I remember when I’d be laying there in the dark, alone but not, but, I was. It wasn’t like it could’ve been, but, then again, that would be asking for too much, wouldn’t it? Sure seems that way, always.
And I’d lay there, my back to the large tilted blank wall. It sloped into the room, protecting me from the elements outside, but, it was pointless to try. I was terrified anyway.
Any minute then, in the middle of the dead night, cold with rigor mortis, crepuscular rays would beam past my quilt-curtains, brighter than they should ever dare to be and snatch me away. There would be a big loud snap and boom, I’m gone, a blind subject suspended among probes.
At least, that’s what I was terrified of. You can see it then, as well, maybe, if ever. It didn’t really matter whether there were big ol’ slanty walls, or vaulted roofs, or waterbeds, or a warm fire, oh no, not to my peace of mind. It mattered a great deal to my peace of body, don’t get me wrong. Everything was always provided, enough, I suppose, along those lines, which, that’s a lot to be grateful for, and believe you me, I am.
I really am.
But when my mind sets itself to something, it always has its way in the end, I guess. I don’t really know, and yet, I do, maybe, perhaps, I’d like to think so, but, not? It’s a tricky thing to be so errant, and so arrantly handled, this relentlessly unending potential so beyond my own apparency it’s easily forgotten. I turn away from it, and smiling, to you; I hope.
I remember how, when I would twist my head so dramatically, and so stupidly, but it was just a few minutes, I could almost be there. Across the barren white paint of the slanted cage was the topology of my imagination. Infinite in all directions save one, and full of the everything that ever was.
And I remember how I would go, concentrate, focus, fixate, make it grow, come out of me, become mine.
No, not the landscape of dreams and Yanni arias. Again, that would be asking for too much, but, this time, that’s like, everybody, so what? Oh no, before the ever-present mountains were tall enough, back when everything wasn’t deep enough because I hadn’t experienced shallow, it was the tail.
If I could just obsess, zero in, heed, fasten, incorporate, coordinate, and unite my every facet of my multidimensional self, if I just reconcentrated myself inward, I knew that, mind over matter, that tail had to fucking come out somehow.
Didn’t it?
But, it didn’t.
And what was I to do but sit on my hands in the computer lab, so I wouldn’t jump ahead of whatever Mr. Michels thought I didn’t know we were doing? What was I to do but have a droopy snout on an eye-holed fake-fur hood with two triangles for ears? What was I to do but log into text worlds far past my age, never getting very far at all, and read terminal daydreams of feral minds? What was I to do but be made fun of for trying to get help because I didn’t know a custom Metrowerks keyword wasn’t standard? What was I to do but fashion it myself, just a strip of fake-fur folded in on itself just right, and rivet it on, just above my ass, my fucking self?
What was I to do other than train myself to live forever?
It must be nice to look back on all that and be able to frame it as just, ah, well, silliness. Stamp it down to adolescent frivolity, discard the plot that you imagined your life could have, heh, yeah, imagine is the key here, and then, just, become an adult and decide things as if you’re everyone else. And it’s real nice, I guess, when someone else can just decide to do it for themselves as if it’s all on you, so you don’t have to like you should.
Of course, everyone knows that nice is different than good.
Oh, how I would thrash in frustration, as much as one might do on a homesteading waterbed, which, sounds fancy, but, the 70s were a thing… in the early 90s. How I would bemoan, dream, cry, despair in that bed, alone together alone, that I was the wrong shape, I had a tail dammit, where was my tail? What happened to my damn ears, tail, and snout?
Why was I this ugly furless frail portal to an abyss of possibilities that never really were?
Why was I struck, not touched, but fucking sledgehammered into that which I wasn’t?
Why would I ever choose to be this?
But, there’s a certain movement that travels through time, one that, as subtle as it may be, adds up to answers to ignorant questions, and it’s called living.
