unifier
KINGSTON / WINTER SOLSTICE 2024
In writing this evening I am trying to think of where we left off. Linked above is a song demo I made last night/early this morning that might give some insight into where I’m at emotionally.
The recycling truck skipped our side of the street yesterday morning. I wrote a song about that today with a friend that might make you chuckle.
The pair of shoes I’ve worn these past five months have large holes at the heel that have been chewing through every pair of socks I wear. I guess to be more accurate, topoligically these socks are more like straws now. They lack the comfort of an enclosed shell. Sticking your foot into one continuous path.
In and out.
Last week was a productive one. I fixed a long standing slowness issue my desktop computer had. The RAM wasn’t being detected properly so I just had to open up its organs and fiddle around a bit until the computer was happy. Not a hard fix I guess.
In and out.
I’ve been breathing better since I finally got checked out by a medical professional. My bloodwork came back perfectly healthy (my family doctor was more concerned about my mental health). Try not to remember my last entry as a hypochondriac meltdown. My hands and feet still go numb so I’ve been referred to a specialist. I learned what physiatry meant yesterday.
Medical appointments are always a dissociative haze. The major one last week lasted over an hour but I could have swore it was just five minutes. I walked an hour to the closest bus station from the clinic on the side of a slushy and wet highway, water seeping into my shoes. It was nice to feel something.
In and out.
I think my lazy eye is settling back in. Most of you wouldn’t know this but I wore a patch to correct my vision for hours a day until I was ten. The muscle strength from puberty was enough to mostly correct my vision for the last 10 or so years but I have since hit the inflection point of that strength. I’ll need glasses again soon enough.
With this newfound PC functionality and at my friend Jonas’ recommendation, I played a video game yesterday for the first time in a long time — “Before Your Eyes”. It follows the story of a soul on its way to the “gatekeeper” and leads you through the memories of this soul in anticipation of being asked questions to judge the soul’s worth.
This game includes a really novel mechanic. It uses your webcam to detect each time you blink — skipping time ahead and causing you to miss pieces of the story you seem to need to retain to pass later challenges.
Perched above my post open heart surgery desktop tower, I keep my eyes fixed on the screen. I believe in two deaths so I try my best to remember. My eye is turning in again so it is harder than regular to not blink. If god exists it must be somewhere in my peripheral vision. In a cache behind the ever-filling leaden pool of my iris. In the light that projects through the wire between me and you.
The unifier — and the line that has started to protrude from the source of that light.
I know it is the shortest day of the year but could you do me a favor? I’ve been losing more often since this astigmatic reality set in. We just need to form a continuous chain across the meridian and walk until our bodies give out. A line search. They taught me it again in boy scouts but I believe I first learned it as a kid in the Roman Catholic Church.
I wake to the local top forty radio station still on from the drowning of last night’s difficulty getting to sleep. I’ve never been comfortable in silence. My mom knocks on my door and I take a small joy in my routine of pretending to keep sleeping — hoping this time I can stay home and play Pokémon with the sound all the way up. Maybe I finally beat the gym I’ve been stuck on.
Me and my skin-coloured eye patch are in the car for Sunday mass. The choice was not mine to make.
Soon enough there is a river between us that I am reaching across. The pew my boat, I look to the swollen sea for the nearest hand. We have just lit the Angel’s Candle — the last one of advent before Christmas and a symbol of love. It is cold in Ottawa and the furnace is doing overtime to ensure our hands are clammy enough to stick together. My fingers covered in yours, we pray as Jesus taught us…
The poorly synchronized syllables form a hum. My vision sparkles and blurs. The TV at home would be jealous. A product of skipped breakfast and the weak core muscles of a child, my body goes limp. I’m the one jealous of the TV at home.
To my excitement, I get the privilege of recovering in the back halls of the church alone until I can see my friends in the church hall for the weekly social, “coffee sunday”.
I can’t help but feel betrayed by the structure of the mass.
My body’s failure as a vessel for praise.
So I spin and spin and spin and spin and spin and spin.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
(around here I attempt to convince myself that Hell isn’t real)
Fuck god.
Fuck god.
Fuck god.
Fuck god.
Fuck god.
(around here I realize it might not be responsible to totally write off the existence of Hell so I should probably shut this train down before I am irredeemable)
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
(around here I realize that Hell is right here)
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
Fuck God.
(if you can hear me, please wash me away in a Noachian-esque Flood)
I wait to hear the recessional hymn — the signal my sentence is nearly over.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now I'm found
Was blind, but now I see
Kids lose. Kids get lost. Kids cry. Kids develop OCD. Kids are waiting to be found.
I don’t see kids around the neighbourhood I grew up in anymore. I like to imagine they are all hidden in the cracks between the products of the shelves of local supermarkets. You’d think we would have found a couple when we bought all the toilet paper during the pandemic.
72 HOUR OVERNIGHT CHALLENGE IN WALMART (HIDE AND SEEK) (PART 3)
You’re so glad I reached out but you’re actually at capacity / helping someone else who’s in crisis / dealing with some personal stuff right now, and don’t think you can hold appropriate space for me. You want to connect [later date or time] instead / You ask if I have someone else I could reach out to.
What about restarting? Turning it off and on again? Hopefully there’s no water damage. What about unplugging it from the wall and then plugging it back in? Reseating the RAM?
Dry your eyes. What about now? Where did that kid go?
Why the gatekeeper?
Why not the unifier?
