by Ethan Seavey
On the bus my mind just keeps running
And I’d love for it to slow down. It does when I’m writing because the thoughts can’t happen four times a second. They go as fast as my fingers do, and my fingers are clunky on this little glass screen, they have to go back and polish up the thoughts so that they’re readable, so that they make sense. My mind doesn’t do that by itself, it just jumps from jump to jump to jump. But it’s hard to type on the phone and so I just sit and think
I miss [redacted] but it was right to say goodbye because I’m not ready to spend more time with them I need a psychologist to diagnose my adhd and a therapist to rewire my brain and ketamine therapy is something I should look into I’m gonna be so tired at work today I have to be a self starter I’ll tell my coworkers I’m kinda sick so they don’t expect too much of me I’ll close my eyes and open them when the bus stops again I forgot to spritz the plants today I should write a story called all our husbands are gay, all our wives are lesbian and it would be humorous but probably insensitive, cut to a random memory from my trip to Greece when I walked around the ruins of a temple with James, spliced with the time I was walking a dog and failed it because it pulled on the leash and I let go and it ran across the street + got bit. I get bored and check my apps, I deleted an app and now I spend too much time on social media and I can’t read War and Peace because my brain is tired, I can’t write well on the bus, can I? That’s language that limits you, E, you often let language limit you , using language which further locks me to its statement; I often let language limit me because it was once said about me by me and it clicks in my head that way
Do I have to do backflips and say that language does not limit me in order to harness its power in a productive way?
It all feels so overwhelming but in reality there are only a few things I need to do
Find an apartment find a therapist and a psychologist find a graduate program to apply and find a graduate program that will accept me and find a spot in a career I have no energy for right now because I’ve just been stuck because you’ve been giving yourself away to other things and other people
…
At work I push gelato to the front of each little tub and destroy the beautiful peaks and valleys of its newness in order to display how empty the case is, a decision by the new manager, a decision that cannot be questioned
Scraping old gelato on top of new gelato makes it uglier, like this peach gelato, half untouched before I touch it and then suddenly fully touched and disgusting. There’s barely any creamy rice gelato left and I stuff it to the front so my manager can see how silly it is. Pumpkin spice phrenology phrenology is the scientific study of beauty on the human face and I saw it on a YouTube thumbnail, I should write it down as there’s something musical to pumpkin spice phrenology, something dissonant
I’m puzzled (monkey puzzle tree) by the way I think because it’s so random (the thatch roof cottage in Ireland I visited with my family when I was much younger) but random does not mean it’s not thorough (last thing to do before I leave is to restock the lids, don’t forget, because I already forgot once before) and the ideas and thoughts just stack and blend like tee ball when I was eight and thunderclaps from last night’s storm
I come to the back room to type this out and leave and remember I came in this back room to find the lids (I forgot again) but I will finish before I leave + I will finish this piece because I’ve been leaving too much unfinished and unframed + I see a guest, more to come