I never needed to imagine the plot. That’s why it’s so easy for me to imagine everything else. There’s no need for me to do otherwise. It’s such an easy thing that if you blink, if you get distracted by a smile, some asymmetrically long hair, a few drips and drops, a surface so accelerating you have to run to stay in place, an immolation so inevitable even stars can’t avoid it, if you lose track of time, you just might miss it.
I don’t think years are all that disposable, and yet, my sense of time is so out of whack. I thought, well, I guess, I’ll talk to her in a year or so maybe. Oh, can you imagine? Can you fucking imagine it?
I don’t have to.
Twelve years? Long enough I suppose. Twenty-four years? Sizeable, I’ll give you that.
Three years? Oh god, longest fucking span of time in my entire fucking life of sitting on my hands so I don’t get ahead of everyone else.
Maus had a dream where I had baked the “breakfast log” (imagine a Yule Log, but, it’s eggs, ham, and cheese with a mustard parsley sauce), and we sat down to ate it. I started eating my slice and I went, “This amazing, it’s so delicious!” Then I floated up from my chair, and the roof/clouds parted and as I slid into the bright light of the heavens he could hear me go, “It’s so gooooooo….”
That about sums up my coming apotheosis… hey, a wunk can dream!
If only I wasn’t cursed.
Oh, no, not that curse. The Holley curse? Oh, no, broken years ago, you know, when I stopped being a Holley and started being a Wolfstein. Kinda helped with the thrashing in my bed thing, but, *sigh* still a ways to go, work cut out for me.
It’s the curse of having to be perceived to be known. You know, existence. I wish I’d only look, but I have to touch it. You’d think I could only smell, but I must taste it. I flog myself with a desire I cannot unload, but I must. I must suffer the perceptions of others upon me at my most tortured moments just to be seen, I’ve concluded, and worst of it is that I’m not even there when it’s happening.
Neither are they.
There is no accordance where I’m simply known by social osmosis, where I’m considered for just taking up space, and because of that, sometimes, I burgeon to such an immensity that everything that stays near risks being blown away when its imminence is fulfilled.
It’s the Tailifesto, though. It’s always been about the wag.
I am a man with a certain set of specialized skills. And why wouldn’t I be?
I’ve been training my entire life for the now.
It’s just a turn of the spirit. After all this time, it’s just a glance of spiritual posture, casting itself aside and onto the glittering waters of the annihilative lakes of indiscretion.
It’s a turn I already knew how to do, but, then I grew up and promptly forgot all about it.
The most awe inspiring thing inevitability teaches us is how utterly impossible it seems the entire fucking time. To you, perhaps, it is a child being ridiculous. But to the inside, it’s every moment of existence, it is the wag. And to everyone who’s had the misfortune of having to suffer the disturbance of my discharge, it’s watching something teach itself how to how.
And how!
The universe doesn’t give for a hysterical blob of baby intent on growing a tail, because how horrifying would that be? I mean, that was the plan? To use the power of imagination and will it into existence?
Yeah, that was the plan.
And see, here’s the thing, that ain’t gonna work, oh no, this ain’t no “trust me bro.” That might work on your friends, but that don’t work on me. What we need to stop the pain, the gnashing of teeth, the constant fear that maybe I’m the villain in someone else’s story, is a mutually agreed upon concrete plan to make sure such inept childish shit never happens again.
The beautiful thing about reality is that it’s true. And the truth doesn’t have it’s own miserable pile of secrets to get in the way of this mutually agreed upon concrete plan, because whatever may be concrete, is already agreed upon because, well, it’s true. It’s so simple!
And that concrete plan?
Well, if they saw my face, could I still take that bow? Though now I know my place, if science will allow, will they know me? I’m all alone, like it’s some kind of test, and, well, my how how I have grown… will they know me now? The human race, with their collective brow; will they know me now?
My, how I have grown, will they know me? Will they?
Will they know me now?
I had to learn that transcendence without an implementation plan is another blank wall with someone else’s heaven projected onto it for you to yearn for.
A convenient little excavation site.
I prefer the darkness. There, no one can see they need to save you.
I held on.