"This poem is called 'Time of Sorrow'"

Mr. Wallace's suicide continues to resonate, or it weakened the glass enough that bigger bowling balls landing on the windshield over my heart made some big scary cracks. Today I am watching a documentary in which a girl, out from foster care and juvie, screams wounded insults at her drug-addicted mother. I am sitting next to a girl with acute Borderline Personality Disorder traits, like: she cannot take in any genuineness and so judges and deflects, loudly and with the aid of teeth-sucking. "[tsk] she so stupid [tsk] her hair ugly [tsk] she be blowing me, she don't deserve no mother [tsk]." My grief over my mother was summoned by the documentary, but my hatred of her and my hatred of my hatred of her is sitting next to me like Kryponite, if Kryponite was human pain, and Superman was a social worker. I am so raw by the end of the film that I nearly ram the glass with the A/V cart in my rush to escape. It was carnage in there, girls crying over their cancer-ridden mothers, their sad lives, their existences, buy my girl is running for her room, making sure that we all see her tear-stained face and hear her anguished cries. I am certain that she isn't feeling anything. I want to smoosh her face. I want to reach into her empty self and fill her with empathy pudding.

Cut to the boys group and all their bitching and moaning. This one kid--I shall call him Ponytail, because he is mean--obviously does not want to participate in the spoken word group. "So go." "I don't want to go." Continues to cuss under his breathe, attempts to screw his face up into a shank and psychically stab me with it. "Okay, everyone who wants to be in this group, raise your hand." He does not raise his hand. "Okaaaay, everyone who didn't raise their hand, step out." He does not step out. "I want to be in group." "Well, you should have raised your hand. Step out."

And then it begins. "This is some bullshit, some fucking bullshit, etc..." He is pouring me a heaping helping of the word stew commonly called 'M.F.-ing' in corrections lingo. Usually I know where to place myself in the mental terrain of these interactions. There are boundaries. Clearly, kid was looking to M.F. someone. Plus, the stupid and selfish rage of adolescents cannot be overstated. You can bitch all you want, but I know I asked you justly, and you must justly obey. You, kid, are in jail.

There is also Spazzatar, a young man greatly underserved his share of intact genes, nutrition, family life, or social capital. I try to remember that they are puppies, you know? Cute puppies you see near a dumpster, having been bested by the other dogs, and you move closer, like, "Hey little buddy! Aw, buddy, what happened to your leg?" and snap!, Little Buddy is baring his teeth and lunging and hiding his hurt leg from you, you fucking monster. Spazzatar's bared teeth take the form of a high-pitched voice he uses to repeat and mock everything I say. I feel like the worst group leader in the world. I am a terrible person, a fat white lady pouring effete syrup on nasty little kids that would rather punch each other and mock each other to death. I wonder what I am doing with my life, I should be on Project Runway. I should be doing a job that never ever hurts. I am going to quit, and find a job that does not want to kill me.

Couple things:

I'm working on a plan to update this more as a personal challenge! I love personal challenges!

Also, from Laura Miller's article on Salon.com about DFW's suicide, we get this: to counter exhausting self-consciousness he practiced a "rigorous and imaginative compassion." I scribbled it inside my pocketbook I liked it so much.

And finally, I'm entranced by this spam email I read, imagining it's like an internet rune by which I can tell my future, or maybe a cryptic map to millons of Nigerian dollars. You tell me.

"Lila Thomson" CaseyexhaustBlanco@wikipedia.org

sourberry ginmill ed,

counsel sunset colony? assurance, edit nielson.colony jessica protract assurance cyclone playtime, skipgaberones marshland congestive absolve salvage.

counsel eldest.

David Foster Wallace, please. Please don't hang yourself. If it isn't proof enough that, um, things are happening, that life is going along and the thoughts and words that I love are not tied to a man that can feel that love, well, you committed suicide. Just last night I was telling a stoop full of drinking women about Infinite Jest, about Don's speech in front of the Crocodiles, perhaps my favorite story ever told.

Well. Well. I choose to believe that love means something, dead or alive, and so, having not met you while you were alive, I would like to say: your books made true things clearer, and funnier, and more poignaint, and therefore: more true, in my humble opinion. Thank you. I am sorry for your mind-shattering pain.