Conspicuous Assumption

She flinched, almost like I spat in her face. She was pretty, as they say. Thin dirty blond hair coming down against the blood red of her tight shirt on her well formed shoulders, bangs down past her chin, curling ever so slightly at the ends to make it seem like an oval picture frame around her proportioned face. There was a brown spot on the left of her adams apple, which was almost like the residue of smallpox in one spot. Grandpa had smallpox, and each spot on his white face was like someone jabbed a needle wildly into them to make little barely percievable white islands on each spot, which reminded me of milk or tapioca pudding, or something else that I used to visualize but cant remember anymore. I gave her back her meal card and tried to make it seem like I was giving her thanks. Then she closed her eyes and lifted her brown eyebrows in jolted surprise, like I spit in her eyes- dotted with glitter makeup- and the skin her forehead compressed to make perfect horizontal creases. She was tan, brown like someone who often goes to the beach, probably in a complementing pink bikini with boys who also often go to the beach.

That night, lying in my bed stiffly because I didnt want to be recognized by my roommate who may have been awake, and may have been angry if I made noise-staring at the moonlit white ceiling I thought of someone I once knew who was a sociopath. He was funny, many considered him funny. He joked at everyones expense, and his jokes where always mocking because he never told the truth. So he mocked and mocked his mocking, but noone knew what he was doing. No one knew he was a sociopath. I never talked to him.

A group of tall boys-these werent boys, they were college students. Do I call them men- opened the far glass door, so I stared at the computer monitor as if I didnt have a mind. I didnt know what I was looking at, I was only thinking that I should look up when the time is right so I can appear normal. The lead one opened the second glass door and entered the cafeteria, first looking at the crowd and then at me- I suppose. I dont know if he looked in my eyes or not, I was doing my job and he needed to know that, Linda the manager and everyone in the room needed to know that, so I sat at my chair looking at his hands expectantly. Not expectantly, more dumbly than expectantly. I think I looked up at the right time, because I could see by my peripheral vision that he rested his arm on the stand where the computer monitor rested. He took his meal card out of his pocket and I took it using my right hand, with my left hand pressing down on my left leg to try to keep my soul as down as possible, hopefully under enough to hide behind the computer stand. I swiped his card on the side of the monitor with a half smile in case someone was looking, and I placed my hand in the air for him to take the card out of. That went well, I believe, but it may be false as a belief. The next tall boy had long frizzled orange hair, and a ginger face that had no visible eyebrows. He probably played basketball on account of a hoodie he was wearing, but he wasnt black. He's probably distinguished among his team if he's good, because that's not what he's supposed to do.

I think curses exist in peoples mouths when they want them to, as a reality. I imagine that they exist like black gas filling a mouth, blacker the closer it gets to the throat, but dense all over regardless. I realized this thought when I saw Amber cover her mouth over a compliment I said, and when Mr. Shaibany gave me a dirty glance and gave an off coment about washing out mouths when I was smiling at a lecture he was giving, and when Susan Adenale walked off whispering to her friends that I was annoying after I laughed at her joke, and when Ashley stopped talking when I responded with interest and a question, and when Nick DeVannosse told his friends that he was fucking angry when I greeted him as we passed each other in the hall, and when the cashier avoided my eyes when I told her to have a nice day, and when my friend said she had a dream about snakes under her feet, and when the girl with the brown blotch next to her adams apple flinched when I thanked her, and when the Pastor preached to the other side of the crowd when he saw my face, and when my therapist grew afraid when I told her that I compared myself to God, and when the room grew silent when I entered it.

Holly is a girl in one of my classes. She had to present her project in front of the class, and she is oversized. Overweight, I mean. Her project wasn't very special, it was simple and it didnt work. It was the worst out of all the class, actually. I was worried that someone would make a derisive whisper or snicker at her, so I tried to let her know that I was there and I didnt care about her bad project or her weight and that I tried to make myself confident enough about it that she could be confident in the reality of it. I tried really hard to make it conspicously obvious that it didnt matter. I looked at her attentively, I was almost right in front of her. She made a joking hint that her project was a failure I tried to make it conspicuously obvious that it was alright, and I smiled and tried to appear nonchalant and she flinched and closed her eyes tight and frowned for a second like she was crying and I saw her past and ways she suffered that no one had any right to cause and when she was done I clapped loudly so it would cover up and I wanted to cry but I didnt because if I did I wouldnt control it I wouldnt be able to control it I cant because its too much too much behind me inside me and I wanted to help her or pray or cry and I thought I would wait until class was over but class was long, and I forgot.

