scribbled in a notebook

3/25/2005 4:11Pm - so my mother finally made me speak - "no" - when all i wanted to do was keep my mouth shut. hi my name is brooks. i am a senior in high school with a 5.0-ish gpa and seven ap classes to date. i am a starter on the varsity mens soccer team and i play guitar and saxophone in the school band. i am an eagle scout and have never been drunk or high. i have never gotten a speeding ticket and have never been in a real wreck. i drive a volvo. i go to church and pray every night. i even write poetry. and im not ugly either.

i am uncomfortable in social situations, especially with kids my own age. i think i might be slightly depressed. im eighteen and have never lived. for the first timein my life i am seeing and feeling the sad ugly underbelly of society. God knows i am probably just scratching the surface but how am i to know that? worldwide paranoia creeps into my veins and puts my toes to sleep. for the first time, it is painful to be awake.

i havent written in a month. i think it is that which keeps me alive. im finding i dont run on intrinsic human motivation like most do. like i used to. i write out long monologues all the time that i would love to record. if i only had a laptop or other... mostly on the ski lifts... or in the car or in school and especially while driving. dont think ive given up on you because i havent.

paranoid. i think it comes from going backward when i really dont want to. when i cant see. changing lanes without a rear view mirror and someone else's stuff blocking my view. relying on others' eyes and scrambled words. my father's driving scares me, especially when i have my eyes closed. jerky.

most people know that i always have a song in my head and the manipulating of that drives me crazy. i play volume games and try to change tracks knowing what is catchy and new and old and what i love and dont want to burn out on. sometimes they are layered three or four deep. combining and playing independantly and simultaneously. alll the time.

at night in massachusetts i lay on an open sleeping bag on uneven split cushions listening to music under a sheet and a blanket for an hour with my eyes closed watching a dull light from the kitchen and convincing myself that if i opened them i would be somewhere else in the room looking some other direction. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt. at least it gives me something to wrap my mind around.

everything i connect to death. everywhere i turn. every car cuts me off and changes lanes into me. i run off roads and crash and instantaneously am rolling, gripping the wheel hard and pulling my head down, not thinking of my family all around me or my friends wherever they are or my love if she exists, only the suv im driving rolling around me and me with it. all the time, everywhere i go, death is looking for me. not safe until im home not moving, just in the earth spinning along with everyone else spinnning, at least we are all spinning, just some faster than others.

machinery is horrendous, industrial zones terrifying with so much dirt and rust and pipes for miles (driving past the cogeneration plant) and no people to wrangle them. (i dont speak even when i know the answer but am forced to otherwise when i dont want to. anything just dont make me back up any further blind) hundreds of piopes and spires and gauges and directions and smokestacks (two billowing) and it cant all be working t the same fime, functional. if i broke a small pipe on the outskirts with a big silver cartoon wrench, what would spray out at me?

i take my artistic license to write words by whatever leaves my mind, i am always right.

maybe it comes from falling in my dreams. watertowers, industrial areas, high staircases and metal walls of them with no railings walking with my family i lose balance, turn to grasp, nothing to grab, fall back and leave feet. mother shouts and flying through the air slowly backwards i shout back that i love her and everyone and that im sorry i have to die. but i fall away from the base into a parking lot and land softly on my back and sit up and with jubilation and relief, disbelief, cheer upwards that i am not hurt at all and dont know why.

i wonder what makes paper curl when only my hand is there.

i cant keep these things perfect. breathing is harder than it seems. the physicality of this entire usa is real and not just a thought and not just pictures or a map and middle north carolina is a real place not just where i live and its not just my world but also anyone who comes there and leaves again and ive never had more than one world like you but for now im realizing and feeling for once that you are farther away that i thought and the distance is irreconcilable. im sorry. 4:56