12/15/2014 2 Comments Unsure.4 a.m. I awaken gasping from a nightmare I cannot remember. A sick feeling of warning in my stomach; I know sadness is around the corner, panting, waiting. There's a scene from the movie 1408, one of my favorite films, that has always stayed with me, the one where John Cusack's character is in the post office, having escaped the Kafkaesque hotel room. All is fine until the construction workers begin tearing apart the walls and one can see he is still within the room, that he had never truly escaped.
I have known no greater metaphor for depression than this. I can feel that unbidden, illogical sorrow licking at the edges and I am doing everything I can to flee from it, keeping busy, filling my life with events to hold its specter at bay. I am still very nervous about having published a book of poems concerning funeral home experience. As I stated in the introduction, I wished to hurt or offend no one with these poems. But I can't deny that many of them are offensive; still I know if I wrote them again they would surely emerge the same as they did before. They marked the only time in my life when I did not think at all about what I wrote (as opposed to my "regular" writing, morbidly hacked and slashed and pieced together countless times). Those pieces simply poured out of me of their own volition, "writing themselves." I have tried to publish these countless times before, without success. I always assumed, naturally, that this was due either to the taboo, possibly "tasteless" nature of the subject and / or simply that my technique was inferior. I presumed the best target audience would be those with more gothic sensibilities like myself. But strangely enough I cannot seem to locate this audience as I thought I could so easily. Truly accessible venues seem scattered and few, for the subculture still has its roots in that somewhat haughty obscurity that used to bother me greatly about being a part of it. Many have said I should obviously try to market the book to funeral service professionals. But I am also worried because it reveals much of the grim realities of the business, and in many instances casts a negative light upon those who work in that capacity (of which this is still unintentional, for ninety-nine percent of those I met within the field were exceptionally competent and caring in what they did). In many ways, I believe the book is not just about the mortuary arena but something so much more. There is some subterranean current of experience and emotion I long to communicate that I cannot quite put my finger on, something which goes far deeper than simple bereavement, as if bereavement could ever be simple. But I know I worry too much, obsessively so. I must wrap myself around the concept that I cannot please everyone, that I must be true to myself. I can safely say I have lived a life attempting to be genuine, empathetic, and humane. Hopefully this translates in some way. One last thought (I have been quite vociferous today). It always seems so strange, that seemingly from my experience I should be better equipped to deal with death than before. I think instead it has made me less equipped to do so. Ironically I have experienced very little death within my own life, and I think of my beloved family, imagining what it would be like, and I cannot fathom it, my brain shuts down at the possibility, I do not feel as if I could survive such sorrow. I feel badly for being such an intensely brooding person, but it's hard to escape who I truly am, especially here. Off into the day, then, chocked full of errands, the monotonous tasks of daily life. All the while this acute yearning in me, always within me, simmering, waiting to be appropriated.
2 Comments
Carlos Lincoln Marks
2/22/2015 12:30:19 am
"... 4 a.m. I awaken gasping from a nightmare I cannot remember. A sick feeling of warning in my stomach; ... "
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Carlos Lincoln Marks
2/22/2015 12:43:36 am
- My previous comment -
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AuthorToni Scales is currently lost in childhood reverie. Archives
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