Discursive Thought

My thoughts are of snow. How much? How little? These thoughts are not related to an immediacy of occurrences; rather, they are abstractions to distract me from what I would think if I wasn't thinking of snow. I could be thinking of how many waterfalls there are in the world, but even that is too precise. While there must be something tangible related to the thought--snow exists, certainly--there can't be any more information that might lead to another thought. "How much snow" can not be related to "where" or "when." If I made such an association I might follow thoughts down a winding path that might lead to thinking about something else besides snow. That would be a disaster.

Not thinking at all is even worse because all that surrounds me and all that is within me is suddenly there. The burden of such an awareness is unbearable; perceiving the chaos of sights, sounds, smells, and touches without accompanying thoughts is simply a different form of the cacophony of disorganized thought. And so I think of snow in a way in which there is, in a sense, nowhere to go. I grope with my eyes closed trying to feel flakes or perhaps handfulls from a bank, but there's no way for me to know whether I'm doing either of those things because they aren't happening. I ask, continually, "how much"; there is never an answer. When I shift to "how little" answers are just as elusive.

So I continue in this way as a way to occupy my mind so that rambling thoughts does not arise. The possibility of roaming endlessly down corridors of fears, doubts, wonderings, memories, reinventions of past outcomes, questions like "Did I set my alarm?" or "When was the last time I showered?", such an unending march of thoughts, not one of them meaningful, creating an emotional roller coaster ceaselessly accelerating into a blur of speeding images of strangers waiting in lines at department stores, bored men squeezing the nozzles from gas pumps, women tying their hair back with scrunchies, dogs taking craps on neighborhood lawns, and scenes from movies I didn't like, all of those images and more combining with misaligned sounds, the sounds of the thousands of different ringtones I've heard on buses, trains, airports, and elsewhere, the voices of checkout clerks at grocery stores, automated phone voices asking me to press "1" to confirm my appointment at the doctor's office next Tuesday, geese squawking, dogs barking, super-sized pickup truck engines roaring, and the incomprehensible mash of schoolyard children during recesses, the images and sounds combining even more incoherently with smells of dumpsters outside convenience stores, exhaust from diesel-fueled buses, and the aroma of coffee being made in the kitchen in the morning by a woman whose name I forgot since falling asleep the previous night--smells that have just that sense of time and place and circumstance--all of those images, sounds, and smells mingling like the ingredients in a madman's mixing bowl: Asphalt and milk and potato chips and marbles and iPhones and caulk and butter and crushed. What the fuck am I supposed to do with all that?

So, yes, I think of snow, how much, how little. There's sanity there. At first glance no one could see it, but after the contextual explanation it all makes sense. I can hear a woman's voice, she's talking on the phone, "Well, what else can he do? What would you do? I would think of snow, too, if it got that bad. What's that? Yes, yes he is cowering in the corner right now. Uh huh. Yeah. Oh, I see. Uh huh. No, no, I can't talk with him. I don't really exist."

Why would she say those things? I mean, I can hear her. It's not the first time she's squawked about me to someone else. I never know who she's talking with, though. It could be the same person, but I don't think so. There's too much variation in her tone of voice and the way she responds to unheard questions, questions that may not be, is too diverse. She usually talks with women, but occasionally men. The last conversation she had with a man started this way: "No. No, I'm not going to try that. He'll get upset. He doesn't respond well to that sort of thing. Oh, I'm sure that's you would do. Come on, it's far more complicated than that. Why do you always insist on a one-size-fits-all approach? *Sigh* Yes, I'm still listening. Now--wait a minute! Sure you might be able to do that, but I'm not that strong. Now you're just being rude. I have to go, he's weeping again."

The only time I ever hear her voice is when I am able to successfully think of snow and relax yet again after the run-on of thoughts ceases. She is adept at beginning the cycle again, of preventing me from thinking of snow. Her voice is so soothing, I think it can't possibly be bad, but by the time she hangs up the phone I'm in a state of terror. I don't know why. What I do know is that the bullet train of lightning thoughts comes screaming back into my mind with a rage that startles me. Was it this fast and chaotic before? I can't remember. It seems worse now than before the snow or maybe it's just that the snow was so peaceful that I forgot how rambling thoughts can be.

