ariel? ariel!

I overestimated myself.

My own ability to keep my pants and my heart separate. Or to keep my head out of the game. To do something. Anything. I feel like I am exploding, overexploding, overwrought, making bad choices, and driving myself nuts. I haven’t let myself do this in a while and that is how it goes, I guess; I am out of practice. I hate every time I have felt like this, this overextended, this unable to trust it all. I feel unqualified.

I don’t know why the system is so threatened. But I feel it in my guts, threat, danger, a need for resolution, a need for clarity, or at least a need for contact. Too much in my head and not enough in real space, in the real world, in the articulated space. You speak and words become waves that move particles that move particles. Maybe it’s not a butterfly in Osaka that causes hurricanes; maybe it’s the answer to an unvoiced question, the static from a cell phone connection bursting into space and back down again. The beep from a voice mail.

I don’t know what I want. I believe that I do not want definition or some pat answer. I want to know what the framework is. I want to know what galaxy I’m playing in. At least a little. I want to know how — I was going to write how safe this is. But nothing is safe about this. Nothing at all is safe about this. Nothing is ever safe about feelings even if those feelings are whatever these feelings are, or whatever the polar opposite of these feelings are, or any feeling in between.

I am satisfied that I looked up the etymology of “visceral” and they said from the Latin for your bowels, origin ultimately unknown. Who knows where this comes from, this intestine pigshit of emotions going thousands of ways. Who knows how to ride it, the stink, the swell, the bile, all of these uncomfortable things. I do not know who or what I am or who or what I want. I want a phone call. I want a sign. I want to look at these intestines and be able to divine just enough that I can find some peace. I am not good at creating my own peace. I can’t sit still because this comes back to me, too much, too much, bilious and gutwrenching, unable to get rid of the tiny kernel of hope that sits in my gut and irritates me with wonder. What if. What if. What if.

This is not a road I can go on. I cannot be watching my phone for signs of life. My only response is the cold turkey one. Turn off the ringer. Put it away. Hit ignore. Hit pause. Distract and create. I am excited to get in the studio and make things. I am going to make things right now. Make and destroy, make and destroy, gutwrenching and bilious.