October 17, 2003
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A Heartbreaking Blog Of Staggering Dumbness
or: A Series Of Disjointed Autobiographical Entries, Part I
The neighborhood was typical New York suburbia. Two homes attached on one side with a driveway between each unit, like the space after a compound word. The neighborhood was predominately Irish families. The kind of families that had policemen or firefighters for fathers and housewives for mothers. The kind of families that didn’t believe in birth control (the largest family had 13 children).
My earliest memory is one of two things – I can’t figure out which happened first. One is a nightmare about an evil E.T., bruise colored with shiny solid black eyes. He peers over my bed and he wants to hurt me. I wake up. The other is lying in bed trying to sleep but afraid of the monsters that live in my floor. They’re serpentine and cyclopian, lamprey-like. Quietly chewing their way up through the floor underneath my bed. They want to get me. If I lie still enough, if I’m quiet enough, I’ll be able to hear them coming. I’ll be able to hear them coming and I’ll be able to run away. Unfortunately, I’ve learned you can never run from the monsters of your childhood. You can only turn and fight them.
Comments (32)
This is good. I’m glad you’re writing stuff like this. It feels real and honest again.
in a strange coincidence, i am currently reading heartbreaking work of…
Tangible, dude.
When I was a kid I could never get the phrase “Run, run, as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I’m the gingerbread man” out of my head. It always creeped the hell out of me, like it was some kind of eternal curse to be stuck chasing a giant gingerbread man.
For some reason your blog made that phrase pop into my head again.
I remember those monsters…they influenced the monster I became out of sheer self-preservation.
I don’t think these are visible in Safari or Mozilla, but, as requested:
no, you can’t run from that shit.
heres sum props dude….prop baq if u can…..
Need Music? I’m Just getting started. Come Check it out and Leave a Request!
you can’t run from the monsters of adulthood either you know…
(and uh, did you sign up for “Useless Filler Props-R-Us or something? Cause I mean you got “BiG aNd SmAlL lEtTeR gUy” and “hit me baq guy” all in the same post. very sad; poor you. heh)
i feel it
my childhood fear was volcanos…kind funny given that I live in Massachusetts and have never been anywhere near a volcano in my entire life.
Now I am kind of obsessed with them, and plan to go to Hawaii to write a story about Pele.
Props for facing the fear instead of turning from it. I think fear is motivation to succeed.
Beautiful…I can’t even describe it…*cheers* Dude- tutor meeee!
http://www.rockerfaerie.co.nr
Is this Bayside?
It’s the last 2 sentences that make this piece. I like! Glad to have you writing again.
the Lampreys are the scariest. I would have run.
wow..that’s freakin awesome..i wish i could write like that! >|yellOw sunshine|<
I’m not sure that I get your point but I still get scared when my legs hang over the bed.
Man, what the hell did you do when you were a kid? Those are the wierdest dreams I’ve ever heard of. When I was a kid, I had dreams about my mom being killed all the time (I think it was because I love her so much…too bad for my sister and dad.) And now, I have dreams about little inflating aliens that pop out of books. They’re green, and they’re glowing. I try to catch them, and end up in an airport, but I don’t ride any planes…
That is one of my most recent dreams. The others, I don’t think I can talk about on Xanga (uuuh. Yeah.)
The truly frightening thing is when you realize that the only reason you no longer fear the monsters from your childhood is because you’ve become a bigger monster, far more scary than they could ever hope to be.
When you realize that is why you no longer fear anything or anyone else…that’s a bit of a cold fright.
If everything has a purpose, isn’t it odd that we remember our childhood nightmares? Mine were about (a) being kidnapped, and the details were always the same, or (b) giant Slinky monsters. So much for being fun and a wonderful toy.
the emptiness of the streets and of the world prevailed before my bloody eyes. unfortunately, doom was only a mirror second away from my last breath. as for me, it’s only the fear that awaits me in my dream. monsters creep and crawl but they will be automatically zapped by my alarming clock as another day surfaces my eyes. And so it continues…[your fine entry is a delight] smile.
pr0pz. Ever write something more than a paragraph? Good work.
my only recurring nightmares were:
1. me on a conveyor belt with a huge needle shooting through my head and out of my feet
2. trying to run or walk and my legs not working (as though I had C.P.)
Nothing too traumatizing.
hey what’s up
When I was young I had these nightmares about purple dog-sized giraffes attacking me in my sleep. The only way to kill them was to spray Lysol on their faces, so to help me sleep more “safely” my parents kept a can of Lysol by my bed and told me that I could use it if they came for me. Then the other night I had a dream that my hand was a hampster cage. It was weird.
go figure an aquarius being afraid of aliens as a child
Oh I agree… Back in Black does rock harder, but it is not as fun to sing along to as I’ve Got Big Balls. You don’t get the same kind of looks from people when singing that song than you do when singing Big Balls, as well.
awesome
oh wow. That is incredible. If only I could write like you.
<3
I’d always figured, if I was benign, nice, quiet, kind…my monsters would leave me be.
Monsters certainly don’t work the way I expected. One slip, and they eat you alive. I applaud your willingness to fight.
and in response to the title of this blog…
I dig it, and I dug the book that inspired it. Gave it to my best friend for X-mas even.