Hopelessness
Dear Vegard,
I love your exploration into the abyss. Sometimes expressible only through negation and what it is not.....and the strange, incomprehensible nothingness and consuming fears. The last times I have clear recollection of the depth of feelings your words generate were when I divorced [no details necessary]; and prior to the marriage, when I worked on the grounds of a mental hospital [many years ago, when they still existed as such in the U.S.], and surrounded by mental illness, saw so clearly how close that line really is for us, and slipping over it, conceivably, as easy as traversing a stream via slippery rocks and misstepping....just once.
Living in a basement apartment [with a shared bath]; sleeping on a mattress on the floor [the 60s, y'know
]; awakening with spider bites; and hitchhiking 15 miles on an expressway, to and from work in the dead of winter; the circumstances and scenario were rich for contemplation of such outcomes. Daily exposures brought the precipice into sometimes frightening proximity. The imaginings became a bit of an obsession for awhile, as I would arrive at work; be the only one to make coffee, as I was the only one willing to first empty the roaches from the pot; and watch a tall, white-haired, extremely-distinguished-looking, former medical doctor wandering the acrid, antiseptic-over-dirt smelling tunnels, with the other patients, with whom he now resided.
Your poem really brings back some vivid feelings of "what if....." from that time.
~Lizzytysh
I love your exploration into the abyss. Sometimes expressible only through negation and what it is not.....and the strange, incomprehensible nothingness and consuming fears. The last times I have clear recollection of the depth of feelings your words generate were when I divorced [no details necessary]; and prior to the marriage, when I worked on the grounds of a mental hospital [many years ago, when they still existed as such in the U.S.], and surrounded by mental illness, saw so clearly how close that line really is for us, and slipping over it, conceivably, as easy as traversing a stream via slippery rocks and misstepping....just once.
Living in a basement apartment [with a shared bath]; sleeping on a mattress on the floor [the 60s, y'know
]; awakening with spider bites; and hitchhiking 15 miles on an expressway, to and from work in the dead of winter; the circumstances and scenario were rich for contemplation of such outcomes. Daily exposures brought the precipice into sometimes frightening proximity. The imaginings became a bit of an obsession for awhile, as I would arrive at work; be the only one to make coffee, as I was the only one willing to first empty the roaches from the pot; and watch a tall, white-haired, extremely-distinguished-looking, former medical doctor wandering the acrid, antiseptic-over-dirt smelling tunnels, with the other patients, with whom he now resided.Your poem really brings back some vivid feelings of "what if....." from that time.
~Lizzytysh
Last edited by lizzytysh on Wed Dec 04, 2002 1:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
Wonderfully dismal. I have found turning such angst into an "object" transforms it into something less immense than what originally thought. One can only hope the art of poetry is a means to a betterment and not a hole to stand in. And this reminds me of a dismal thing i wrote a few years ago, so i'll post it, just cuz. Cheers, Laurie
