21. A photo of something you wore when you were younger but wouldn't wear now. 7/91(?) ISSA, Illinois State University. Jon Cates & I strike a pose.
Ripped jeans? Brightly colored long shorts underneat? Backwards hat loose atop head? Big glasses? Earrings? Front 242 shirt? Ok, I might still wear that Front 242 shirt, though even that is questionable. God only knows what kind of shoes I was wearing but they were most likely high tops of some sort. Also, that pose and the hair. Well. Yeah. I have it on good authority that Jon Cates still dresses exactly the same as that though.
It’s no secret that word count has suffered lately. Just don’t know where to go with this thing. But I did write some stuff that I liked. It’s pretty much exactly like some stuff from Illinoir, main character examining himself in a mirror and not liking what he finds. I think he’s metaphorically becoming a zombie. It’s a metamorphosis! Trying to capture a total…disconnection? Conscious thought is still there but he is detached, unmoved….
Standing there, looking in the mirror, I was struck by how quickly a familiar face can become completely foreign. Those features, my features, the ones I’d known all my life, the ones I’d be able to recognize anywhere were nowhere to be found. Staring back at me was someone else, someone completely different. A monster, a devil, a demon. A zombie.
I used to be able to stand in front of a mirror and have entire conversations with my eyes, figure out exactly what was going on in my head, what had been buried, and what was bubbling just beneath the surface. I didn’t need therapy, I didn’t need analysis. I just needed my eyes. My eyes, once — according to men and women, friends and lovers alike — my best feature, striking, piercing, sharp and blue were now sunken, dead, dull. My eyes (along with my quick wit and sharp tongue, of course,) my best method of expression, now said nothing to me.They were silent. Dark. Shallow pools of vacant thoughts. Seemingly empty sockets made my face seem skeletal. Skin was drawn tight across hollow cheeks. My nose, once full and fleshy had lost its shape, sunken in. My jaw was slack, my mouth hung open. It seemed a natural expression of shock and dismay but I found that I felt neither of those things.
Indeed, as I observed all this, took stock of the changes, it was with an unnatural calm, the same calm I felt during my dream about being covered with cicadas in the woods. I was completely detached, like it was somebody else that was looking at the features of somebody else. I should have been terrified.
“I should be terrified,†I whispered.