I know what I'm doing. I hurt people. Its like I send out conspicuous assumptions like a plague out of my body.I don't feel sorry for my iniquity anymore. I dont think I do. I might though, because I tend to forget my feelings if I ignore them for a few days or weeks. But I just laugh in my head now, so I don't think I feel sorry anymore, which would mean that I also don't know who I am anymore because the True self is like a mirror where one finds oneself in other people, like sharing identity or giving it away and getting it back more Real. Unless I just forgot, which would mean that my True self is just rotting underneath, until I get it back. So what I need to do is find my True self, and I think Buddhism can teach me that. But I lie to myself sometimes.

I had a dream once and I only remember the scene where I see a woman holding the body of some person who had a metal spoke sticking out of the top of his head, and I think there was a little girl staring in the back and a house burning further back, and it was night time and I tried to offer the woman condolensce and maybe a smile, but she stuck out her palm to stop me and yelled at me to go away. She was crying and yelling at me quite a bit, and I didnt see what the fuss was about because she wasn't in my dream earlier and had no relation to the body earleir in my dream, so I walked on. I think I stuck in the spoke. Hahahahaha.
I think I want to kill people sometimes, but I'm not sure. Anger is useless though. It's useless. I think writing can help me discover myself, but remember that I lie to myself? It's difficult to express myself in writing, because I go into a mode of conspicuous assumptions and I don't even realize that I'm doing it. That's what I call it anyway.

Mr. Stevens gave us a paper to write, when he was describing it he told us to make it on a topic that we had covered in class and I had chosen to cover the problem of an omnipotent and benevelont God that allows evil to occur. When I was at my desk in my room I became inspired to write a creative and impassioned argument supporting the side of God. I thought of how I would surprise him with paradox and overcome him with intimate detail and broad argument. The teacher would not know how to respond. Then I thought about when I used to write stories. I used to write stories. I thought of writing a story of a college kid who is suddenly overcome with rage and plans to fill the cafeteria with toxic gas. He would lock all the doors in the busiest time, maybe during a formal dinner, and he would bring a gas mask for himself and a lead pipe, and he would detonate gas bombs in the vents and wait for panic to erupt. But anger is useless. It's useless. I need to write a story about something not angry, unless it has a positive lesson. Its ok if anger is involved in a story, so long as there is a positive lesson about it in the end.

My roomate knows about our culture because he watches t.v. and talks to his friends and views popular websites on his laptop, but I don't watch t.v. and I smashed my laptop. He refers to things that I don't know about, so we don't talk much at all. He's a normal person, but I can tell that he used to be himself once. He was killed by the vangaurd of conspicuous assumptions. No one knows why its the rules, they just know that they aren't supposed to go against them, and if they do they are wrong by default. I wonder if they think about it. Do they know that stereotypes are stereotypically portrayed as shallow and untrue?

"Jesus, I see a light." If you can picture that feeling of awe, that's how I felt when I say the lamp post at night behind the snow covered trees. It was like art, or something out of a mystical fairytale. The trees still had all their leaves in February, and they had little red berries on them like a mistletoe. The lamp post reminded me of city streets in the 50's and musicals. It was right behind a tree, in a hallway of snow covered green red and white trees. It was right in front of a dimly red brick arch, like a gaurdian to a gate, or a lighthouse to another dimension. I was alone at that late hour of night, in an enchanted winter wonderland, but I hurried on in case someone saw me admiring-genuinly admiring a lamp post at night.

I think it's a reaction from my body, so I dont die. I dont care most of the time, but I cant show that. I have to care what they care about. Otherwise they will be alone, and they don't like that. But I can't give myself to it, or else I give my soul away.

The pretty girl in the oval picture frame flinched because I thanked her. She had turned away to go and I wondered if she knew what I had done. Her eyes told me that she had self respect and discipline. She doesnt let anyone get away with dragging her through the mud, and I respected that. I respect that. But I spat in her face and she turned away, and I wondered if it stuck with her. I just did what I was supposed to. I've been doing that for a very long time.
Its a conspicuous assumption, like the seed of a shadow growing over heads, that we must live by a code of right and wrong. I sow seeds but I dont want to. I'm afraid not to. I sow seeds of division that may or may not grow to fruition. They can't acknowledge that I plant them because its only an assumption after all, that I had just spit on their soul. I wish I wouldn't. It grows worse every day I do. So I am stuck with a conspicuous assumption like a malicious shadow that must be defeated or obeyed. I negotiated with it, I told it I would obey so long as I keep my soul- but what a fool I am! I sold my soul for a promise from the shadow of Doubt!

I want it to end, but it doesn't end on its own. I read in a book of mine an author who said that writers live to do what people want to do the least: they dive in black waters of suffering and confront demons in the deep. They choose to live the most painful possible life a human can live-a life facing themselves, standing and watching alone the endowing rays of the sun. It's an act of faith, I believe. I believe it's an act of faith.You have to trust yourself enough to believe whats inside you.

So now I write.