Austin

But I can't find that calm, I feel this anxiety especially in my forearms.
and the history channel used to have this show called the universe, and sometimes in the midst of that show i would lose myself to eternity. but now I feel actively tethered to the pain of my humanity

and maybe there's solace in the existence of love, or there should be
but the very concept of love, for me, feels evacuated of meaning
like all of the hope and comfort and beauty that should fulfill and exceed the very word "love"; contained in it as in a box;
the cardboard got wet and all the meaning of the word dropped out the bottom, shattering in the dirt
or something

So now it's just a word that these people say and for brief moments it's as a salve but largely I feel the contours and emptiness of it.

And I think I need this act of dialogue, this articulation of my feelings in relation to the unadulterated positivity and beauty that I understand you to be. Because when you wrote back it was exciting and when I watched your video I felt better. And pausing from myself to write this, I think, has been sustaining.

Cognitive Dissonance

'I "should" be falling asleep.' I try to think sarcastically, but really I'm terrified of when obligations will want me to wake up and I won't believe in them. I never believe them (I seldom believe them). Sleeping Garrison always thinks it's some sort of exaggeration and everything just needs to "take a step back" or "chill out" or something. I like Sleeping Garrison a little bit better than the Garrison that's afraid that he's not going to sleep. That one is me. I like the me that isn't me more than the me that is me. Me=person typing. Or it can mean Garrison. I don't know if "or" is the right word. I don't know if any of those words were the ones I meant. Probably both. I feel like I just keep typing words and regretting them a little right before they finish. And then a whole lot more when the sentence is done. Like when I'm typing the words I think, "Yes, you're getting somewhere. Just keep trying and these small failures will add up to a Success". When that doesn't happen, I pause sadly; I think I just keep hoping it'll happen eventually. Like at the paragraph. But I think I'm done now. "Fuck."

I wanted to write about why I want to email Tao Lin. I want to email him something like,

I want to hide in your bed, and I want you to be comforted by that when you see my body under the quilt my grandmother and I made and it was the only thing I had with me when you picked me up at the airport.

But when I think that, I think "at best", he would maybe just email me back something interesting and maybe send me some interesting things. It would, if everything went "according to 'plan'", be "just another relationship" that doesn't include touching. I think that caressing someone's (my) cheek is a very good thing to happen. Once Branden cried, but he was lying on top of me so all of his tears fell on my face. It felt warm. I should have been crying, or, I think he would have been comforted if I was crying, too. I think even I wanted to cry, but wasn't. Not as much as he was anyway. But I felt relieved because his tears kept falling on my face and he would rub his face on mine so both of our faces were smeared with tears and maybe some of them were mine.

I told that story because I want someone's tears on my face. But I don't get that. So I send a lot of text messages and read Tao Lin's blog and John Campbell's webcomic and I listen to music. When I'm falling asleep, or sometimes while I'm in the process of reading or listening, I think about emailing these people and "endearingly" requesting of them to take me with them into their lives. To let me sleep in their beds and maybe help with the cleaning. I'm entirely convinced that if someone would just cry tears onto my cheeks when I wanted to cry, but wasn't really, but was comforted when the tears would smear "evenly" on both of our faces, I would be satisfied with "life" and everything.

I think that's what I wanted to say.

But I just remembered that it isn't.

I wanted to mention that I'm trying to get Branden to fulfill all of my "desires" for "social interaction". But he's "long-distance", and sometimes I don't have very good service. And I don't know where to go from there. So I pretend like "celebrities" will fill in the gaps.