book 1

Y ou ask me if I feel flat. You ask if I feel dysphoria. Am I feeling stable? Am I having any medication side effects? You are asking me to describe the landscaping of Scotland and to map out for you missing landmarks and changed terrain. Can I first visit this strange land? Can you show me what a mountain is? Where it is suppose to be and where it should not be? Can you dip me in the river and let me feel what is water? Can you let me see its path and the valley it has carved? Can you offer to me the native grasses and show me where they grow and what a flower is?  Throw me a fucking Rand McNally for chrissake. You are showing me a goddamn Highlights activity. You want me to find the differences between two pictures and you only offer me one of the two. I don't know what's missing. I don't know what belongs. I don't know how many chairs the table had or if the treehouse had a ladder. I don't know if the child is suppose to be missing a tooth. I walk in the cold. I...

 I stood at the window in my studio and slid the locks open. With a thrill I pushed the window open and felt the cold January air bite my skin. I lowered myself to perch on the sill, pulled my droopy cardigan closer around me as I fished a clove cigarette from the barely smoked pack, and lit it with  the excited abandon of a 38 year old mother of three. The incense burning on the shelf near by swirled thickly, filling the room overbearingly. None escaped the open window. Instead, the draft pulled frosty air into the room and I immediately questioned my spontaneous, deviant, indulgence. Fuck it. We've come too far.  I lit the cigarette and took a long drag, watching the smoke from the lit ember immediately pull into the room. This plan was obviously built on romantic images from movies, of some needy or even satisfied soul stealing a moment of solitude and waiving away the surgeon general's warning as they lived in the moment and indulged a destructive act of abandon. I fe...