by Megan Boyle
10:04PM: just going to insert ‘abandoned’ now, in parts where i thought i’d write more and stopped.
10:05–11:59PM: abandoned.
AUGUST 10, 2013
1:08AM: keep losing my goddamned e-cigarette batteries. keep. keep losing. stood to look and got dizzy. heart beats faster when i stand up. in a rap it’d be like: ‘heart beats faster when i stand up [noise that goes from low to high, like when something ‘powers up’ in a game or something shit why do i know this sound, it’s like ‘d-oooyyyyyy-ing?’]’ then the beat drops.
1:51AM: bought ‘turns turns turns’ EP by majical clouds from itunes. think it’s actually ‘cloudz.’ shit. i always forget um. the main idea of this, liveblog. which is that…nothing is permanent…or something. i think the main idea was to feel like things were more permanent/i had more agency. er. i don’t think permanence was addressed. i completely forget my introduction to this. the prelude…i’m laughing…‘prelude to a liveblog’…one of keats’ uh, lesser-known…very rare…you can only see it if you do a tour of his house, it’s like, in a journal that’s kind of falling apart, they keep the journal in a clear bulletproof plastic case…bulletproof…it needs to be…you don’t need to know why it needs to be bulletproof, it just is…it’s not even open to the page with ‘prelude to a liveblog,’ because that part, he actually…um. he ripped it out before he died, actually. he was too ashamed.
people think a poem about a ‘grecian urn’ is like…[something]…but a lot of those same people think what i’m doing is [something else, bad]. i don’t know that to be true. this is just a feeling i have. i’m laughing. what the hell am i trying to say. peace b witchoo keats. bummer about your name being almost the same as ‘yeats.’ bet that gets you rolling over in your grave.
wonder how many poetry M.F.A.s’ first exposure to keats and yeats was ‘cemetery gates.’ ‘oddly enough’ i knew about keats and yeats a few years before i knew about the smiths (or knew…that those names were mentioned in a song i knew by a band called ‘the smiths’).
people don’t really talk about the smiths much, in contrast to a period in my life where some of my close friends were into them.
i like them. i like morrissey. what the hell is with morrissey. what is that thing. gotta love him. i have told msword to stop capitalizing ‘morrissey’ three times but it keeps doing it, i feel like that’s morrissey’s fault, he’s doing that. gotta love him. what a polarizing fellow. morrissey and DFW: polarizing. that means they’re doing something right, i think. think i feel a default interest in anything that seems polarizing due to not really knowing what i like/want…interested in things that cause strong feelings in people…no, not accurate, i’m not interested in religion or politics. also i know what i like/want. i think. mostly. shit i don’t know. what i’m doing right now is…i’m trying to make up an idea about myself. i think people do this easily. they’re like ‘hey, i’m [this thing].’ guess i did make up an idea like that: ‘hey, i’m…i don’t know.’
whew!
3:22AM: chewing 30mg adderall IR with incisors. alvie made a nasty stank poop. laid one hell of a grecian urn.
5:20AM: hearing voice of [omitted] in my head saying ‘is the liveblog getting in the way of other ways you could be being productive?’ not his voice. it’s not my voice. voiceless thing. wish my inner monologue had a definite voice. sometimes i remember people’s voices or like, if i’m tired or zany/lighthearted i’ll ‘hear’ a voice pop in. going to try to discern the voice of the thing doing the thinking…the baseline voice of that thing…i don’t like when people say ‘voice’ when they talk about like, ‘the voice of this story.’ i’m not talking about that. er. kind of. you could say i’m talking about that i guess. what i’m wanting to talk about is the actual…if my inner monologue could speak the way i can talk, how would that voice sound. you would think ‘it would sound like my talking voice,’ i bet. but no. when i hear a recording of my speaking voice it’s never like ‘oh yeah, that’s me.’ they showed this really well in ‘being john malkovitch,’ when someone is inside the malkovitch and looking through his eyes and his voice is sort of muffled and vibrating. contains more bass.
