Elucidating Questions

Got myself a Chinese virtual pet

No English option

So naturally I’m like, yeah, I’m gonna learn the menus, but in Chinese

I already know random characters

And when I read my name

I may as well have thrown a party

Hey y’all, I can still read my name!

Obvious ones I still know

And some I know from Japanese

Forgot to put the microwave on

Stuff like that happens and I worry

But I can still read my name in Chinese right?

And I’m still learning Japanese

And apparently I’m going to conquer these menus

There’s a cute little early November storm blowing through

I am nervous

I don’t want to actually disappear

Can’t even remember to set the microwave

I wonder if this storm has any bite

There have been small rumblings

They’ve come in and out

Tiny micro storms

The trees are swaying

Is this leaf falling weather?

Fall, you have to tell the trees it’s Fall and give them time to turn orange first

You can’t just vague Fall your way through September, have window opening weather in October, and then mid October just

Bam

So many sirens today

The space is insistent today

Everything seems to be about something being there

Meanwhile I’m boredly teaching myself some Chinese

It doesn’t feel like there’s anyone there

No one visual

Object permanence

Tugging at senses

A boom in the distance

Who knows

I wonder what the rain says today?

Who are we crying for?

It’s pouring

October rain

Yeah apparently I’m studying Chinese again

That “how do I say “it’s raining?”” point of language acquisition

Maybe I’ll give Korean another shot too

I’ve been preoccupied

You would think I have everything

It looks like it

But I don’t want things

This amassment

And my horde of devices can keep me busy all day but they’re not a conversation

The Rain is falling

Thought I’d have stars tonight

The weather can’t decide one hour to the next

Fall with no focus

We have ADHD Fall

Fall is hyper fixated on something else

I wish I could be hyper fixated on a person who also had interest in me

I’m not the type of person to aim for another person

That word wouldn’t translate

Stupid language barrier

The rush of a song I feel in tune with

I want to be more than a whisper in this world

Being invisible is maddening

I used to imagine it

‘Course I got some watered down bullshit version of it

I can’t rob a store without being caught

But I don’t exist

I go for hours without being thought of

Days?

The only one thinking of me is me

And they’ve insisted I’m delusional

That I can’t be a sound witness to anything

Do I exist at all?

If I stop thinking will I cease to exist?

Unperceived

Oh I’m just making up words today

English doesn’t have enough

I said with a wry grin

The Ocean isn’t far away

Yet I haven’t seen it

The down side of not taking the public bus

I’d like to see it

I wish I could have an Ocean view

I just want to watch it

Ideal setting

A small hut in the forest by the shore

There might be bears wandering around

I’d like to see them but I also would not like to see them

So many thoughts in one person

I can’t keep them straight

Am I holding in a breath waiting for myself to stop thinking?

I’m trying not to sink back into it

The feeling of thinking of you

I know it’s for nothing

All these songs that get you amped up

Saying things like turning dreams into reality

It must be nice to have something to dream about

It’s pointless for me to dream of attaining things

Attaining is somewhere else

Not here

And the wind is running through the trees

If you close your eyes this is paradise

And I’m just fine

And right now I am

But I’m already watching me when everything goes back to normal and I’m hopeless again

Through my fingers

What do I do?

If I’d thought of this before maybe this would be different

But I can’t exist in any moment but this

For all I see the future coming head on

I look away and pretend and then it’s now

Hedonistic

But just, like, enough to not go insane, you know?

And I keep finding out new and horrible things about my disease

In my fantasies I’m not disabled

And that’s the fantasy

It even tries to break into my dreams

It’s funny it took the disability years to break through the dreams

Besides the weird dreams I have where I’m catatonic

But the tattoo took mere weeks

I was showing it off to a store person in my dreams

I could do without any more packages from the gods

Sometimes I wonder what the Universe is harvesting from us

What purpose stars pose

It’s all as integral or unimportant as any other thing in this space yes?

The clouds are blocking out the moonlight

Ah back here

It’s good, right?

These little unimportant bits of information I get?

I miss the stars

It feels less like I’m talking to myself when they’re visible

I’m so far away from ideal

And I’m not even as bad off as most of the population

Screaming perpetually into the deep

Animals fighting in the night

Me too, animals

I don’t know what for

Can I love with half of me and detest with the other?

I need to drop it

This torch

What a time for this song

Can I send you some good vibes?

Wherever you are

I’m still here

Just as always

I’m always at the back door

Stuck here

Why do I always love things everyone hates?

