(evening) 5 maybe 6 maybe 7 years ago i was trying to place a small pin i bought on ebay onto my backpack, the backpack i still have. i slipped and shoved the pin as hard as i could into the tip of my left ring finger. i dont think it bled. it was extremely clean. since then when ever it gets cold, but only in a extended cold way, what i should say is when it gets cold because of winter, that finger aches where i stabbed myself. every year it hurts more. this year i am acutely aware of the pain in the tip of my finger. im saying this because, my life is divided into perspectives: one where im looking down at my hands and so aware of nothing except what is that far away, and another where things are father away. im focused on the near, i look up, i have a slight delay in my eyes focusing, i enter a different perspective. nothing in my hands is somewhere i can go, somewhere that can overwhelm me. no one has ever brought this to me before. does anyone else's vision do this? i think im imagining this. ive never been so tired before. im too aware of my finger hurting, it interrupts everything. it draws my attention down. i look down at my hand, ive rotated it so the palm is up and the tip of the ring finger is the easiest to see. i do this multiple times a day, i dont even think about it, if i could think about it i would still do it. my attention is out of my control. but i dont think about it, my attention is out of my control. im thinking about st augustine right before he converted, or maybe as he was converting, being distraught by his inabiltiy to match his thoughts to his actions. if i could match my thoughts to my actions i think my mouth would water less. i think my apartment would be nice and my sheets would be cleaner and my meals even lovelier. my finger wouldnt ache in the cold because i wouldnt have forced the pin, i would have been more careful. i need to be so much more careful with my attention, i will be so much more careful with my attention because... i dont really know what i have if i dont have even that. i must not have ever had anything. i still dont have anything. some day soon ill have the smallest amount and then ill be satisfied.
(night) i love my sheets i love my linen i love my sheets i love my linen. my head hurts and im confused. my psychiatrist thinks im stable. all of my problems are external and after i have solved them all i will be unassailable. im so assailable. if someone who's opinion was so important to me tried to drag me down they would succeed. the number of people capable of this is minimal. ive noticed recently, maybe too recently, i couldnt be so sure, or sure at all, of when i noticed actually that ive been on edge: on a precipice of confusion and strangeness and inablility and fear. i keep catching myself walking in a way that would be construed as pacing, if i was going back and forth. no one paces unless its back and forth. by definition; by construction really. im not going back and forth but i am pacing. im one of those who has the amazing ability to be able to walk around and look upset and confused with a scowl so everyone thinks im busy. this is a seinfeld reference. anyway, im pacing around, but not back and forth, and now what?
(night again) all day today the beach was covered in machines that were remaking it. they moved back and forth rattling my parents condo and i imagine leveling out the sand thats piled in from somewhere else, i dont know where. somewhere not here. i like to imagine that its the entire beach being remade. the entire coast here is man made, but they only have to repair the beach to prevent it all from falling apart. like if you stopped grooming your nails and your fingers started rotting. there's probably a more apt analogy, but i find this one fun. my nails are delicate when they get long, they always snap in half in a weird way because ill push on them because they bend. self fulfilling. i push on the inside side of my fingers with my thumb, i think of the texture on the wall and the pain of the nail before it bends.