In Diegesis

Today I slapped a man in Acting 101. We were playing an innocent game of charades, basically; everyone wrote a situation onto a piece of paper and two volunteers would pick one at random and improvise accordingly. I wrote “two people cooking in a small kitchen”, but it was never selected.  Jeff Wilkins wrote “A man touching a woman’s breast. if 2 guys, then one was just touching the other’s girlfriend’s breast.” Jeff Wilkins is a naturally good-looking, wonderfully curly-haired West-Coast surfer turned East-Coast skater film student. He’s always making jokes and smiling, which is fortunate for him, because he has a very white and proportionate smile. He and his friend, Owen (who seems to be pretty chill and gentle-natured),  selected his own situation and put it back, I assume for Jeff’s novelty’s sake (they ended up acting out a scene where they are out of place at a party; the professor then threw in ex-girlfriends, to which Jeff commented how Owen’s ex had “nice…breasts”, and on and on and on until invented persona was saturated with awkwardness).

I volunteered next with a kid named Evan (I had volunteered at the same time as Jeff and Owen as well, but I timidly let friendship unite). Evan gestured for me to pick a piece of paper (out of Jeff’s hat, which the teacher had borrowed), so I did. I read Jeff’s chicken-scratch pretty quickly, because I’m well used to my own, but it took Evan a moment to decipher it. I read aloud “man” and “woman” when I noticed Evan couldn’t read it; the class laughed. Evan is very good-looking as well: taller, broad-shouldered, symmetrical face, good color, could probably bench press at least my weight. When the professor noted our initial confusion over the handwriting and nature of the scene, he suggested picking out another one, but Evan insisted it would be fine. “A challenge,” he said. I forget how it was decided that I would be the adulterated, but it was.

I should have talked to him. We should have had an outline. We were just Ian and Evan; as Ian, I could have said, “How do you want to do this?” I could have said, “I was thinking about physical violence, would that be okay? No? Well, how do you want to talk then?” But no one had predesigned their improvs beforehand, and in reality, these thoughts didn’t occur to me until afterwards.

I called him “Scott” (my father’s name). My voice was squeaking a smidge, my eyes were thinly caked with moisture. “What the fuck…” I murmured. He looked back at me blankly, unsure what to say. I reared my hand back and slapped him across the face, not gently. Not bitch-smack. But a slap. Then I grabbed his shirt and threw him against the wall. “You fuc- assho-” and then the professor was between us. I was still acting, still outside myself. The professor told us to sit back down after our first and only try. Everyone else had done their situations twice.

After that, the professor deliberated with the volunteers on how to approach the scenes before beginning. He mentioned something about us staying after class, and I turned around in my chair and asked Evan if I had hurt him; he said “Nah.” “We’re cool, all’s good?” “Yeah, no problem.”

The next fifteen minutes were the worst. I thought to myself, how could I hit someone? How could I let myself do that? I was acting, yeah, but not even fucking sincerely, because that is NOT how I would react if someone was touching Erica’s breast. I don’t know what I would do, but I wouldn’t get violent. I’d ask Erica if she loved the person or if she felt happy well before I ever got violent – but there was no girlfriend to talk to in the scene. It wasn’t complete, and I wasn’t supposed to just be me – or was I?

Fuck this professor for spewing all this bullshit about determinism and motivation. Life is about reason and empathy and decency and love, not choosing the path of least resistance, not all ego-glorification. What was I thinking?!  I latched onto some foreign, violent abstraction – something I know from seeing other people in real life, in movies, not something I’ve observed in my own behavior.

What am I going to say? I’m sorry, what’s this guy’s name? Is it really Scott? I’m sorry, Scott, Professor; I was just reacting how…ugh. Maybe I can’t act. I can’t let my tempered instincts dictate my judgments and if that is what I need to do to act, then fuck it – I’ll drop this class. I could leave right now, drop this class today, and only have 6 classes instead of 7.

You just don’t want to apologize, you’re terrified of responsibility, especially the responsibility of actions performed with ENCOURAGED, DELIBERATE INSINCERITY. I’m not going to drop. I can pass this class. I’ll stick around after class and say,

“Hey, sorry about that, Evan. Again.”

“It’s cool, man.”

And then he thanked the professor for breaking it up and the professor told the two of us an anecdote about accidentally making a guy go limp on the set of Law & Order and the director being all pissed off, and I’m not really sure what the point of the story was – but afterwards, I felt kind of okay leaving, as though a little subjective validation, however seemingly inane, is all I really needed.

