I don’t want to go back.
I don’t want the rules, the restrictions.

Here’s something.
I play jazz because the lack of structure and the incoherence in design is delectable to me.
I admire the changes that occurred in each composer’s mind.
I’d like to think that they have shared thoughts with me, even if sixty years in difference.

Woah. I definitely was going somewhere at the beginning of this rant.
Am I getting less understandable?
Is my train of thought laying more hazardous tracks, threatening to go in a manic way?

I certainly hope not.

The bottom line is that I don’t want to go back.
Oh, look, that’s also the first line.
I’m not funny.

We’ve been over this.
There it is! I’ve changed subjects again.
This is a little alarming.

Am I jazz?
That sounds like something Sammy Davis Jr. would say.
God, stop it.
Stop. Stop. Stop.

You can’t do this to yourself.
Just go to sleep.

Here’s something.
When a man and a woman love each other very much...
That’s an archaism.
Everybody ***** everybody nowadays.
Girls, boys, girls.
Am I getting left behind because I’m anachronistic?
I just want it to mean something, you know?
Not societal pressure.
Not the standard physical progression of a high school relationship.

I just want a friend, and to build a closer connection.
I want to hold someone and feel the heat of their body, and know that they’re feeling mine.
I want to close my eyes and trust that their eyes are also.

I have this idea (dream?) of *** being transcendent, not terrestrial.
I want to love, and to feel...not to ****.
Am I making sense?
Am I the only person in the world who thinks like this? Probably not.
But I’ve got a sinking feeling that I’ll never find that other person.

I'd want someone, a friend, a best friend, who'd understand the connection I want to make.
They’d understand the closeness and transcendentalism, understand that it isn’t about societal rules,
or regulations,
or ideals.

I want making love to be about making love, not pretenses and cliches and other Earthy concerns.
Maybe I’m an idealist.

I don’t care.

This is what I want.

A gear that does not conform is a wrench in the works.
Remove the gear until it can be brainwashed, retrained, forced to mesh.
How to fix it?
How to force it?
The hammer?
Not a surgical tool, by any means, but this isn’t a surgical processus.
Accuracy requires thought.
The bludgeon is a much simpler tool.
A simpler weapon.
Certainly not as successful as perhaps another, but casualties are to be expected in such lock-step, industrial machinery.
It was the height of modernity a century ago -- but the world is changing, and the machine is grinding slowly into the primitive darkness of archaism.

The world is changing. Rearranging.
More and more gears are dropping from their cogs into the morass of the behemoth.
More and more are getting lost in nauseous darkness.
More and more gears.
More and more wrenches in an aging, beastly, anachronic and inefficient monstrosity.

Something’s gotta give.

You’re laboring under the false assumption that I’m willing to work at anything right now.
You’re laboring under the false assumption that any part of me is working how it should right now.

Here’s something: When you connect one wire to both sides of a battery, the plastic coating of the wire starts to sizzle and melt and smoke.

When I think, that thought leaves my brain for a while, pulling a new train of different thoughts behind it.
I have a small room, and soon, the train has laid tracks all around the carpet, along the hideous green walls.
Tracks everywhere.

I’m left with a choice I can’t make.
If the train derails, then I can’t think, and that terrible void comes back.
If I let the train lay tracks back inside my head, I turn into the battery.

Is that what going crazy is like?
Is this it?

Didn’t I already say I don’t want to go there?

There’s more than one reason I’m not attempting to make myself coherent; I don’t know if I can. Could you?
Don’t answer that, you don’t know.

I’ve made too many concessions to your docility, your placid ignorance.
This isn’t entertainment. I’m really dying.

When the last fiery ember has burnt out, express your sorrow for the man, and make sure you stop at the lobby on the way out.
The credits roll, my name upon the dark screen.

Enjoy your evening.

I understand where you’re coming from. “It’s sick. Let’s fix it.”
I might be an animal, but you’re no veterinarian.
This horse might not be dead, yet, but you’re not the right person to kick it over.
Let sleeping dogs lie, even if they’re having a bad dream.

I’d rather be a horse; I’d rather be a dog, than what I am now.
I need help, but you’re not helping.

Please, please stop trying.
You will only make things worse.
You will only wake the dog.

Have you come down from somewhere?
Is it because I’m going down, too?
What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?
Are you here for me? Am I vain for asking? Am I insane?

Let’s not go there, yet.

You change me. I turn to stone. I melt.
You deserve better. You deserve better.
You deserve stability. Is Heaven stable?
Will I ever find out?
Let’s not go there, either. Let’s stay here.
Don’t stay down here. Go home.

I care too much about you to let you stay.