Reader response from Interesting Timing
“I would take this as a sign to NOT reach back out - Lance, ‘west coast’
Yes this is how I read the dream too. On our Joseph era.
Celebrating The Funeral // The Aesthetic Archetypes
I’m not paying attention. I look like I am. So much like I am that everyone thinks I am in fact paying attention and this has given them an invite to engage more. I’ve overcompensated by diverting mental focus into a facial expression that looks so interested it’s understandable the party opposite me would keep going, nonverbally motivated by my enthusiastic mask. I’ve given too much of myself to this. I’d rather be over there. I’m not present. C’mon! Have the bone to say “hey that’s cool” and turn my head to end the conversation. Be more firm with my boundaries. It’s not their fault. I’m acting in a way that they naturally feel compelled to keep going. I don’t resent them.
I’m watching myself outside of myself.
“and then…”
My eyes wide and now I’ve hinted to them: he’s enthralled. A purse of the lips, quick exhale, ‘whoooo’ ‘that’s crazy.’ Someone else would kill to be sitting here in my seat. Salivating with envy, nervous system spazzing with jealousy and I’m here wishing I was where I am in my head.
“You’re such a great listener.”
“Hm? Oh thanks, I get that all the time.” Tell me your darkest secret. It’s my job to make this interesting. I can be engaged, really. I don’t have to fake it. I want to be here. I want to listen. I want to hear your stories. Winston is glad to have the opportunity to talk to human.
“Tell me your darkest secret.” I blurt it out. A shock.
I interrupted their entire treatise on a memory I couldn’t imagine because they didn’t paint the scene well enough. If you’re going to tell me a story, dramatize it, make it up, stretch it the the break, take artistic liberty with your reality and act like Miller: … through his approach to literature he was able to rebuild himself. He was able to manipulate the memory of experiences that defined his character traits. Putting his own color and sound to it and we must imagine this as some psychoanalytic frankenstein who becomes a stitched together humanoid of contrasting ideas, faux memories and a complete dissolution of any cohesion in Himself. Instead he adopts the jenga tower that is built on his own recollection; an action he exercises creative freedom towards. Ignoring the linear. Ignoring the facts. Tinkering with how he felt when others made it apparent how they felt towards his feelings. He was a breeze blown in the direction of every stranger's opinion, lest not we mention the beliefs pushed like church bells on him by those closest. Gusts so jealous in their own personal direction that the ensuing cyclone he was twisted into equaled blindness of the self. It’s here that he first saw he had given too much, to too many.
Wide eyes. “Tell you what?”
Staring. Unwavering curiosity. “Tell me your darkest secret.” I’m only able to ask this because of the perceived listening - he’s interested - and the established connection.
“MMMM.” A scrunch of the lips. Lights bounce of her black hair. I’m distracted. “Let me think.”
Ok. Think. Think without telling me. I’m thinking about it now. I’m thinking of raven hair on wings spread wide under the moon and that’s imagination. Here is your black hair, thin from straightening it too much, and
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