Right outside the exit doors of UCross, there was Jeff and Owen, skateboards waiting obediently by their feet, talking with Evan, who had a cigarette in his mouth and his back to the doors I was emerging from. “Peace, guys,” I said. “See you,” they all said in unison, without hardly looking at me. And we all liked it that way.

…Welcome

to the ode

space where we

race in between teen dreams to where

we know nowhere is where we are

so far facing each other

from distant stars;

Come back soon to the ode

space ruins where my abode

tastes glue onto geniuses’

and saints’ stone

faces who’ll

be forever old,

and doin’ everything i have

ever known and owning noth-

-ing but home;

Take me far

from this state in a(nything)

car; let me make-believe the sky

is different this time, let my soles

touch the floor of a bar

in Canada, and i’ll do

the best I can, always always

doing the best I can; i’m not

doing the best I can; in this city

i’m not (-even twenty-one-) doing

the best I can. I’m

not, i’m no

t, i’m noth………………….

…ing, plzzztakemy

t0mb to-the odspac roo-

oooooo0ooooooooo0oooooo0o0o0o0o0ooo00oo00o00o000

0000000000…

o

oom.

(i’m gonna cry

like a teenager if I keep

this up): i still feel

sorry, Kevin Roche, for being so cruel,

Matt Hajec, Doug McClellan, i let people hurt

you, i hurt you; i am sorry to the little black girl

whose arm I twisted, because i didn’t know how

to teach her chess; i’m sorry to all the people

i can’t show my love, it’s tearing me a part,

hate is tearing me apart, love is

everywhere, and i am

sorry:

Janelle – Freya Ray Eva Leah Heather etcetera lovers -

Keith – i still can’t believe i pissed on Colleen’s air mattress -

Jeanne – i hardly remember any of the natives’ names in Chevak, just the faces -

Judy – my mother, and your siblings Peg, Claire, and i was five years old at Lefty’s funeral -

Jim – uncle Jim, uncle Joe, uncle Jack, aunt Denise and especially you aunt Sue -

Scott – Karen Cathy Doug (i remember the police, your screams, i remember your sobs, I feel-) Jolene Randy (whose father just died; Randy, i love you, and i’m sorry) -

Rose – Bob, aunt Carrie (Where was i when DJ died? where was my love? does it mean anything that i was angry for days, that for a few hours in artificially-lit darkness i shed some tears in between these monolithic philadelphia buildings? for weeks on my way to and from classes i sang “Gone” by Kanye West and changed the words to “we’re walking home / i’m walking home / it’s too late / it’s too late / he’s gone”) -

Forest – aunt Laurie, aunt Carrie, my father, my father, my father, my father, my father Scott -

my brother, Matthew, I’m sorry for getting angry at you for us never meeting each other, some things are bigger than we ever know, may you rest peacefully in our hearts,

Erica,

Sam – Amanda, Lizzy, Kim, Katy, Leah, Gretchen, ex-girlfriends and potential ex-girlfriends are just beautiful girl friends and now i speak to them as much as i speak to most of these people -

Nathan – Chris, Sam Dz, Steve, those ancient Collegiate Academy friends -

Jess & Jess & Sam & Adam & Katy & Ashley & Molly & Marie & Tylor & Kyle & Jenna and endless amounts of people standing certainly but never knowing where each is relative to one another (or is that just me?) -

Danielle – Mike, John, Bryan, Gabriel, Samuel, Joshua, Sean, Steve, Frank, Katie, DJ and what’s the youngest’s name?, “me and my cousins and you and your cousins, it’s a line that’s always runnin’” -

Corry people – Max, Kevin, Kevin, Brad, Mikey, Colin (i forgave you ages ago), Doug (that stutter joke i made on the bus in middle school was beyond callous), Doug, Adam, Dustin, Rachel and Dana (i was infatuated with you both, why don’t we just Say It All?) and

Shane, i don’t hate you, i just don’t know how to love you anymore – how do I love

all of you?; i love

all of you

none of the time,

and i can’t wait

to see you, but I am

always waiting here

in ode

space.

