I fail at being human #45: watching horror movies.

Somewhere in the long list of things I'm deeply ambivalent about is how fear doesn't feel like it used to. I remember being afraid as having a physical component that it just doesn't now, and I don't know when that changed. I have memories of fear being consuming, blocking out every other kind of thought. That was annoying, and I'm glad it didn't stay that way, but it would be nice if I had a choice about whether or not to feel fear, since I would sometime do so just to keep in contact with it. I like variety, and I need to understand.

I'm sorry that makes it hard for me to not fidget and ask questions during horror films, even knowing that it's annoying to you. I wish I could experience the things you enjoy from a place where I derived something from them, and I would if I could. But I have all this distance; at all times there's a counterweight of backlogged emotions and I don't know how to keep that separate from the rest of what I do.

The only ways I know of to turn off the parts of my brain that point out inconsistencies are dancing, sex, sleep, really well written books and some rare pieces of music and art. And those experiences turn everything off. They're not reflective. If it were as easy to get that empty feeling as watching a horror movie, I would do that ALL THE TIME, but it doesn't work. I don't work that way. I've tried to acquire tastes for things and sometimes it works, but this time it didn't and you get to be disappointed that I don't enjoy something you love, and I get to feel like an outsider again.

I'm tired of that feeling. Exclusion is painful and after a while pain is boring.

Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out -- by Richard Siken

When you see this, post a poem.



Every morning the maple leaves.

Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts

from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big

and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out

You will be alone always and then you will die.

So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog

of non-definitive acts,

something other than the desperation.

( Dear So-and-So, I'm sorry I couldn't come to your party. )