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When I was a kid, I was scared of fire. But maybe not THE most. I was terrified of the dark, vampires and clowns as they took shape in the stories my older sister's friends told, and of my mom dying. Next to all that, my fear of fire was not regularly considered. Except for feeding tinder into an open flame and being the only one standing further than two arms' distance, throwing, inefficiently, the hell money or the napkins which were blown away by the smoke and wind. Lighting bunsen burners during chem class, lab partner liability, weak uncommitted clenching of my fist til the sudden spark scared me into tossing it away. Then, and only then, heat and pain at my fingertips, that animal fear from deep inside of me reared its head, the one that told me there was no such thing as a warmth that stayed lit. Consuming or being consumed. Either way, I reasoned, to snuff it out.
I was embarrassed by my cowardice. I was born in the year of the Dog; of the five elements I was attributed you guessed it which one. Nicknamed whipper-snapper, fire-cracker, hot-headed and burning-out. I tried to be like they saw me: fearless, consequential. But that wasn't my nature. I wasn't a galvanizing force. I moved without aim. Before I had any better ways to deal with it, when I was hoping to run out of my own body, all I could do was dig my fingernails against my forearms and scratch--just hard enough to break the surface but not to draw blood. I was too weak for that, the real red, only able to leave a mark, skin skidding in the wake of my nails. My heart pounding and the coursing thrum of it suffocating the part of my brain that wanted to hurt.
I still remember how anger felt, a reaction to invert the wrongness of the world, just wear my guts on my outside, the opposite of nakedness. These days, such strong emotion doesn't come to the forefront as often. Resentment, sure, or corrective injustice. But I can put it away now. I'm in control. No one hurts me except for myself. All that means is that it's my fault. I hold that close to me and that second heart beats even when all the rest of my organs have gone out.
Phenomenological qualia is meant as one's subjective experience of mental states, being "of a certain sort", in a "certain way." Migraine, tannin, redness. Cannot be observed. Innately cannot really be communicated. So philosophical more than strictly scientific. Still, it's what's another's consciousness apart from mine. I can't know what you mean. Tell me everything. Feeling pain--the pain of soap on your exposed iris, the pain of a cold piercing-gun's lance through the meat of your lip, the pain of forgetting how it tasted, just so, the last modest bite held underneath the tongue and the grit when it dissolved. Wet and wanting the function of teeth. I've felt water on the inside when I drink, run, or turn off my brain. The only thing that burns is fear. A tidal wave / of blazing fingers / of indiscriminate hatred that plays trellis with my ribcage. I don't run and I don't cry and I don't hit anyone anymore. I go into my mind again and think about anything but what I want.
Recently I've been riding on the rails of life. That is to say, I'm mixing my metaphors. That is to say, I want to kill myself. No. I'm rooted somewhere now. So I won't. That's all. In this mood my willpower isn't in shades. I'd rather be affixed but alive. But sometimesfuck I still get in the sun FUCK crane my neck / towards anything that I seek as warmth
I was embarrassed by my cowardice. I was born in the year of the Dog; of the five elements I was attributed you guessed it which one. Nicknamed whipper-snapper, fire-cracker, hot-headed and burning-out. I tried to be like they saw me: fearless, consequential. But that wasn't my nature. I wasn't a galvanizing force. I moved without aim. Before I had any better ways to deal with it, when I was hoping to run out of my own body, all I could do was dig my fingernails against my forearms and scratch--just hard enough to break the surface but not to draw blood. I was too weak for that, the real red, only able to leave a mark, skin skidding in the wake of my nails. My heart pounding and the coursing thrum of it suffocating the part of my brain that wanted to hurt.
I still remember how anger felt, a reaction to invert the wrongness of the world, just wear my guts on my outside, the opposite of nakedness. These days, such strong emotion doesn't come to the forefront as often. Resentment, sure, or corrective injustice. But I can put it away now. I'm in control. No one hurts me except for myself. All that means is that it's my fault. I hold that close to me and that second heart beats even when all the rest of my organs have gone out.
Phenomenological qualia is meant as one's subjective experience of mental states, being "of a certain sort", in a "certain way." Migraine, tannin, redness. Cannot be observed. Innately cannot really be communicated. So philosophical more than strictly scientific. Still, it's what's another's consciousness apart from mine. I can't know what you mean. Tell me everything. Feeling pain--the pain of soap on your exposed iris, the pain of a cold piercing-gun's lance through the meat of your lip, the pain of forgetting how it tasted, just so, the last modest bite held underneath the tongue and the grit when it dissolved. Wet and wanting the function of teeth. I've felt water on the inside when I drink, run, or turn off my brain. The only thing that burns is fear. A tidal wave / of blazing fingers / of indiscriminate hatred that plays trellis with my ribcage. I don't run and I don't cry and I don't hit anyone anymore. I go into my mind again and think about anything but what I want.
Recently I've been riding on the rails of life. That is to say, I'm mixing my metaphors. That is to say, I want to kill myself. No. I'm rooted somewhere now. So I won't. That's all. In this mood my willpower isn't in shades. I'd rather be affixed but alive. But sometimesfuck I still get in the sun FUCK crane my neck / towards anything that I seek as warmth
