Trevor Henthorn & Ruby Wong

My mind runs empty. Then floods again. As if the contents of my head are now liquid. Contained only by the confident solidity of my skull. Threatening to burst open; revealing too much and then not enough to explain what is now lying naked on the concrete. My mouth is the orifice to which this liquid flows. And if I no longer know the meaning of words, then I no longer know what to say.

The ground below me becomes soft. I know without needing to look, that it is no longer bearing the responsibilty of holding me erect. The ground opens up, soil falling through towards an infinite space. The foundation removes and reveals itself; the skeleton beneath the earth -- all metallic poles. Unliving and cold. With no vertical surface to lie down. And then I realize, that I am just looking at myself.

All these wasted, rancid thoughts. Spiraling towards nowhere; and yet managing to cling onto every part of me. I keep them all like children. I can not let go; I can not throw them away. They've mutated into me. I can no longer distinguish the purity of me from the evil; much less perform personal surgery to remove that which is distasteful.

When I open my eyes, the ground is beneath me again. When in reality, it was simply myself that would no longer bear the responsibilty of holding me erect. But I can not shake off the visualization of my terror. I still think that there is a metal foundation beneath the ground. That the exterior of life is just a facade -- when taken apart, is nothing but a pile of non-living matter. And I think I feel, the metal reaching for me. Coming out of the ground like fingers, pulling me in, dragging me into it's beliefs.

Everything becomes small. Smaller. Gone. Like memories. Once held so dear against the heart; against the chest. Nothing remains objective, nothing remains constant. No matter how meticulously filed away. One against the other in compulsive-obsessive neatness. Packed in a box, in a space where I hope time will not touch. Only when I go back, I notice that everything is not as it was. It is a terrible cruelty -- to remember enough to know that it is not right, and falling short of remembering exactly how it was.

Too much sadness coupled with a dangerous amount of anger, freezes over the body. Painting the skin over with an off-blue color. Replacing the flesh with something less vulnerable. And to think I would derive pride out of this defensive mechanism. Pride in my off-blue armor. Letting nothing penetrate. Not heated insults, not rejection, not anything at all. Not even love. And not even sanity.

I break apart. I hear my rationalizing snapping, broken into only 2 pieces. Either I am right, or I am wrong in my thinking. I can not choose which one. I can not bear to be right in my choice, can not bear to be wrong. With the weight of my disorders, I have broken my own reasoning. Dismantled my own security.

Now there is no order anywhere. My secrets revealed, unearthed. Left on the judgement table. To be disected by anyone who is obnoxious enough to have an opinion about another person's interpretation. And I search desperately, for a hard spot to convince me of its reality. I look for what I think I know. I look for the metal foundation beneath what is living; what is deceiving me.

My body is a containment device. Holding life in. It shapes me; it is the container to which within it, I am otherwise beyond grasping. It is what keeps my liquids from spilling out. My anger from leaking through. Only sometimes, I know I am careless. And I let it slither out of the slits of my body. It is beyond my control. If I did not let go, I would run out of space. The infinity will fill up. I would become nothing but anger, nothing but resentment.

Intersection point again. This is retrospect. Coming full circle. Only peering at it from a different angle. Retrospect is not 20 20. Looking back is always different. New revolations, new regrets. Still, the choice remains unclear. How am I ever to know what would have happened had I taken a different direction? I can speculate myself into a frenzy. Each road leads to a tragedy, leads to a pot of gold. I do not know, even with retrospect, where I took the wrong turn. For that, I have my rationalizing to blame.

Somehow, I keep moving. I keep struggling to make sense of what surrounds me and what composes me. I roam forward, or backward, blind to never know which. It is unfair. When I have all my defenses down, I am forced to still keep going. To make regrettable decisions, to take chances when I can not organize the reality into something intelligible. Hatred surfaces; no one lets me crawl into a hole while I try to make sense of everything suffocating me.

I hear the laughter of those even more oblivious then me. Their minds made of something gelatin. Not even liquid to let ideas ramble, to let things take their own shape. Thoughts stuck in a fixed position. Unable to move, stupid in its never-absolute certainty. As if they know the map to higher thought. As if they can read signs in a language I can not understand. They direct me; tell me where to go. Tell me where to look, what to think. They take their gelatin minds and shove the excess down my throat. Despite gagging and wretching it back up, I am nauseous in knowing that I have unavoidably swallowed some.

They must live like rats in a sewer. Feeding on anything. Living off a place where rejected thoughts go. They must live suspended in infinite space. Their bodies like the thoughts in their head. Unmoving.

My temporary vision of the bigger picture fades slowly. I can only hold on to being detached long enough to write it down. And then the moment slips behind me. Ebbs away from me a little at a time. Its absence hardly noticed.

A small part of reality resurfaces. Subjective behavior settles in. I fall closer and closer into my situation. My vision, my decision, everything about me is obstructed with the closeness of it all. The intricate reality; the fabric where there is no beginning and there is no end. No belonging and no total isolation. Without much struggling, I have let myself become absorbed.