PARIS JAPONICA - JOURNAL 1

Hi, jounal

we're going through a grace period, before a horrible storm that will last god knows how long

I will try my best. But if it's too much to keep you alive, I will bury you.

From me, to me, to the world someday.

As I walk around, I think about collapse, judgement, projection and shame to name a few.

Some day this place might be burnt down, the closest thing to a home i have. I can't see anybody in this state and not think about how: 1.- they're dissociated from the gravity of it all. 2.- I look insane, in disrepair and lost at a glance and in further inspection.

You get what you see I guess. A pit of immobilized hopelessness. 

I came home, smoked until it hurt, tossed and turned, then finally, slept. That was yesterday, that will be today.

Triumph

Today, another client came in. This one seemed so young, my  motherly instincts almost kicked in and gave him a hug. God. Fuck. These poor kids. 

Notes for next session:

- pull hope and drive out of your ass to try and give some of that to him

- reframe the negative self talk as a consequence of things outside of his control

- gliders and winds

- dig into his school and home life more

- secure a date so he has something to look forward to

Some kids know the life they barely got to know is doomed, somehow. Out of everyone in this world, i would hope kids were blissfully blind to this selfish human-made horror. But they can't be, You can't cover the mechanical sun with your thumb, or your two palms, even.

Stimulus and response

LENKA'S BACK OH MY GOD SHES ALIVE. It's been a few days since that chat with Lenka, so i feel ready come back to it. I couldn't get an audio log for that last session with the stoner kid. Machine was broke but turns out i just had to sotter something back in place bc i knocked the recorder over one night when i was drunk. God bless this wire machine, though. I could never get this much info on digidisk. She had a fight with her mom after her mom noticed her suicidal conduct. She said that her mom didn't want to understand, like she fought her own brain to try not to in some parts and in others it was "like our brains had assigned different weights to the strings tied to us. To our organs and our minds." Damn. She IS an artist. Anyways. As usual, I'm doing something stupid, so i'm sticking the wire recording in a paper envelope, sticked to this here page. Bite me, archivists, I'll do my own archive however I want.

PLAYING WIRE REC LENKA 02...

Lenka: So uhh... My mom confronted me on some stuff. Some heavy stuff.

Geneviéve: Oh... Okay, I assume you wanna talk about it?

Lenka: Yeah, yeah. I just feel like my brain is still scrambled.

...

Lenka: So, the way I've been acting recently, and i know i should've 
talked about this sooner (sorry). Anyways, the way i've been acting recently 
has been a bit self destructive. And i've failed to fight against it, to the 
detriment of my loved ones.

FG: What do you mean by self destructive?

Lenka: Doing drugs, walking out at night with just my shirt and pants on... *sigh*
shooting cast iron pans and cowbells with my gun in the junkyard, barely eating and
just laying down in my bed trying to manifest mold growing out of me, eating me.

FG: I'm sorry to hear that.

Lenka: Thanks. So my mom confronted me about this, I mean i didn't really hide
the decay i was feeling. Nothing outside of it seemed to matter. I just thought
if i'll die soon anyways i'll just live out my pain and make my chances go up. My mom didn't like that. As most moms probably would.

FG: So what did she say? if you don't mind going into it.

Lenka: Yeah, no, right- That's what therapy is supposed to be about, I guess.
She said "I've carried a shitty life just like you for twice the time, have mercy on me"
and "what have we been fighting for if you just throw your life at a coin toss? Wouldn't
that make it all useless?" 

She went on about how shes fighting to keep our place here
when she's out the house, that then she comes home and it's all a mess and that I
could help her out with that instead of ruminating. That those things keep your mind off that desire to rot away or be on the receiving end of a stray bullet. Ok that last one is my artistic liberty, but i think it adds a more apt description to this feeling, what it's been like.

FG: Damn, well, that sucks, I'm sorry... I got 2 questions for you, remember you
don't have to answer if you don't feel comfortable or need a break.

so... first off. how long have you felt like this?

Lenka: Well, for a long time but for different reasons, I guess. When I was a kid I was weird and a bit confrontational, got my ass beat a couple times. That was the first taste of that, whatever that is. When I was a teen I was lost, seemed like almost everybody knew what they wanted to do, except me and Pedro, my best friend and the closes thing to a leader we have in the movement. We both were finding meaning in things together.

 In the impotency of youth, ironically, i felt the most meaning blooming out of things. Young adulthood, I guess that's what we call the now, has been trying to keep the flower in the vase alive n pretty. But there's this toxic rain that keeps seeping through the roofs I build for it, and it drips into the vase, i guess? sorry, it's hard to speak coherently on this shit.

FG: Nah, don't worry, I think i get you. Actually I think more people get you than you think. I'm sorry to hear that. That you were never relaxed for such a huge portion
of your life. I get it, because, maybe with less violence in between but still, I see
myself, my younger, scared and lonely self in the story you're telling me. If there's
an upside to this burden, it's that nothing feels more raw and human than recognising that poor kid in someone else, right? It can be beautiful in a way.

Lenka: ... You're right.

FG: So that next question

Lenka: Oh right, right.

FG: What- How did it feel like, when you heard your mom say those things?

Lenka: I felt angry. Then sad in a way, sorta reciprocal. I felt so incapable, cause like- Am I supposed to want my mom to understand why her child doesn't wanna see this whole thing to the end? Wouldn't that be cruel? 

There's this fundamental barrier between us, a gap, it's like our brains had assigned different weights to the strings tied to us, to our organs and our minds. But if she understood, if the gap was breached, that could also mean she might end up where I am... And then what?! Love is cruel like that sometimes...

...

FG: Love is tough, alright, but death is worse for everybody when you're loved.

Lenka: *sniffles* I know...

FG: Come, now, I'll see you out the door. Take care, Lenka.

End of recording.