Not everything I love is what everyone hates

But damn, I pick them

I don’t even know I do

I like this thing

And then someone comes along to tell me how hated it is

Sorry

Again, I guess

Today was tame

People are back to buying stupid amounts of stuff

But it’s the season

And a bunch of things that our store was doing have once again been changed against our favour

My ability to give discounts has basically been gutted

And now I have to say no to customers

And I still haven’t heard anything about my accommodations

That they took away because it was “against store policy”

Forced me to get a form filled out for them

But they’ll take their time now that they have it

By the way the accommodation was me getting two fifteen minute breaks two hours apart instead of a thirty minute break

They’ve decided this is undue hardship

And my manager hates me as much as I hate her

Good

Saw her roll her eyes when I reminded her I needed to be off at exactly 2

Because I have a bus to catch that won’t wait and may come early

It was over walkie, so she didn’t see me seeing her

She was off yonder and I just so happened to see

It’s funny she’ll remind me I have to clock in at exactly 10, but I’m off at 2 and before this I was often not getting to clock out until 10 minutes later

And they don’t pay you for 10 minutes

So bye bye my time, but yours is sacred?

Fuck you and the institution you stand with

No concern for how my time has value

Or that I have a life to live after my shift

Man, life is fucked

I wish I could say this to her face

Into the web with it

My life and my time are not important to the business

So why exactly am I supposed to be loyal to this thing?

And she’s making fucking 3 minute long speeches over the walkie about increasing loyalty, while I’m stuck waiting for her to shut the fuck up so I can get a price check for one of those god damn loyalty customers!

You people are a cancer on the stores you claim to run

These stores run in spite of and despite you

Customer and employee alike hate you, head office, hate you, corporate bootlickers

Like fuck off I could do my job just fine for the year before your crusty ass took over store manager

But apparently increased sales wasn’t a good enough sign that things were going fine

It just wasn’t enough, was it?

Fuck

I don’t know, I started somewhere and now I’m here

And now I’m here, what am I doing here?

You don’t even know where I am now I haven’t described it

This isn’t where I want to be

I need to remember to do things for me in the morning the day before

Morning me is incapable of doing anything but routine.

Keep forgetting my headphones

Another day of work

Simultaneously Thanksgiving

Can’t do Thanksgiving

I’m thankful I had a few months of reprieve from a worse hell than this

But I don’t really know how to be thankful when the end is staring me in the face

And there are so many people with nothing

It feels cruel to think oh I’m so thankful for this that other people don’t have

Like I can’t be grateful without everyone having their needs met

Because otherwise I’m rubbing it in their faces

People, my aunt, have told me I need to be grateful for what I have in my country

Despite great inequality and disabled people being funneled towards MAID

They want to add or added people who want to commit suicide

See, we can’t afford proper mental healthcare

Or a world that doesn’t cause mental health problems

But if you want to die, we pay doctors to help!

It feels so fucked up, and yet, no one is stopping it

The trees have turned, most of them

Fall and the harvest and all that

I’m already saying my thanks for the Fall veggies I’ve been eating

Me, eating vegetables!

Sorry that just stopped happening about 10 years ago now

Don’t know if I’ll be able to afford it this week, my meals

I suck at preparing for my own future

The present and the past are sort of where I live.

Just really really need someone who can help me figure out living I guess

I’ll never know though

I’ve been floundering for a while

There’s not much for me to write right now

Besides what I’m feeling

There’s not much for me to write because I’ve shied away from the world for a moment

Only have so much energy

And my heart is so broken right now

I’m sure some awful things have happened

The climate crisis is a crisis

Apparently this is new news?

Oh, right, it’s only a crisis when it hits your house and not when it’s 50 degrees in Iran or India

Which is why I’ve been staying quiet on that subject

I’m sure there’s some hundred poems you can read of mine going on about the weather getting worse or the Earth dying

Needing to open a window in October is an emergency

People’s homes being washed away is a crisis

Something something corporations something something stop them

And I’m trying not to feel guilt for having to make that decision this week

Those final seconds playing over

And earlier there was an owl hooting and I felt at home

I need to live somewhere I can hear them

These little mini horrors

I can’t escape the real out there horrors

Nor the horrors of life

We manufactured horrors

Why did we do that?

I don’t know

Maybe I’d rather not know

I don’t think the truth would satisfy me beyond cementing human greed

This is a strange world

I still don’t know why I’m living in it