mildly, ways maybe mania might express:
after months of eating up to 36 eggs every 30 days, you stop. and you only eat maybe an egg a week. maybe less. then you start eating them again.
you sit at a table, it could be small or large or neither. maybe it is both, one of those tables with eaves or leaves or wings. whatever it is we call the method of their expansion. and you listen to eggs chattering in a frying pan. and you choke on tears that just don’t really ever come. you choke a lot on absence. disappearance.
you see people walking away; leaves. you see people walking towards you. threats, so you look up at the sky and look over at trees and look down at your shoe-clad feet. maybe you wear boots. and you find that perfect time to look at the approaching person, to nod or smile. not too soon or else you’re left staring at them, frightening them but mostly yourself. and not too late or you miss the nod and the smile and have further annexed yourself from humanity.
you date women. let’s say you date women. sorry to you all you who date men. in this example you date women. and you date women who are really beautiful and have just ethereal halo hair. and they treat you wonderfully and love you and they bring their spirit to you, which they often carry in their body, so they bring that to you, too. and they let you touch their body and allow you to think maybe you can feel or even see their spirit. and they give you no reason to distrust them. so of course you distrust them. and you become mean in your distrust and hurtful to their spirit. and they take then both their spirit and its housing from you. and they never talk to you again.
you get obsessive about dualism and dichotomy, even as you try to further cleve yourself from dualistic notions of Self and Other. you think about the weight of absence. the choking obliteration of space. you see? the tears again, they choke you, but they aren’t there! a spirit wraps its hands around your throat, sticks its fingers into your mouth, gags you. but nothing is there. and this is more obsession and dualism and trying to understand. is there nothing there? is the disquiet original to the Mind, or, Body? if you are of the earth, is the earth then also of you? how can you help? and how can you be helped? please.
so of course this experience of living is perhaps hell. and why you might surmise that is that life and planet are so beautiful and choking. and we see each other, all these bodies and spirits! and yet we remain so frozen and alone. it is hell because we are all here together and we can help each other and we can feel closeness and we can even touch our bodies together and feel the shimmer and suffering shudder of our spirits, yet we remain always just apart.
i see the rays of the sun,
can even feel its warmth
on my translucent skin,
but never sun itself.
it. always
dips below horizon,
just as i rise.
it is an effort to be understood;
here, perhaps effort.
there, over there,
understanding:
i walk the limited walkways of the island
i currently wander. ocean and mountain.
cloud, low though not depressive,
cover peak of mountain.
it is there,
i cannot see it.
the ground is damp,
with every step a galloping spray
of water leaps from the toe of
my shoe. unseen,
a few hundred yards away from
me, ocean breaks itself
upon harbor rock, sending itself
to mist.
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