Boogers

You know what I just realized? Boogers have absolutely no smell whatsoever.

A dream - too filthy

A nightmare. I only just remembered it... from sometime last week.

I awoke wrapped up in blankets, shivering and sick, and lying on the cold uncomfortable floor of the old house on Sena street. The walls of that house are like the inside of a cave... hard and rough and cracked, and cold to the touch. Like stone. I was nestled up against one of those walls. It was cold in the house as per the norm, since there was no gas or electricity or water, and there were candles burning in every room.

As I lay there, miserable and feverish, the feeble gray light of a cold and overcast morning began to seep inside through the windows, and I saw that the house was filled with people. Matt's friends. Some kind of party that I had nothing to do with, and that I didn't feel like caring about at all.

I rolled onto my other side and saw that Fr. Justin was there. Here, at the party, at my house. Of all people, I muttered to myself as he knelt beside me on the floor. I was embarrassed to have been discovered in such an undignified repose... unwashed and apathetic, wrapped in soiled blankets infused with the smell of days old sick, with a thin layer of accumulated grime coating my skin with an oily sheen.

Fr. Justin didn't say anything. He just got up and looked down at me lying there, then he kind of jerked his head in the other direction, indicating that I should get up and follow him. Then he walked into Matt"s room.

So, still wrapped up in those dirty blankets, I managed to stand somehow and I shuffled and stumbled my way toward my brothers room. From the kitchen I could see Fr. Justin sitting in there on the edge of the bed, quietly surveying the squalor as he waited for me.

The room was filthy. It stank. There were discarded plates containing the remnants of rotting food, and in every corner piles of mouldering laundry were heaped alongside open bags of stinking garbage. Beer bottles filled with swampy cigarette butts littered every available surface, and the carpet was infused with cigarette burns. Several ashtrays had spilled over onto the floor.

Then I came out of the sick and to myself, and I was suddenly aware that the entire house was in a similar condition, and so was I. It was me too, I realized. Filthy and despicable and repugnant and foul to the senses. The moisture of my body and of my self and of my will had become standing water... poisonous and stagnant. I felt embarrassed and humiliated and ashamed.

I tripped on the threshold of the doorway to my brothers room and landed on my knees. Fr. Justin was still sitting on the edge of the bed, looking down at me with a vague expression of distaste. I cupped my hands to receive a blessing, but Fr. Justin stood abruptly and said, "No, there's too much filth. It's unclean."

He strode out of the room and I hurried to follow him, knockering about and bestumbling forward on my hands and knees. Out of the room and into the kitchen, still wrapped up in those dirty blankets, and back into the living room where I saw the hem of Fr. Justin's robe flutter as it disappeared through the doorway into my own bedroom.

It took me a little while to crawl the distance through the kitchen and into the living room, through the mingling crowd, and to my room. I saw Fr. Justin in there. In that place that used to be my bedroom, in the old house on Sena street where I used to live. The one with the cold walls, rough and hard, like the walls of a cave. He was sitting on an old wooden stool that I used to know something about... just inside the doorway, hunched over and smoking a cigarette.

My eyes widened in alarm and I tried to reach for the cigarette to take it away from him, and at the same time I tried to cup my palms for a blessing. Then I fell, and as I fell, I wailed in dismay. And then, somewhere inside the utter clusterfuck of chaos that was unraveling the goodness of myself and of my sanity, right then and there, in the mean time of a night mare, I caught a glimpse of Fr. Justin flicking a cigarette ash onto the floor and muttering, "It's just too filthy, too filthy. Forget it. You're just too filthy..."

The dime sized spot of pain right under your sternum

Have you ever been listening to a song that reminded you of someone lost to you, maybe a friend you haven't seen for years, or an ex, or someone close to you who died, or maybe someone who is still in your life, and who you've shared a lot of it with?

Do you know that feeling that happens right underneath your breast bone, or your sternum? When you hear that music. You know that feeling, right? It's a definite physical sensation, almost like a pain of reminding. It refers to a segment of memories which contained that music, but the happening of those memories never knew this feeling I'm trying to describe because it didn't even exist when those memories were made... the feelings only manifest after the fact, usually by about a year. What? Why?

What IS that? It feels good and bad at the same time. It's like a pressure, about the size of a dime,.. but very concentrated. Right underneath the hardest part of your chest.

How does this thing happen? Just what in the heck is the mechanism for the physical manifestation of something as insubstantial and abstract as an emotion? What's it for? Why does it hurt and attract at the same time? Pain is supposed to be a tool for the learned avoidance of things which can harm us. And there's the pain, right there under the bone and inside the flesh. But then why does it also attract? It's like, when a moth dives into a candle flame. It's like two polar opposites conspiring just to 'ef with logic. Attractive and painful. Compelling and miserable. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria!

I demand an answer to this crap. Or at least a reason for it. Even if it's a stupid reason, as long as it's the truth.

You

I went home from work early tonight. Relatively early after staying late, that is. I was feeling sick... ugly.

I gotta get home and wipe my feet off, man. I hadda kick those frikin' boots off. OH... bad idea. There sure are a lot of empties on the floor in my compartment. I guess I need some new ones. New empties... some future past tense empties? Some past future tense not-empties?

You know, there sure are a lot of dead bodies in the ground. How do I know that? It's obviously because I used to be one of those dead bodies, so that's how I know. Through experience. That, and also... well, how to describe it? Through a simple feeling... I mean, a simple lack of feeling, fuel, and energy to work, pretend, and make it through the day.

However, I did learn through that very same feeling that I'm not the kind of guy who'd cheat a friend to make it through the day, and because of that, I also figured out that someday they (you know, everybody who isn't me) are gonna exercise an unreasonable amount of strain on my simple way. To cheat me into cheating, that is.

Meaning... you know. Meaning that I know someday that they are gonna separate the part of my brain that can discriminate the friendly from the enemy.

Oh, they've already done it. You are the enemy.