Work Text:
i. The Wall Records (etched into various walls with a variety of implements)
14
Dear Diary,
I'm fourteen today. Happy Birthday to me! I'm fourteen today and I'm scratching out my first diary entry on the wall of I think it used to be a bank? This is stupid. It's not like anyone's going to read this. I'm going to be stuck in this stupid time forever and even if someone did see it, they wouldn't care.
Happy Birthday to me.
I mean, I could stop, but I am just so bored. I've walked everywhere and seen everything and I guess this could just be typical teenage ennui, but I'd like to think of myself as being able to push past that.
BUT IT DOESN'T EVEN MATTER IF I DO BECAUSE I'M HERE ALL ALONE AND IF I WANT TO WRITE ON THE WALL OF A BUILDING AND BE A STUPID DEPRESSED TEENAGER I WILL BEAUSE I'M ALL ALONE AND I'M STUCK HERE FOREVER AND IT'S MY FAULT IT'S MY OWN STUPID FAULT.
23
It still feels pointless, all these months later, to come back to this. I spent so long making that book, finding all the paper, figuring out the best way to keep it together, even that paper I made myself the year I was eighteen. And then, all it takes, on rainstorm where I forget that I left it, the only record of my years here that I could take with me if I ever get home, out underneath a bench.
All that work, gone. All those years, gone.
But let's just be serious. I mean, I might as well be, it's taken me three weeks just to get this much chiseled out on the wall, but what else am I going to do. Even if I do ever get home, a record of my Thoughts and Feelings from age sixteen onwards isn't going to do much to help.
Nothing's going
37
I'm going to stop my calculations for a time now. I'm not sure what else I can add, with my head as full as it is. Six months away, maybe, then I can come back to it. I might try my hand again at building. My last small house was strong enough.
I'm finding it hard to express myself. It's to be understood (if there was anyone here to understand, or anyone even to read these words and not understand. If there as anyone here that I might have to whom I might have to explain myself. If there was someone who questioned, even for a moment, my extreme self absorption.), this long without anyone else to speak to, I am used to only myself, and my own mind.
I have, of course, gone completely mad. I don't think it will detract from my eventual discovery of the route home; madness is not, in and of itself, a clear block and/or deterrent for genius. I suppose in some cases it would seem to be required.
I doubt very much that this madness is a madness caused, however, by an overflow of ideas and creativity. I have never been particularly suited to creation or wild leaps of intuitive logic. My power speaks to that. (If I do find my way home, and I manage to bring anything with me, this scratching on a wall will serve as proof I kept myself well analyzed, if nothing else.) If it is a power, a gift at all, it is one of reaction, not of action. I am no Number One.
No, this is a madness of loneliness. This is a madness of a feral child, only I'm not quite so feral.
I WASH MY HANDS BEFORE EVERY MEAL STILL, MOTHER, I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN THAT MUCH.
ii. The Wall Records (spray paint, house paint, charcoal)
14
I just want to go home I just want to go home I just want to go home I just want to go home I just want to go home
14-29
(An image of an umbrella, negated. Repeated many times, in various cities and towns, on almost every conceivable vertical surface. Predominantly on libraries and schools.
Never on a hospital.)
30
This is probably the least permanent of any of my writings, anywhere in the world. I'm going to cover this entire Town Hall in charcoal. If there was anyone to appreciate it, it would be a poignant artistic statement, I'm sure. Something faffish, pulling together my contempt for institutions, with the futility of doing it in charcoal.
It's summer, it's the Midwest. It's not going to rain for days. I'll have enough time.
I just think that I need to stop with the pointless introspection. It won't help. I'll take one last shot at clearing my head and then I'm going to truly throw myself into finding a way home.
I'm going to cover this building with that word, and then I'll walk away. I'll walk till I can't and then I will begin. And I won't stop until I know that I have found a way back. And I won't go away again, I'll stay, I stay oh so still and quiet. (hah!)
Home. Home. Home.
iii. The Bark Records (carved into trees)
22-59
LET ME COME BACK
iv. A Conversation (handmade paper)
unknown
I think I've found the way back.
You thought that last week.
No, but this time I really have, I know it, I just have to get to the right place and implement my new theory and it should work, it should be fine.
Nope.
Yes! Why don't you support me.
Do you really want me to tell you?
I know why.
You couldn't go back, even if you found a way.
I know why.
You've lost too much.
I SAID I KNOW WHY.
v. Pen and Paper
dual. Back in the stream
I've found my way back. I was right, that last night. I just had to listen to the right voices. Cruelties of cruelties that are my lives, I've come back in the body in which I left. As if it weren't enough to be mad. I can only hope I miss puberty this time around.
I was foolish. I should have stayed.