there has got to be a cure for this

malady, this aversion to speech, she thinks. she knows she has written of this here before, perhaps many times already. is she fascinated with it? is she secretly entranced by it? i have read somewhere that the way people deal with intrusive thoughts, fixations, is to naturally develop another one in the belief that this new neurosis will somehow mask the effects of the first ones. don't we see this all the time in each other? the more we protect ourselves and each other, from our selves and other people, the more suspect we and our intentions are. the more she talks and converses and comes up with quips and funny remarks the more her stomach turns. the bile rises. i see it happening all the time.

i suspect that this stems somewhat from her protracted thesis work. she knows she should let it go already, but here she is, tweaking and cutting and restructuring again. it will never end, if it were only up to her. thank goodness there are such things as advisers, and penalties, and tuition fee increases, otherwise... otherwise! but she hates what she has done thus far, and yet cannot let it go. she hates the fact that it is meaningless and useless. full of words. she balks at the lines she's strung together, packed into pretentious stand-alone paragraphs. she wants to hang the person who thought up those arrogant, flimsy, inconclusive findings. she wants to shoot those who produced the worst of them books, which she had to read and reread and apply herself to. she wants to gather all the words, tie them up real tight, and then, and then violently pull them apart.

i suspect that this stems not just from the thesis work. i suspect that this is borne of those moments she felt most inutile, words were most inutile. when there were only images and no words. when there were words but no meaning. when her body should have been acting without thinking, and then the thinking just had to come along, comanding the body to move, the face to break into a human smile, the eyes to flicker once in a while. the commands were always packaged in words.