I had mastered discursive thought after shrooming for long stretches of time. For years after I could turn such thoughts on and off at will. Then the woman's voice came, always talking on the phone. Her voice is not a thought, not something I can control. She's simply there, waiting as far as I know, until I master my thought again. I don't know why she insists on disturbing my peace. I don't even know if that is her intention--and maybe she is not the cause. But the sequence has been wild run-on thoughts followed by willful mastery followed by an ease of being followed by the woman's voice followed by a belligerence of racing thoughts; the cycle begins again.

How do I escape from such a trap? I don't. I've come to accept that this particular cycle--it is not the only cycle in town--may be like that of the seasons. It is part of my rhythm, like it or not, so I may as well like it. Not that it's easy to do. I'm neither a sadist nor a masochist, but I certainly would rather inflict pain than have it inflicted on me so if I lean in a particular direction it would be toward sadism. Unfortunately, this pattern is suited for a masochist. Had I been born with a proclivity to enjoy my own misery this cycle would be heavenly. The big question facing me now is "Can masochism be learned?" I don't know, but I'm exploring the possibilities.

This isn't the cycle, though, certainly not one that is endless and always. Sometimes there is wonder and joy then directed thought followed by a whispered imagination slipping into a futility I can best whip out of through extroversion then, perhaps, there will be quiet or sequential dottings of "i's" or maybe adopted personas for role playing--though I sometimes forget for months and even years that the persona was adopted--as well as rest then excess mixed with comparative thinking or analytic reasoning broken up by magical musings. When I refuse to consider everything I hurt all over, but when I think of nothing I feel fine. That makes no sense to me, but I've come to accept that senselessness is not absurdity but simply the way things are. I have too often tried to apply the ideas of order created by others. This has always caused pain and a sense of failure.

One day quite some time ago I simply realized everyone was wrong--at least about me. There was no big flash or lightning bolt that resulted in me leaping into the air shouting "Aha!" No, I was painting and I saw a swirl of color and thought, "I think everyone else is wrong. Huh. That's something." Then I went back to painting as if nothing of significance had occurred. The reality is that the ways of others are not my ways. I've tried ways that are not my own; they just don't work. Now I simply say to the ideas of others that do not jibe with my experience of being, "Fuck you, you arrogant assholes. Your gibberish doesn't jibe with me."

On occasion, though, I've been locked in cages by bands of strict and narrow thinkers with more might than I could muster on my own. They interpreted my insistence on autonomy as insolence then forced my mouth open and shoved pills down my throat before tossing me into cold, dark cells in attempts to force me to think like they did--as if such a thing was possible. The conclusion I have so far drawn from such experiences is that my thoughts are far less absurd than the actions of those around me. But it does me no more good to rail at the absurdity of the world than it does for me to try to change my experience of being.

I could say I wasn't meant for this world, but that would only make sense if I believed the presumption that experiencing inexplicable pain arising from within and raining down from without is unjust. Justice is a concept that can only make me miserable because I've witnessed no evidence that such a thing exists. Love, too, is a concept of cruelty, no more likely to be experienced than to ride a unicorn over rainbows into a Land of Forever and Ever. There are emotional experiences that make me profoundly happy, though: tenderness, kindness, passionate kisses, painterly sunsets, affection, wonder, awe, and more.

Given that, I do without certain concepts as much as I can. All of which leads back to the problem of discursive thought. Those damn ideas of love and justice and equality and hope roll around in the swirl of my unchecked thoughts telling me lies about what should be, what could be, what would be, but never have been. I have to remind myself that most of the ideas I've encountered in life are lies--or maybe just wrong. It doesn't matter which; I'm not interested in assigning blame. Not at all. My thoughts are of snow. How much? How little?