(I’m gonna keep

this up; here comes “Bros”

by Panda Bear: I’m not trying

to forget you, whoa-oh-

oh! I’m just trying to be

my own. Come and give me

the space I need, and you

may and you may and you may and you

may find that we’re alright.) I’m not (-even

crying over you, whoa oh-) going to talk to you

as much as i could before you

die, I’m not going to think

of you (dying)

as much as i could, I’m going to

forget you most times, but I’ll

dream of you

sometimes, and we all know that

in the fullness of time, every moment is

everlasting, every dream as much a dream

as the last one. I’m not doing the best

I can, and I want to know that

it’s not good enough for you; This Is

My Art, and it has

no start (because immortal

lovers can’t be torn

apart), and it never

ends, (be-

-cause

There’s a dissatisfaction settling into my feelings regarding this journaling that I need to address more fully than I did in Journal 2. I want to tell my story, I’ve wanted to for some time. It began last year as I slowly emerged from the haze of ignorant adolescence to the lucidity of inspired education. I began seeing my life as a story, as a spiritual continuum with constant relation to beauty. I wanted to share it, I still do. I had fantasies of Keith visiting me and Janelle during my summer at her place; we’d start some drinks early and then I’d ask if it’d be cool for me to share my life story as beautifully as I see it. Hours later, I’d be explaining my freshman year at college developments and how they relate to my life and from what spring in my Soul they originate. That never happened; I was too timid. These journals are the first step towards the grandaddy, the beautiful. It’s starts by me simply sharing and rendering the story not so novel. From there I will try to make it timeless, endlessly appreciable.

That’s the ideology. The practical matter is, no way could I just sit down and summon the beauty of my life. My memory is awful. I’ve got to get back into these things, these moments, deal with them in gradations of remembrance and poetic understanding.

Already these journals have conjured so many questions in my mind, loose ends of meaning, poetic points that are mentioned lightly but I know are absolutely integral to the story of my soul. I mean, stories are pockets of contextualized life, always relative to something: to this circumstance or that happiness or this sorrow or that ending. When I say my life has been mostly perceived in a relative manner to my mom, that’s a true story, but what exactly does that mean? Well, the philosopher Ian in a detached-yet-earnest fashion would probably say that my life has been constantly relative to Agapic, un-conditional love, that indeed it was that relativity that made me fall so cathartically in love with Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love. However, there is something different between understanding the concept and feeling the meaning of the concept’s contextualization, there’s something imperfect about living which makes life all the more tragically beautiful. Did my mom love me truly unconditionally? To the extent that she was able to, Yes I am sure she did, but in her own imperfect way. And it’s that imperfection which I perceive and interpret emotionally to be the Agapic-love standard to which I understand my life relative to. It’s that imperfection which is going to sink me into such a deep depression as I become more and more estranged from it.

In many ways, depression is the Lover’s reaction to a dwindling sense of value. I cried, because I missed love, because I was valuable enough to cry over. SIGH. Ignorant yes, but innocent too; they go hand-in-hand.

I tend to think that I remember my willing of life to happen when I was 12 years old, at Andy Jackson’s birthday party. Andy Jackson was a bully who used to tackle and beat me up a good deal in 6th grade. (Of course, that’s not who he is or probably who even was, but hey – metaphysics is messy and who’s the author here?). He did beat me up and that’s a fact. Colin Bailey was my friend and he used to encourage Andy to do it. He gave me pain, and I learned how to not cry. Yeah, I did have to learn (I’ve spent most of my life learning this, and the last year i’ve spent trying to un-learn it). Years before, Shane Craker and I were getting changed into dry clothes after swimming at the YMCA and some boys decided to get their kicks by whipping us with wet towels. I cried; Shane didn’t. He was proud of himself and I felt ashamed. I remember wanting my mom to say that the injustice was the same and that the reaction didn’t make much difference, but she didn’t. I don’t remember what she said.

I remember twice that Andy tackled me in the snow. Pain feels weird in bundles of snow-clothes: muted, maybe like an Avalanches song, but poignant and effective, like an Avalanches song. Once was by the ditch behind my house (but in the elementary school’s property). I was running, Colin was chanting. I really can only remember the fear. I don’t even think it hurt all that bad that time, but the fear can make you cry – even after it happens and you’re not scared anymore, just hurt. Lying in the cold snow, but it’s not cold, because I’m wearing lots of cotton, it’s strange to think that after someone tackles someone else (intending for pain), they are lying on top of them in typically intimate fashion. I don’t remember much of Andy’s mass like, say, I know Erica’s mass, but Erica and I have cuddled a lot more…

Another time in the snow was behind Colin’s house. Again, it was the three of us and I don’t know what the hell we were doing, but of course it happened again, and this time I snapped. I leapt onto my feet only to fall back down onto my knees to pummel Andy with punches. I wanted to hurt him, I wanted to destroy his chubby face. I hit him with my soft gloves, and he laughed and Colin laughed. I cried and punched and they laughed harder.