WHAT VOICES MY INNER MONOLOGUE SOUNDS LIKE (IT’S LIKE A COMBINATION OF THESE, IF YOU COULD COMBINE THESE THINGS INTO A NEUTRAL VOICELESS THING WHICH IS ALSO SOMEHOW ABLE TO TALK):
• john arbuckle (surprised that’s the first thing that came up. john from ‘garfield.’ haha)
• daria (monotonous qualities more than sarcastic qualities)
• batty from ‘fern gully’ (voiced by robin williams jesus…i’m just listing these as they come up)
• keep picturing an inhumanly beautiful faceless slender man who is like, just out of reach, who kind of wants me to touch him but is content with—‘being wispy,’ i thought
• the ‘ringo’ character from ‘yellow submarine’ but not british
• when i’m crying sounds like a dialogue between ‘hal’ from ‘2001’ and the shoe from ‘who framed roger rabbit’ before the evil guy lowers it into the vat of liquid that destroys cartoons
• why are they all cartoons…what the hell…interesting…
• goldie hawn (felt pressured to think of an actual person, think my speaking voice just sounds like her)
• the voice my friend brian and i used to do when we’d ‘do the voice’ of my dog, lady (kind of like the ‘belly voice’ jerry seinfeld would want to ‘do’ to his girlfriend’s belly when she was sleeping)
6:17AM: oh great it’s morning again time to turn out the lights…almost…shit. no, not going to sleep. will be zany sleepless megan around alec today. everything will be fine. but then, even if it’s not? still okay.
1:29PM: don’t want to talk about it. goddamnit. haha. haha. like nelson. wish my keyboard would make a sound like nelson going ‘haha’ when i’d type. or like. just sometimes. random intervals, to keep me guessing. having weird period-like cramping again but it is way past my period and no way i’m pregnant.
have been listening to ‘what that was’ by majical cloudz on repeat since sometime last night. sad pretty song. sad in the dollar store way but it’s not like a dollar store, not depressing. it like, has the yearning of a dollar store. the quiet forgotten yearning of a dollar store.
which is all to say: this is why i think dentistry is scam. fake industry. totally made-up. what, your teeth are going to fall out? seriously? come on you just wanted to be another kind of doctor and they hadn’t invented ‘tooth doctor’ yet, come on. jig is up. fake ass ‘d.d.s.’ jig is up. you know it’s just ‘d.d.s.’ because they were still in the process of figuring out how to spell ‘dentist’ and gave up. that’s like if i was ‘megan boyle, a.a.s.d.f.a.d.f.a.d.f.s.d.f.’ in fact that is me. that is what i am, that is my suffix. i am a special kind of doctor. i specialize in helping people find the best angles to tilt their heads. fuck you this is important. tilt specialist. licensed certified full tilt specialist, a.a.s.d.f.a.d.f.a.d.f.s.d.f. if you think this is bullshit, fine. just don’t come crying to me when that far-right corner of your ceiling suddenly disappears from your peripheral vision.
1:37PM: i don’t feel like going back in time to talk about how a few nights ago i ‘went all out’ and bought a lot of carbs. have not even mentioned that i’ve eaten a box of cereal since then. oh my heavens.
shit i want to do laundry before i see alec. also showering: major issue, must address. major. oh my heavens. alright guess i’ll get this shitshow on the road. here we go. heavens. my heavens.
wait before i do that, i want to…
IMPORTANT THING:
• it doesn’t help to write to-do lists in this.
1:47PM: how are people so uniformly relaxed about whether there’s a comma in four-digit numbers or not. how has there been no authority about what this should be, officially. how is this, of all things, something we haven’t ‘figured out yet.’ this is what ended up undecided for so long. all this time. slid through the loophole. no one cares. in
500 years people are going to type like ‘e;oiweu w pwe sdsp lp;l brbr.’ i don’t care about that, actually. it’s just a comma, chill out. the number is still at least 999 whether there’s a comma or not. all is good. all is quiet on the comma front.
2:31PM: cats seem to have lost their taste for food that is not the mechanically separated and poisonous, i think, fancy feast. fancy feast makes ‘appetizers,’ which are smaller and more expensive and feature upscale packaging. they are just like, fish. like a can of tuna, but probably not tuna, and in a vacuum-sealed plastic tray. cats hate ‘em. they have clearly lost their appetite for the real fishes. what have i done. my son my son what have ye done.
