i just noticed the room was swimming. and i thought so that's what it's like, when the room is swimming. and swimming with the room, i got up and walked to the door. and the floor was under me, and the floor was under me, the floor was under me more often than it was not. the floor was under me, except when it was not. then the floor was not under me, but the room was swimming, so i swam with the room, and all was still, that kind of still where everything is moving very fast and all at the exact same speed: so that motion is merely a rumor, an idea tossed on the lips of bored school girls.

oh, she said, seeming to understand, i see.

shriek: half turn in the back room, tugging off my red velvet slippers, my metaphor for dancing shoes. fell off the couch, crashed into the coffee table. wrenched my neck, blackened my knee.

howl: pulling on my nightshirt, slammed my elbow on the ceramic toilet tank. that's a little purpled, too.

chip once told me for a little girl, you sure make some big noise.

my middle name means "grace."

the book i'm reading brings me ever closer to the snapping point. what did we do to her, what did we do to her, god what did we do. but mercy, it wasn't like that, and i can't think about it that way, anyhow.

"firm realty" came up on the caller ID. i glanced "firm reality" and felt a burning need to answer.

last night it rained and rained.

i am so tired of everything there is to be tired of.

i dreamt this morning i was hemorrhaging blood in a bathroom in a part of the house that doesn't exist. miscarriage, rupture, i don't know. in the dream i fell down on the floor and crawled for the door. in our room i woke up with a cramp: thursday morning, placebo week. all falls back in line with the normal sequence of events.

i press to hard when i type. i press too hard when i write, too; pages i've written curl up and rustle. there's no denying i've just had contact with that page or the four indented behind it. a beloved art instructor in high school told me once i had "that kind of left handed hand." new age handwriting analysis throws around words like 'passion' and 'conviction.'

i doubt that i can lighten the pressure with regard to pens and pencils. modern mechanical pencils are a joke in my hand; the slippery grip of that awkward barrel is all that keeps me from bending my needle tipped pilot pens into a permanent sway. i've made my peace with that, but i'd like to work on the keyboarding issue. my fingers are long and thin, size four rings drop to the knuckle on my ring finger. as hard as i've pressed all these years, all the nights i've stirred family members and roommates with 3AM clacking, muscle tissue does not seem to thrive along my fingers' shaft.

simple logic suggests this isn't something that can go on forever without repercussions: i mean, for me personally, for my non-replaceable inventory--not the more mundane property damage, that which can be repurchased, the countless letter "e" decals i've sent to decal heaven, those space bars i've eroded clean through. coyote recently discovered a stress fracture in her left foot and now, jamming away at the keys, i've started to imagine my fingers cracking and crumbling away beneath the merciless weight of my hand.

how does one begin to retrain such a habit, unconscious as breathing?

the lesser static noise removal filters, the ones included to push a cheap sound design program as opposed to being the entire point of the program you put out a grand for, they typically work by taking a five second or less sample of the noise you are trying to clean out of the file--just the undesired noise itself. line hum, tape hiss, buzzing from the computer fan.

it creates a filter that will block those frequencies where the static noise exists: it does not eradicate the sound itself. after creating the filter, you apply it to the whole file and are left, presumably, with any sound not in those frequencies. except not every aspect of the static noise keeps the same frequencies throughout the whole file, and at times the blocked frequency coincides with the range of desirable sound. especially when cleaning a spoken word piece, you are left with a noise like crumpling tin. the rustling of metallic wings. charged wires loose inside of your mouth, small shocks clustered around every part of speech. corroding away at the simplicity of one person speaking in what they'd believed to be an otherwise silent room.

last night i experienced my first migraine aura. experienced, at least, in conscious awareness, as some of the sensations involved were very familiar, have been a part of my life since i was very young. my left eye was riddled with zigzags in half circles that distorted my vision, in spite of the fact that i could not actually see them. the edges of things came into focus with nearly obscene clarity. i didn't want anything to do with direct light. it felt, though it never appeared, that i was a half mile gone from everything in my immediate vicinity. i felt like a creature trapped outside of itself, void roaring in every direction.

ben recognized the structure of things, had me take two naproxen, had me take a decongestant, had me lie down and turned out the lights. we sorted out my chaotic panic points:

- is it a stroke?
- it's not a stroke.
- is it what nate had on six feet?
- it's not what nate had on six feet.
- ...is it eye strain?
- it might be eye strain.

i did not experience pain. i have not experienced pain--but it doesn't feel quite like there's not pain to be had--it simply feels like those frequencies have been blocked from my range. they hover around me, empty and intolerable. my perception weaves around the absence, clucking and rustling, an insidious omen of things to come.

lurid with nightmares.