Transference

It's entirely possible that I have been watching too much of programs like Six Feet Under -- programs that give the imagination license to believe that the negotiations that execute themselves in one's mind might actually take on some theatrically obvious form. Metaphor turns into masquerade. The tangible is no longer significant. My mind is anxious to be given license to pretend that such things can be.

I was haunted by a ghost, today. A specter. A person I could see standing there just as clearly as I could see that no one was standing there. And I carried on conversations with my vision. Just like your average crazy person or abuser of hallucinogens.

It got me nowhere. Or only as far as those one-sided discussions I have when I'm driving or standing in front of a mirror ever get me. Which is to say that it got me to a place where I had to ask myself if normal people do this. I do give the appearance of talking to myself a lot -- if anyone's watching. But I'm usually actually talking to someone. It's just someone who isn't there to hear what I have to say. And sometimes I get enough catharsis from just saying what I would without ever having to have my words heard. It's the utterance that works for me. While it also protects me from confrontation and the unavoidable disappointment of interruption that is the cornerstone of actual discourse.

If only I could ever get my thoughts to run as clear as they seem when I'm about to say what I'm about to say. Instead, I plan and purge and hope for profound ideas to show themselves, only to find that I'm addressing everyone from the center of a giant muffling cottonball. And whether they can understand me clearly or not, the truth is there are people I talk to who don't really want to hear what I'm saying in the first place.

I grow weary of postcard people and lunch menu friendships and storybook princes and comic book lovers. Particularly when the nametags get shuffled around and I can't tell who's who.