Cthulhu Sleeps at the Foot of my Bed

LATENIGHT LOVECRAFT

I played person today.

This person spent a lot of time behind a counter, hands placated behind a back, head perpetually bent, downwards, so the eyes strain to meet other faces. This person (me) has a lot of issues that insurance-covered talk therapy won’t begin to chip away at. In saying this, the person is avoidant and in denial and just wants a room full of kittens to roll around in.

Last night I read some Lovecraft cause I couldn’t sleep.

And the first time I read his longer, snow-capped story, I was being trucked from Florida up to Tennessee. I had been in treatment for two weeks when a hurricane hit Panama City Beach. It followed us up through Georgia, where we rested. It brambled through the shingle roofs, unassuming as a colossal dark tumbleweed. That is to say, it took a taste of the tiny town and nobody got hurt. At least I don’t think so. I'm too lazy to check now. I also have perpetual constipation and existential dread.

At the time, I was so lonely, and the thrill of disaster rippled through my sick troupe like a holiday. We packed our bags and carts of meds, a rupture in the routine, a reason to talk/road trip/abandon. The remainder of us camped at a tiny motel. Outside, I sat by myself. I read Lovecraft. Dreamscape horrors hogged the breadth of my mind's eye, star-headed spindles of dread and frozen wastelands more fertile in their flatness than the always so complicated real. Characters lost themselves in the impossible geometry, the primordial undulation, the unfathomable truths, and so did I, for a while-- until it was time for the nightly meds again. And then I woke up the next day, poked a sandwich. Probed the gray air for a good radio station, reveled in the ability to watch TV after weeks of twelve steps and group therapy. Ate at mom-and-pop’s diner. New guy from take-in, sat opposite me, remarked so matter-of-factly over his lasagna: “yeah, you look like a vodka drinker.”

Now, I’m torn up. Because while reading the work I once found spellbinding, there's an aftertaste at the top of my head like melted lithium, like disgust. Like a room temperature glass of milk. The author was a fucking asshole. I know this now. Now I come back, and I'm trying to read the cat poetry. And while the words still make magic, I am slammed back to the real with the remembrance of his hate. It cannot be avoided. The guy might have been good at conjuring up ethereal worlds in people's heads, but he was a racist douchebag, filled with hate. But he's dead, and the words are mine to make with. Right? They are the rambling gridworks of a palace that's mine to play in. You give me the blueprint, and my brain makes a world. I reconcile, I separate the art, I roll around in the dark aura I've made like catnip.

Last night I tried to sleep with lids like iron rails. I thought of should-have's and what-if's and so-alone's until my consciousness wanted to pop. When I finally drifted off, a black stringy mass bubbled up in front of my eyes. And then, as I reeled through the dark of a half-dream, a big translucent insect wound its way up the wall. My gasp could’ve turned on a clap-on lamp. Or called Alexa. Or maybe my roommates thought I was having great sex.

Today I assimilated. I started a new job. It actually felt good. All the while I was perfecting every movement, every intonation of the voice, every perceived difference between me and the norm. I think I was good at it. But all the while, I was thinking about the world not quite so contrived. About how I feel when I read Lovecraft, so late at night. How I feel when I take the words like a color and my brain finger-paints. All the while, I’m standing and smiling and posturing and thank you’ing and i’m sorry’ing so much my tongue wants to chew itself to tendons. It doesn’t have to be this hard. It is my first job after a long while. I am obliged to smile.

Horrors are reserved for those pockets of half-sleep where your body forgets it’s an animal. Falling and grappling in space for something to understand. Last night it was wall bugs. Today it was the scrutiny of strangers. And Lovecraft you asshole I’ve got enough hate imbued in this form to punch your stomach back through time, but that doesn't mean I project it onto others. I am living in a cataclysm of my own creation and I understand my own fear so I'm impossible. I jump rope with angels and demons, I'm an Aquarius, I haven't taken my meds since Tuesday, I'm learning how to live again, I'm a disgrace, I'm a god damn divinity. I am so full of love, even though I'm so scared. I’ll take elder gods and bend them like pipe cleaners. I want to build worlds. I’ll make the better magic founded by love.

(That guy was wrong, by the way. I’m a wine drinker.)