I tore down my cork board, and placed my memory scraps in an orange folder. I hadn’t pinned everything up. Many things sat in a drawer for the couple years since I’d moved in. I filtered through them on my way out.
Many of my memory scraps are difficult to explain without a discussion of my personal history. This is a quiet feature of transition.
Some of my memory scraps are too embodied. I stared at my Anime North 2011 name tag, and I felt like a stranger in my body.
That was about a month ago.
I brushed my hair and stared at my face. Disappointed, I thought: my biggest inspiration is me from the 8th grade, cosplaying Link from the Wind Waker at Anime North 2011.
The memory embarrasses me, but I look back at the cosplay as evidence of a pure sense of love for something. I cannot critique my past self because he was doing what he loved. I can critique my current self for its failure to behave similarly.
The garrote
I have been overworking my mind recently. I don’t know how to avoid this. AI allows me to engage deeply with anything that pulls me, but I don’t know when to stop. When I can’t stop doing something, my sense of time falls apart, and my self-expectation distorts.
The word “garrote” comes to mind. It’s a torture device: a pillar with a metal collar that is tightened with a screw from behind.
I give myself no grace. I don’t feel like I’m living up to my expectations. I begin to seek out any reason to tighten the collar because I need to tighten the collar. Punishment for my dull performance.
I visited the website of an online friend I met on tumblr. It’s really a wonderful site. I find so much inspiration in her art. She somehow laces herself within her outputs. I thought back to the website I’ve been developing. I slather boxhouse with corrosive spit. I’m disappointed in myself.
I tighten the collar. What was appreciation for my friend and her vision doubled as evidence to support my self-hatred.
Ugly behaviour.
Embarrassment against embarrassment
I punish myself when I don’t need to as a precaution. There is nothing worse than going without punishment. If I give myself grace, I won’t learn. This is deeply embedded in me. I don’t know how to function any other way.
Punishment provides key information and benchmarks to optimize performance. Punishment is good: a material consequence to action is healthy and necessary. Analysis requires a detailed inventory of action and consequences.
Analysis is not intrinsically virtuous. Analysis without boundary is an ugly thing. Analysis without boundary is also lazy analysis. Laziness does not always come from sluggishness. Laziness can masquerade as precaution.
Lazy self-punishment is embarrassing. I’m tired of being mean to myself. It’s embarrassing.
I am embarrassed by my dullness. I am embarrassed by either my inability to translate myself, or my inability to recognize the truth of myself. I am embarrassed to fail so sorely when I try to write something. All of this is just as embarrassing as lazy self-punishment.
Circles
I appreciate that I once had a self that did not seem to slather things in corrosive spit.
Life seems to exist, even in the absence of my whirlpool of embarrassment.
My brain circles ideas endlessly.
I write in circles. I spiral around a gravity in me that pushes down on my mind and warps everything I see. Maybe if I master the mechanism of a circle, if I can make them sing, or dance, if I can live in harmony with them, then maybe I can relinquish this centre of gravity. Maybe I’d be able to see things the way others seem to see things.
I want to disregard my ego indefinitely.
I tighten the collar. What’s the pillar?