I do pride myself on the volume of volumes housed within my humble abode. Yet my absentmindedness and carelessness has caused me a wee bit of concern for my books.
Books are precious.
In my life I've only thrown away one or two books which were still in servicable condition, one was the Avon edition of the Necronomicon which was complete shit and the other title escapes me but I harbored the same opinion of the other tome, and I'd always wince with guilt when forced to dispose of a book which had become waterlogged, torn or inexorably ruined.
Fish was kind enough to contact me in response to a recent entry. He graciously and selflessly searched the internet to find the short story I was seeking in the aforementioned post. H.P.L. by Gahan Wilson is available online through Google books but due to copyright issues certain pages are omitted from the scans. So I checked Amazon and discovered this tale was featured in the anthology Cthulhu 2000.
I spent an hour looking through my tiny apartment looking for that god damned book to no avail. Plus I discovered that I seem to have misplaced volumes one and two of The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft!
What the hell?
After having my cup of tea I decided to let it lay and ignore the issue. My vow of silence for Tuesday among other issues will not be conducive to achieving wellness.
So I've taken a vow of silence starting at 7 a.m. and will not break that vow until Wednesday morning.
This is foolish on my part, discriminatory and unnecessarily exclusive of me. It's an unhealthy form of self-aggrandization where I believe that mere acquaintanceship with myself would seriously threaten someone's job security because I consider myself to be on the government's shit list due to my beliefs and politics.
My lack of knowledge on the subject causes me anxiety when I really ought not to be anxious at all about my situation.
Fortunately this underscores my recent assertation in the aforementioned entry.
My sister visited me back in March. She had a pleasant enough time and unfortunately I really wasn't able to schedule any time off to spend it with her. Her fiance's cousin's personality stressed me out but that was easily put aside. The last night she was in Colorado Springs she wanted me to drive her back to the place where they were staying in Colorado Springs. It's some house over on the east side among the nondescript intestines of suburbia and sprawl.
Woo was disoriented because it was late, dark and unfamiliar to her. I had no fucking clue where this place was because I never go on the east side of town. That's where those kinds of people tend to congregate if you catch my drift. She starts rattling off like a cokehead that she needs to get home on time and how I should know where I am going and she doesn't want to wake her fiance but she eventually does after she snaps at me.
Please understand, gentle reader, Woo has apologized to me on several occasions expressing sincere remorse for her behavior on that early spring evening.
Yet the way she was going off and then snapped at me coupled with the fact that she kept going on about "My fiance's cousin needs to keep everything neat and Just. So." and trying to dissuade me from asking to use the bathroom even though I was poking daylight once we had found the fucking street made me wonder "Is her fiance going to beat her for coming home late and making them late when they leave for Las Vegas tomorrow?"
Seriously that was the only thing I could parse as the cause for my sister's anxiety that night.
Completely untrue and I apologize to Mr. Woo for having that thought pass through my head. With twenty twenty hindsight I have realized that I was ignoring the fact that my sister also suffers from anxiety and a need to control everything in her life so it is Just. So.. Should my sister read this, she refrains from visiting heptapod.org because I posted one or two sexually graphic dreams, I'm sure she'll respond that I'm all wrong in my assessment.
I maintain that we have the same anxieties, we are both control freaks and it all comes from our upbringing and how we have incorporated this behavior into our lives. What has been done is done and spreading blame doesn't accomplish anything except serve as a topical anaesthetic to deeper pain.
An aside. I've recently been thinking that since my mother was the source of much stress and anxiety in our house then she must've suffered quite a bit under her mother, going according to sidelong comments made by my father throughout the years, and her mother had to put up with the Germans back in the heyday of soap and lampshades. So maybe having to put up with Nazis running a prison camp, escaping with her underground Polish freedom fighter boyfriend (who would most certainly be labelled as a terrorist in George W. Bush's Germany) would've laid the groundwork for promulgating psychological pathology. Much moreso than the strict northern European Catholic upbringing would have lent to the situation.
Shortly after Woo's visit I had my car accident and from there I began my decline in earnest. First mistake I made was reaching out for help when help was completely unnecessary. Reaching out for help simply validates the feelings of others that they are needed by someone. Everything regarding the accident was under control. I remained employed, I was fully insured and it covered the uninsured guy who hit me and at the very worst my tax refund was spent on the deductible.
The anxiety lay in ZOMG SOMETHING BRAND NEW. Fear of the unknown which destabilizes my carefully constructed and maintained universe that covers four hundred and twenty square feet not including the backyard and walking out to my car.
Once the car had been repaired I heard that my parents were coming to Colorado. Let's say this visit was exceedingly awkward for me. First my space had been violated. Neither of them entered my apartment and I don't believe either of them entered the laundry room. Still the barbarians were at the gates.
The reality of my mother being overly critical, still trying to tell me what to do and what not to do like giving raddidge a playful punch in the arm only to have it magnified into full-scale spousal abuse with the mandatory kick down the stairs into the fist-shaped doorknob. Bad enough that when I was growing up my mother would always seem to drill it into my head that without her quote-unquote guidance that I would end up as some unrepentant monster rapist who keeps heads as souvenirs and real doll replacement parts. Anyway it was fucking relentless.
I didn't know how to handle my father. Let's just say it's guilt. I still don't and I do not want to discuss the situation at all. Any attempt at discussion will prolong my silence.
Long story short.
Too late!
My wires got crossed during the visit. By June/July 2007 I was already on thin mental ice. I miscategorized the visits as being done for the wrong reasons. My sister sees my apartment, returns home, declares that I live like an animal and how spivak is in dire need of some TLC. My parents step up to the plate taking her word as gospel, everything is underscored by the car accident, my parents arrive and I believe they were hoping to find me a miserable wreck which is why my mother kept going on and on about "Oh, I wish my son lived in New Jersey. Even Pennsylvania. Why out here?" Turns out that I am perfectly content and comfortable but I was still allowing myself to be manipulated with the thinking that my parents know what's best for me since my mother would either ignore anything I'd contribute or attack me so harshly for dissention to cow me into silence.
Hearing those sentiments from my mother were particularly disturbing since for the latter half of my adult life she wanted me out of the house. Good intentions and all but it was on her schedule and on her terms rather than allowing me to stumble and bumble until I found my footing and began my life for myself not as some vicarious thrill for my parents. Now you can say I'm deliberately being cruel by refusing to move back to New Jersey. Of course you'd be ignoring the fact that Colorado really is the best state. Should elmgrows, maribou or even that rascal Jaybird happen to leave the state I reckon I'd be content to stay right here.
This led to the demise of my vanity game Asbury Park by Night by my own hand. I nearly lost three good friends and I'm still trying to keep my head straight to remind myself that somehow I still have friends.
Being honest, which is the journalistic motto of heptapod.org, I rewrote that last sentence twenty times until I was happy with it and knew that I was being true to myself without making people believe I was reverting to established patterns of behavior and perception.
Finally I went to get some help back in September 2007 which was an insurmountable failure, condemned myself to do it alone again, getting the silent treatment at random times for unknown reasons from raddidge and finally going off the deep end in October.
Now I am feeling self-conscious because while typing that I had a coughing fit which roused Spot. She went into the kitchen for some kibbles.