2:49PM: i’m afraid to update this. just. afraid. what the hell is my life. i’m devoting my life to this thing. think i’ve made it impossible to ‘call me out’ on anything regarding being a shitty wasteful person. if anyone ever says anything like that to me i’ll just be like ‘oh, you must have read my liveblog.’ it would be a sick person who’d want to pick on a person as sick as me. it would be like having sex with someone in a coma. who is related to you. you sickos, i know you’re out there. actually it’d be nice if someone would…kick my ass…somehow…show me a better way to live…better ways to think…feel like this is something that needs to be demonstrated to me. i am open for beatings or harshly worded anythings.
6:23PM: need to get more cat food plus shower plus laundry goddamnit i just want to be on a porch drinking mountain dew with a little something else in it and…seems like that’s all…all i want…yeah. should i eat one of the last adderall to keep me going, or what. what the hell. the stuff about worrying about getting ‘called out’ seems like my dad, so great, now i know that, so great. great. sometimes people try farming. should i let the cats roam free and try to work at a farm. free cats back into the ocean…where all the fancy feast in the world awaits them…the fanciest of feasts…wouldn’t they be happy? in the ocean? that is an awful thought no no especially because shirley has been good with her peeing all day. will it ever be back to normal…need ‘life adderall’ to get me back to ‘normal’…will i even feel the effects…mountain dew on a porch…a little something else in it…when can i go home though, do i ever get to go home at the end of this…
7:26PM: swept and mopped. thought i wouldn’t be able to do it without eating phenethylamine or an opiate. opiates will make me more tired. don’t want to eat adderall. imagined trying therapy again. would be a struggle to leave apartment. then the talking, explaining context. i’d be smiling like the last time i tried it because i’m always smiling because things don’t want to hurt you as much if you’re smiling. it would take forever. i would be a smiling idiot for like four months, saying ‘well, you know, i guess it’s just a slump.’ imagine not doing that, like going in, allowing my face to be like it is now with no muscles tensed, shaking therapist’s hand, saying ‘i’m going to try something different. i’m going to try not smiling or bullshitting with you at all. i have not done this before.’ then six months or something later when i’m…i don’t know…when it’s not like this, the therapist would say ‘i knew it, i knew from the minute you said you didn’t want to bullshit me: this one would not be like the other hopeless cases. congratulations, you’ve made it to the other side.’ she would hang a photo of us in her waiting room. in the photo our arms would wrap behind each other’s shoulders with the casual, natural interdependence of two people steadying their balance after running a marathon. the other therapists would have initially mixed feelings about the photo, but pretty soon similar photos of themselves with patients would cover an entire waiting room wall, under a banner of cut-out letters spelling ‘greetings from the other side!’ between stacks of magazines on a nearby table where there would be a little upright plastic apparatus proffering free ‘tickets to the other side: simple time management strategies for jumpstarting your progress in therapy’ pamphlets, that would open to a page with the heading ‘1. STOP SMILING, YOU’RE NOT OKAY!’ opposite a page with the heading ‘2. SAVING THE BULLSHIT FOR THE OTHER 23 HOURS OF THE DAY,’ and thoughtful tips under both. my therapist would keep a framed copy of our photo on her desk, to remind her of the success story that started it all. the picture was taken right after we finished the first draft of the pamphlet.
got lightheaded when i’d bend over swiffering. remembered someone saying something like, ‘don’t worry about it, there are plenty of idiots out there in the world who would really like you.’ it wasn’t that exactly. i don’t remember when it was said. it was just a lot of stuff like that. they were jokes i think, but also true. remembered sometimes people get hospitalized for ‘exhaustion.’ sounds good. it would feel bad to be there though, what they would think of me, isn’t ‘exhaustion’ just politically correct code for ‘drug problems.’ maybe i have a drug problem. a lot of my problems do seem centered around drugs. the hospital staff would know about ‘people like me.’ they would have biases. they would be required to do a bi-monthly training workshop about tolerance. it’s part of the job. the older hospital staff wouldn’t even think biased thoughts anymore. partially because of the training, mostly because they would’ve seen too many people like me and it wouldn’t matter anymore.
get a sick little annoyingly symbolic thrill when i see less of myself in my reflection. i like seeing more of me that’s not there. the least i can do is make it go away a little. make a little less of it a little more every day: the least you can do. stood in front of mirror for ‘daily inventory session’ of what remains of me from yesterday, as if my mental report of this would be directly sent to some forensics lab, which experts would analyze then send back to me, so finally i could know ‘what happened to the body’ and get some sleep. case closed.
