenting myself, alienating people, being criticized and ridiculed, and lying tangled on the ground in a heap of contradictions and funny feelings. But in the process, word by word, I will take on mass and become real. I will earn my red stripe, and eventually that stripe will turn to gold.