The Patterns of the Mind

It is possible to be out of words. I know because it terrifies me as often as it doesn’t. It comes and goes.

I am a writer, and it happens all the time, but being out of words is easy, you just write some more until you can start to fit them together and make a little story. Make them into something people like to look at, look through, make their own, or project back onto you.

Then again, it is possible to be so full of words you are choked by them into a crippling type of silence. They could be your own words, they could be the words of those around you, it has become harder and harder to tell. And there are so many people around you. So many, many voices. Telling you what to do and feel and think, how to act, who to believe!!! Who to believe.

But you need to decide that for yourself.

Through the noise, you peel back the curtain and you make your selections. You carve out a cause and you make a sign. Women and children and men in any order. So many voices around you. Perhaps they’ll tell you what to say. But it’s nothing you haven’t heard before only now it’s very loud. Only now it is louder and louder.

And the ones lifting you up are the ones holding you down. But all you want is to be touched anyway so little by little there is an erosion in the difference. It is possible the end is near or, even worse, the beginning. It could be we are only just at the beginning of increased cruelty.

Well, some of us. (It’s a continuum, you see. Don’t you see?)

This seems most likely, although they would prefer you don’t speak about that.

“They.”

Such a spooky term to use. How jarring to have it fall from my fingertips so easily. And to understand exactly what I mean so clearly, unequivocally. (Do you?) They need to pull us apart to get inside where they can do the rest of the job they came to do.

There are cracks in the ceiling. My eyes trail over them back and forth as I listen to the voices. Listen. Listen. Listen. Sounds like skin. I suck the smoke through the gaps in my teeth. I swallow. I spit. I break a fingernail and chew.

See if you can notice the inflections in the tone, the sarcasm and the degradation. See if you can get at your own sense of worth in spite of everything else trying to convince you otherwise.

Recite the words in small phrases, small bites. Try to go fast without thinking. You know what that’s probably it- you probably just think too much. Forget it. Just select your five hundred words a day. It’s okay if this was really tough for you to put together. It’s okay if they don’t understand you right away. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.