Once we were in class (there was a storm outside and recess was kept inside), and Andy pushed me on the floor and he and Jimmy kicked me in the stomach and ribs. I crawled across the floor, looking for help; Colin was laughing – what else? I got up and got punched; across the wall, by the sink, jogging past the teacher’s desk, finally ending up in the corner between a tall filing cabinet and the wall, Jimmy stamped his four half-fingers hard all over my stomach and chest. Then the weasel with the southern accent, Weston, came over and dug his thumb into my shoulder just because at that moment, he felt like being a buzzard for pain. Days later, I would punch him in the cafeteria, because I was friends with the other kids. He didn’t even mind.

Once I was just minding my own during recess, and near the end of the period I got slammed harder than ever before by Andy. We must have both flown at least a few feet. I learned later that Colin and Andy had been on the opposite end of the playground from me (about twenty to thirty yards) when Colin said something to this effect: Andy, nail Ian as hard as you can. I laid on the ground, tears stained on my face while the rest of the kids went inside. After everyone had gone, I got up, wiped my face with my hands and returned to class. (Later I would hear Colin say joyfully in front of me: that’s the fastest I’ve ever seen Andy run, and he’s a big guy!)

I don’t know why I went to his birthday party. It’s hard to explain, especially because I really can’t remember it all that vividly, but I do know that I really appreciated these guys just a year before. In the 5th grade, we had lots of laughs together: Andy cheated off me for history tests, Colin was as friendly and gentle as can be, the three of us were in a group called CIA (after our initials) when Mr. Sperry held the paper airplane tournament. Andy threw a plane that I had designed and it stayed in the air for a record-breaking 23-seconds. I guess everything has to crash eventually.

It was out in the woods, on Andy’s family’s hunting ranch. To this day I recall that spot of forest as one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, but then again, wasn’t it some ancient Greek that believed we find beauty in the face of terror? To me now the night is a blur, and I guess I should say at this point that eventually I’ll write this all as beautifully as I can – it’ll be a book – but now’s just for the sake of it. Having said that, I don’t remember what insults I endured, when Colin told Andy to make me tap, when Jimmy and Doug shoved porn in my face (they were all fascinated that I abstained from masturbation). Perhaps the worst was that some moments were so awesome and loving. It was a birthday party! I climbed terrifyingly up 100-foot-tall boulders! Honest to god, we played a game of capture the flag where the flags were atop two enormous rocks which only had, like, a couple avenues of climbing…

I did guard my team’s flag, but that’s not when I seriously considered jumping. It was later, I don’t remember when exactly. I had abandoned the group; all we had been doing was walking, mostly in trios or duos. The last things I had heard from the Doug and Jimmy duo had been how much they hated Colin because of how mean he was. I had to escape, had to get alone; Oh, cripes, is it too poetically blunt to say I was already alone (who the hell else was getting physically tortured? – After Colin’s request for me to tap, Andy dug his knee into my back and pulled my hair up towards his chest). I found a bench and sat.

I sat atop a tall precipice of rock. Trees opened up to my left and right to make a V-aesthetic, funnelling my view into dead-ahead. I cried. Why did my friends do this to me? This was not fate, surely, but free will – and on my part too, because in some awful way I consented, always giving benefit to the doubt like an ignorant masochist who in reality despises pain. For the first time, the option made itself clear: I could jump. I want to jump.

And ever since, I’ve had to grapple with that decision.

Life is given. I don’t remember exactly when, or if, I willed it to be. My life has been perceived (by me) in constant relative terms to my relation with the god of my life – my mother, the giver. I spent the last decade getting sentimental about getting older. I dramatized my relationships; yeah, I fantasized about all my loved ones dying – Keith, Janelle, my mom, my dad, Sam, other folks (in GA I fantasized about Corry friends dying) – not because I wanted you to die, but because I wanted to feel how close I was to you. I wanted to cry over our distance, and if you’ll believe me – look into my face and believe this stoic philosophical mind – I really did cry over our distance. It was all drama, yes, but it happened and by god did I sob.