Collections & Doppelgangers

The book currently occupying the top of my spread-open book stack has cover art which features a spread-open book stack. It's right now when I start wondering why this stack should exist. What do I expect out of poetry? Is is some sort of enigmatic fetish which I'm hoping will help me find that ultimate ass-kicking Other to share my narrative and then later enter it wholesale? (You'll have to forgive me; I'm feeling more than the usual share of self-loathing for reasons not at all apparrent to me.) Perhaps I'm just looking for the equivalent of the humiliating gimp-mask which seems to work for some people. It's strange: the lengths our whole teeming human mass will go to, all the places we'll visit just to search the Self (as far as to try to resuscitate some old side projects). I'm thinking out loud here because there is a nagging uncertainty over a few cases this month where I've apeshitted and overinterpreted others' words, and I'm unsure whether the mythology I've built up (a mythology that made me happy) can justifiably continue. I did some web research and I've established, to my everlasting exasparation, that the above-mentioned mythology is about 50% likely to survive to the new year. How's that? It induced an unwelcome autonomic nervous system response. If only I coould slow down time, I could have taken a nice long look at all the accumulated wisdom of my body in action, spotting a threat to my well-being from just a few words on the internet.

Here's a Fun Fact from my personal history: I always get out-competed by my doppelgangers. It's always someone very much like me that gets the job or the girl or the idea or the recognition or the confidence or the attention. And I've responded by denying (or futilely attempting to deny) each of those things. But I can't do it any more. I can't blame my doppelgangers because I identify too well with all of them; indeed, many of them are indispensable to me as friends and relations. So that means that next time I have to be a competitive dick. It's a dick world that makes me have to be that. Two years ago K.Z. said that if I wasn't selfish in a particular mindfuck affair of the heart, I would turn into a bitter old man. She was absolutely right, that guru of mine.

No doubt you are frustrated by my vagueness. I can't help it. Is it strange that I've never used a single person's name in all my entries over the past year, preferring psych-textbook-esque initials. (Aside: the anterograde amnesiac H.M., quite possibly the most famous psychological test subject in the world, is named Henry.) I name famous people and animals, but that's about it. Is it just a bullshit attempt to be mysterious, or is is something far more sinsiter and psychologically ridiculous?

As I write this, Phoebe (the cat) is the only thing keeping my mood stable. She's monopolizing my chair, but I could use the body warmth.

Consider: "福無重至, 禍不單行. (Fortune seldom repeats; troubles never occur alone.)"