7:59PM: brushed hair. a lot fell out. typing/saying ‘seems interesting’ or ‘seems funny’ after anything makes you sound like ‘don’t worry, i’m in control.’ a lot of the time when i say it i think i mean ‘don’t worry, it feels worse when someone is worried.’ i don’t like it when people have answers to everything but i’m like that too. most of the white parts of my eyes are red. i’ve been wearing bathing suit all day. all night. no reason to not wear other clothes. a lot of how i’m feeling right now is probably due to not sleeping for 31 hours and adderall leaving body. this is a miserable existence. thinking about what drug to eat to prepare me for the shower. jesus christ. how will i respond to alec. i want to see alec. i want a beer or something. i would fall over, maybe. maybe the e-cigarettes are making me feel faint. should i not wash my hoodie as a souvenir of this smell? the smell is really something else.
8–11:59PM: abandoned.
AUGUST 11, 2013
12:46AM: responded to alec’s message after i’d resigned to ‘a depressed night of not responding.’
12:57AM: feeling better. tweeted with tao. debated ordering pizza. listening to the ‘hole in my heart that can only be filled by you’ song from duane reade yesterday. dollar store song. ate 1mg xanax for motivation to shower or do laundry and walked around, pausing arbitrarily but with ‘doom intervals.’ have been wearing bathing suit from freshman year of high school since last night. red light, rainbow lights, and soft yellow light are on. it feels nice. ate 5mg oxycodone. wonder how tao is watching ‘oblivion.’ on phone? he is in the UK without a computer. clicked on a ‘these horses have better hair than you’ link. they did.
[unsure]–4:[something]AM: read ‘frowns need friends too,’ feeling comforted and sometimes laughing. watched ‘the office.’ ate 1mg xanax, avocado with salt and lime, and what remained of a bag of ‘pirate’s booty’ cheese puffs it seemed like i had hidden in a cabinet. at 2AM i saw alec had responded to my message at 1:30AM saying we could hang out if i picked him up in bed stuy now. hadn’t showered yet and felt sleepy, said i was going to stay in.
10:[something]AM: woke and saw clock. thought ‘great, up early, i’ll sleep for another ten minutes.’
1:37PM: woke. feeling groggy. alec and his friends are driving back to rhode
island tonight, i just read in a new message. he asked if i wanted to come too.
2:49PM: ate half a ‘personal-sized’ watermelon, 800mg choline, 1.2g aniracetam, 800mg phethylamine. driving to rhode island at 6PM. ‘personal jesus’ by depeche mode is playing in my head only it’s ‘your own…personal…melon.’ this sometimes happens when i think about ‘personal-sized’ melons.
3:17PM: before leaving: buy cat food, e-cigarette cartridges, shower, pack clothes. shit. packing. gonna get moving with this.
5:57PM: two women walked behind me as i walked from pickles & pies to waldbaum’s. one said ‘i got a grandson that’s 18 years old. pshh, i ain’t got time for this!’
saw a gold cube on the ground in the post office parking lot. it was near where the woman in the cape yelled ‘asshole’ at me. picked it up. think it’s a bouillon cube. cube of bouillon. considered putting it back, in case a homeless person wanted to use it in their food, then thought ‘no one will ever see it. this is my cube.’
in waldbaum’s a dad-looking guy pushing a shopping cart said ‘what kind of soda does shannon like?’ someone said ‘sprite.’ he said ‘i won’t get sprite then.’
the girl i like, candy’s friend who used the ‘store card’ for me and doesn’t move her face much, was monitoring the self-checkout line. when i passed her to exit the sun was hitting the back of her head and she was smiling at whoever was talking to her. it was nice to see her smile.
fed cats, washed dishes, laid out extra food and water, packed clothes in a hurry when i got home around 5:45PM. sweat a lot while doing dishes. took off dress. removed sheets and things from bed, put comforter and pillows in closet, and stood/propped mattress upright against the ‘cat tower’ to prevent pee while i’m gone. still seems like there will be pee. looks like some of the pee from the mattress pad has sank into the mattress. going to do a cleaning/scrubbing bonanza when i return and throw away mattress pad.
