i found another old journal! rock on!

this is from...maybe 1999?

there exists a thin line somewhere in the mind. it can curve, twist, even wrap around itself 600 times, but it's always there. on one side of this line (not the left or right, that doesn't matter when you're there because there is no left or right or right or wrong or wrong or correct or to err or to whimper or to starve or to feast or to move) there is the picture you see when you idealize you yourself others him her them and the grass is always green and there are no mosquitoes or gnats waiting above grass level to strike at your perfectly sculpted/tanned/shaved calves. on this side you see the other only in brief moments and glimpses of what a scream looks like coming from a mouth -- how the tongue reacts to a sound flying up from that spot in your stomach that burns when you haven't eaten all day and the caffeine-laden soda threatens the tender stomach lining and the tongue stiffens and dries like a piece of old meat accidentally left on the butcher's knife. and that side you see occasionally but only in glimpses.
you toe the line. you flirt with the notion of overstepping the line like you're a drunken prom date. you know you see yourself through the exhaust fumes and smog that exist on that side. you stare at yourself, barely recognizing yourself because on this side you never bleed and you speak only in whispers and guffaws at a dinner party. that side that side that side things are not so clean. things muddle up and become loud and the pots and pans are always clanging around the kitchen and waking the cats out back and all the neighbors peer out their windows and stare from their martha stewart kitchens and gucci shirts and they sigh and say poor poor head so noisy not normal like us in our martha stewart kitchens and our gucci shirts.
on good days things are soft things are quiet like a dentist's office waiting room, the silence occasionally broken by a shriek that everyone pretends they didn't hear.

(and now, after reading it and typing it, i wonder if maybe i was a little bit drunk when i wrote it. hmm.)