i was really moved by something i'd read the other day:

that a sheep can recognize another individual sheep's face for up to 2 years.

then i got pissed off that i couldn't write about it. i mean, i tried to write about it and then felt that i had entirely lost whatever writing 'groove' or 'rush' or 'habit' i ever had before.

like my ability to express has run out entirely.

so i got really angry at ryan for absolutely no good reason, and then toyed with the idea of going into therapy again, and just generally felt like my life was never going to be as good or as stimulating as it had been at Iowa.

but you know, i was never happy in iowa. i mean, not really, i don't know what i mean.

so all of this stuff is a preface to say that while watching _donnie darko_ tonight (which was just really fucking amazing and moving and i can't really describe it- heh) i was having all these thoughts about both the movie and my life (not that they were at all similar) and i was thinking a lot about the gifts of insight and comprehension and intuition,

and, to get really meta, i was thinking about how much i think, and how much the people i choose to surround myself with think, and how much ryan thinks, and the people i love most dearly, and how much i value wakefulness and articulation.

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i used to go to a kind of therapy called EMDR. Look it up. It stands for eye-movement desensitization reprocessing. originally, it was created to treat servicemen who had witnessed or experienced trauma-- memories that haunted them.

one of the requirements of the procedure is that you must visualize, with the guidance of the therapist, your most horrifying or painful memories, and then you must edit them, remodel them, transform them, in a visual realm, so that you are replacing the bad graphic with the new.

you always remember the old one after that, it just doesn't seem as horrifying anymore. like, since you have envisioned it's opposite, or its lukewarm counterpart, the original memory isn't nearly as bad.

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tonight while driving home from the movie i kept envisioning my brain and mouth connected by a single wire.

my brain was flashing like a strobe, full of color and movement, and i was looking in on it-- wondering at all the stuff going on inside it, the ideas, the feelings, the observation.

that activity was not being effectively transmitted to my mouth. my mouth looked dead and pale. the wire wasn't trembling as if any kind of energy was running through it.

i think my thoughts are stopped up and i am afraid that i cannot get them out to my satisfaction.

i cannot articulate them to my satisfaction.

even this entry is already embarrassing me because it is confusing and abriged, there is no way for me to adequately explain all the stuff there is to say.

ryan will be glad that i am writing at all, that i'm here, alone in the dark of the office, doing the thing that both of us regard as the main part of my identity- writing.

but i'm not pleased, and i never have the energy to push through. and if this is depression, it is the happiest and most comfortable slump i have ever experienced. i don't get it.

so what do i do when i'm wakeful-dreaming and worried about the brain-stoppage?