Parallax & Paralysis
Jun. 10th, 2005 12:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonParallax: Noun:The apparent displacement or the difference in apparent direction of an object as seen from two different points not on a straight line with the object; especially : the angular difference in direction of a celestial body as measured from two points on the earth's orbit.
Now I remember the truth about ghosts. That you will not find them consigned to lurking in the corners of your closet or waiting in patient ambush under your bed and behind your shoes. These are childrens ghosts, manifestations of a growing anxiety. The body changes, the mind digs itself deeper in memory. The course is set forward and on some level of instinct, you know, you just know that this is the only promise that will be kept, the slow launch of Now into a Then that is both alien & dull at that same time. These ghosts are an inevitable shadow theater, cast by the waning light of the youthful imagination. They are made out of the last day of Summer vacation, the first morning after Christmas and the lonely moments walking home from school. The real ghosts are in the details. They know very well the rules of the game. You are only invisible when you can't see them. You know this rule, hiding under sheets soaked with piss, too scared to get up, to ashamed to admit it. The real ghosts wait you out. They kidnap your reflection and take it's place in the reflection of the window. The shock of the strangers face, replaced quickly by the horror that this obscene character is supposed to be you. So they wait for the veil of fingers to open across the eyes, they wait for the one peek that will allow them to rush in through the tunnel of sight, burrowing into brain, nurishing and nursing the screaming things that hatch out of nightmares. Waiting in the scattered matches on the table. In the unused coffee mug that knows your name. Along the fold of the blanket on an unmade bed, a fingerprint on a glass you haven't touched, the smell of a familiar perfume in the middle of the night. A white shirt with a red stain.
I should be used to it by now. Go back to a better place. A better time made more bluff than history by the demands of your inner editor. Cut. Splice and rewind. My only chance now at salvation lies in the hope that we are what we say we are, and there the requirements end. But it was all around me then and it never registered. Spitting it into a toliet that didn't flush, wheezing for breath after having my ribs kicked in by the locals. Wiping it off my busted lip after $5 shows, feeling the burn/sting of a stolen gulp of Jack swish around my tongue. Then there were the fights, that's where I saw most of it. Mine mainly, but there were good days, when it was theirs and it caked on my knuckles and I was young & stupid enough to think this was all there was to being a man. Well that and getting some.
So why does this bother me so much now? People drive by car wrecks all the time, Rubbernecking, the term itself sounds like some kind of Hang-Mans slang, but every one who drives does it. The invincible commodity of the car now crushed like a tin can, the toy like nature now revealed. The sirens and paramedics and their strange bright colored vests over their uniforms, coloring book authority. They fish the dead out of the traffic river, they dock their ambulances and dive deep into the wounded waters. All the while we drift by, justified in our vulture gawking, by the fact that the car ahead of you is doing it as will the car behind you. The democracy of the morbid. Then the scene is gone with an opening on 85 S, a song is carved out of the static with a turn of the dial, someone calls on the cellphone and thankfully you are not left alone in the silence. Silence is the real fear in America. There's nothing worse than the nagging anxiety that one day our mail boxes will be empty, our phones won't ring and no one will answer our speed dialed SOSs, then the TVs will remain blank on every channel and that's when you realize that one by one the world is going out right in front of you, like stars being snuffed out of the night sky with invisible thumb & fore finger. One by one, until there is only the dark and you left to bear its solitary witness.
Thanks toraygunn_revival for the title.
Now I remember the truth about ghosts. That you will not find them consigned to lurking in the corners of your closet or waiting in patient ambush under your bed and behind your shoes. These are childrens ghosts, manifestations of a growing anxiety. The body changes, the mind digs itself deeper in memory. The course is set forward and on some level of instinct, you know, you just know that this is the only promise that will be kept, the slow launch of Now into a Then that is both alien & dull at that same time. These ghosts are an inevitable shadow theater, cast by the waning light of the youthful imagination. They are made out of the last day of Summer vacation, the first morning after Christmas and the lonely moments walking home from school. The real ghosts are in the details. They know very well the rules of the game. You are only invisible when you can't see them. You know this rule, hiding under sheets soaked with piss, too scared to get up, to ashamed to admit it. The real ghosts wait you out. They kidnap your reflection and take it's place in the reflection of the window. The shock of the strangers face, replaced quickly by the horror that this obscene character is supposed to be you. So they wait for the veil of fingers to open across the eyes, they wait for the one peek that will allow them to rush in through the tunnel of sight, burrowing into brain, nurishing and nursing the screaming things that hatch out of nightmares. Waiting in the scattered matches on the table. In the unused coffee mug that knows your name. Along the fold of the blanket on an unmade bed, a fingerprint on a glass you haven't touched, the smell of a familiar perfume in the middle of the night. A white shirt with a red stain.
I should be used to it by now. Go back to a better place. A better time made more bluff than history by the demands of your inner editor. Cut. Splice and rewind. My only chance now at salvation lies in the hope that we are what we say we are, and there the requirements end. But it was all around me then and it never registered. Spitting it into a toliet that didn't flush, wheezing for breath after having my ribs kicked in by the locals. Wiping it off my busted lip after $5 shows, feeling the burn/sting of a stolen gulp of Jack swish around my tongue. Then there were the fights, that's where I saw most of it. Mine mainly, but there were good days, when it was theirs and it caked on my knuckles and I was young & stupid enough to think this was all there was to being a man. Well that and getting some.
So why does this bother me so much now? People drive by car wrecks all the time, Rubbernecking, the term itself sounds like some kind of Hang-Mans slang, but every one who drives does it. The invincible commodity of the car now crushed like a tin can, the toy like nature now revealed. The sirens and paramedics and their strange bright colored vests over their uniforms, coloring book authority. They fish the dead out of the traffic river, they dock their ambulances and dive deep into the wounded waters. All the while we drift by, justified in our vulture gawking, by the fact that the car ahead of you is doing it as will the car behind you. The democracy of the morbid. Then the scene is gone with an opening on 85 S, a song is carved out of the static with a turn of the dial, someone calls on the cellphone and thankfully you are not left alone in the silence. Silence is the real fear in America. There's nothing worse than the nagging anxiety that one day our mail boxes will be empty, our phones won't ring and no one will answer our speed dialed SOSs, then the TVs will remain blank on every channel and that's when you realize that one by one the world is going out right in front of you, like stars being snuffed out of the night sky with invisible thumb & fore finger. One by one, until there is only the dark and you left to bear its solitary witness.
Thanks to
raygunn_revival for the title.