Skip to main content

A People Zoo

The trouble, I have decided, is memory.  I remember things and people, and I can't seem to let them go. 

I have written something personal, just as a way to organize my thoughts on the subject, to see if I can process events.  I had something that just needed out, understand?  I was thinking of it and thinking of it and it just wanted written, so one night I sat down and wrote it.  And that was good, I had it out, it was safely trapped on paper and that was great.

I am a believer in art for therapy, for changing perspectives, for the organization and processing of events.  When we catch things on paper, it makes them real, and therefore somehow smaller, more manageable.  If we write as hard as we can, as honest as we can, as real and raw as we can though, the problem becomes one of exposure.  In order to reach people in a real visceral way, we have to first expose our own soft bellies, we have to shed our own chitinous exoskeletons, reveal our weaknesses and our failures, we have to open ourselves to attack.  And for someone like me, who has divided himself into in and out, into what I will share and what I keep for myself, this presents a problem.  I want to speak aloud, I want to touch and move people, I want the output, but I don't want the input.  I like my exoskeleton right where it is, thank you very much.

The trouble is, I write for people to read, and somehow just writing isn't enough anymore.  Somehow I need for my words to be read, I need it to be out there in the wind and the weather, out there to be judged, to be liked or hated.  it isn't enough to capture it anymore, I need to display it.

Is there an end to this?  Is there an upper limit to my exhibitionism, or will it eventually be that I invite people into my house, make my safe private life a people zoo, allowing strangers to tour and observe me in my natural habitat, watch as I eat and shit, as I cry, as I fail and lose everything, as everything I have worked so hard for crumbles into dust in my hands?  Am I to expose myself completely, gut myself on the kitchen floor, pull out my bloody heart, lift it in offering, stand pounding on the glass, screaming at the visitors to watch me, look at me, love me?  Can you see?  Now do you get it?  Now can you understand?   

I live a good life now.  I make good safe decisions, I do my very best to not hurt people's feelings when I interact with them, I work hard at being honest and at not harming others either with my words or actions.  I am, honestly, a bit boring.

But it wasn't always this way.  I was a shithead, a selfish asshole, a bully, a walking hammer.  And I think of it, the people I hurt, the things I said, the way relationships ended, the thoughtless and painful things I did.

And maybe one day there will be a reckoning, when I face all of my sins.  Maybe one day I will have to pay.

Maybe I will face judgement, and will be found wanting.

I'm sorry you should know, I really am.  I like to think I'm different but really I'm not.  I try to make good decisions, to be better than I was, but mostly I'm not sure if its an ideal that I am attempting to live up to, if I'm trying to force my square into a round, forcing ten pounds of shit into a five pound bag.

The trouble is memory.  I remember.  I remember.

I'm a wolf, and though I have wrapped myself in the wool, I say baa, baa, and allow myself to be shepherded and fed, I've still got the teeth, the claws, I remember the hunt, the fear, the hot wet metal taste of blood.

I'm still a walking hammer.

My fists are clenched, my teeth grind to dust, my bones are ice and shattered glass.  I smile and say good morning, I hold the door, I drive my children places.  But sometimes I look in the mirror, and all I see are fangs, all I see is a predator, all I see is a smiling killer.

I hate it.

This is the curse of honest self discovery, the realization that the monster is inside, that you haven't been able to find what you have been hunting and hating all this time because it is you.  This is the curse of memory.

Still writing,

RP

A special thanks goes to Amber Geislinger for interviewing me on her channel Southern Belle Humanism.  I had a lot of fun. Check out my dumb face talking, and her other conversations with interesting people (including my writer buddy Lev Butts talking Lovecraft/Cthulhu stuff) on her channel on YouTube. As usual, I am on Twitter @RDPullins; Antiartists, my novel has its own Facebook page, go and like it; check out my publishers website here: pennamepublishing.com; email me if you like at dissent . within at gmail. com.  Cheers.




Comments

  1. Just for the record..Iam not inviting anyone into my private cage and seeing you live with me .. I think your secret is still safe;)) I love you Ralph and you are an incredible writer... It's great fun living in the zoo with you... Still here, still loving you. Sheri

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

One of the Best of Us

In the stifling heat my breath comes fast and heavy. What the fuck am I even doing here? What the fuck am I trying to accomplish? I'm sitting on the mat, maybe dying, a forty something dad playacting at being a fighter. This is my mid-life crisis, this is so, so stupid. This has to be the end for me, assuming I can get my heartbeat under control, assuming I don't just peg out here on the mat.  I can't do this anymore. "It's okay man, it's okay, you just need to breathe through it. You're fine, you're okay." The voice of my training partner, gentle and kind. My partner, the maniac that drove me to such a state, that I think I might die, he sits next to me and shows me how to breathe, how to calm my body. He teaches and guides me through it, and in a few minutes I actually am okay, the panic settles down, and maybe this isn't my last class after all. "You're alright?  Okay. Now lets get back to work."  And back to work we go. There

We Would Be a Song

I seem to define my life with soundtracks, playlists that encompass epochs or periods of change or development.  My earliest music was my mother's: Van Halen and Judas Priest, Def Leppard and AC/DC.  I remember a friend of hers explaining to second grade Ralph that the big balls that Angus was singing about were parties, but even then I didn't buy it.  My teen years were heavy on grunge, Nirvana and Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, and that was the first time that music ever felt like it was mine , that I discovered by myself or through the radio, or like minded friends, that was the first time that I took it and owned it and loved it, and even now I'll hear Black Hole Sun or Rooster or Smells Like Teen Spirit on the radio and back I go. In the fifth grade, I moved to Kelso, Washington. I want to say that it was hard, but what I remember mostly from childhood is just this sense of taking every day as it arrived.  What else do we have except our own experiences to measure th

Fighting for Clarity

There's this to be said about fighting: while you're doing it, you don't have room in your head for anything else, not your busted ass car or your worries about your family, not the leak under your bathroom sink, or how you're going to pay your bills.  There's only breathe one two, step out of range, shift off the center line, move breathe one three two slip the jab level change three to the body check the low kick counter one two...  it is a better escape than most, and I've tried most of them, believe me. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here. I get humbled and beat up at every session, I don't understand why I even go. I'm feeling defeated; everything is so fucking hard for me, and I don't know why I'm doing it. I should just quit, right? Fuck you.  I'll show you motherfuckers what I am capable of. I'll show you-  And then I go and I try and my knees give and I get pummeled and twisted and what the fuck man how humble do I