07.23.02

i binged and purged last night. it was transcendental.

wondering if i'm out of my mind? let me explain.

i binged on 276 juicy, intense pages of evelyn lau's runaway: diary of a street kid. i devoured the entire journal in one five-hour sitting. the intimations of her fourteen-year old self filled me to overflowing with glimmers of hope, lightning bolts of fear, tidal waves of sadness, and a connection to a girl who was fourteen in 1986,who walked the streets of vancouver and asked herself the same never-quieted questions that go bump in my mind in the velvet of deep night.

for five hours, i was her and she was me. i cried tears for her pain, for my pain, for the crossing of planes that meant that time did not connect us to manufacture meaning out of the haze together. i cried because her words were breaking a code that has been tattooed on my skin for years, that i had never been able to extract language from. she made real all the unspoken yearnings that i never dared whisper into my tear-soaked pillow at night.

her dilemma, "i want to do something good in this world. i want a life for myself, a life not chosen at random and too easily disposed of, but a life that will create something concrete for people. it isn't enough just to have visions but nothing in my hands to give.

i don't know how to live reasonably. i don't know how to stop from being hurt at the most insignificant things, from being overresponsive to people, except by shutting and locking doors firmly, checking them twice to make sure no one can penetrate. How does one manage?

I want people to be good to each other, but I don't know how to begin changing anything because I myself can barely cope with other people and with being alive."

the dangers of living life on the borderline of extremes, swinging between intense attachment and excruciating detachment. all the while seeking for the key that will make you click into place, unlock the secret door that has kept you apart all those years, to show you the secret telephone lines of DNA that connect you to every other living, breathing being on the planet.

i read for hours. i wept, i laughed, i wanted to scream. i emerged from the book shaky, feeling as if i had discovered my twin sister, tucked away in the folds of time, and she had given me a key.

and then i purged. i opened my journal, and unleashed a torrent of words; sharp, round, coiled, jagged, salty, sweet...a sea of words floating in my tears, pounding onto the page, marking where i had been touched with purple ink. I swallowed my sister's words and then gave back what they had released in me, translated the heiroglyphics of repressed emotion into words and words and more words. my words.

at the end i was exhausted, and there were 10 pages covered in lines and lines of small, angular purple scribbles of me.

i can't say that i'll ever be the same.

***

xxx,

moonbird

***

design by: outbox