Framing The Mind: Notes From An Exhausted Existentialist
By Brian Polk
Art by Morgan Heslin
Published Issue 133, January 2025
I have no idea who I really am. My mind offers me visions of myself in the past, present, future. Some of these visions happened. Some of them are happening. Some will happen or not happen at all. Everything that lives inside my head is my interpretation of events, and mine alone. And it’s a swirling mess of contradiction. Sometimes I envision myself as a future lover with partners I will never even kiss. Other times I’m a loser who doesn’t deserve love. One minute, I might think I know what I’m doing. Most other minutes, I have no clue. Some days I see my death years from now, and I’m happy and surrounded by loved ones. Most days, I die alone. Every day I die alone. In my head, I am congruently beautiful, ugly, the second smartest person ever, the third dumbest, a pleasure to be around, undeserving of friends, loads of fun, a total drag, talented, worthless, a joy, a plague. And when I see myself in the past, I’m proud that I’ve overcome so much hardship. But I mean, what did I do really? I impressed one person. Embarrassed myself in front of the other. I have trophies somewhere — probably in a landfill now. I’ve accomplished amazing things that I’ve totally forgotten about. Does any of it mean anything? Currently, I love life and hate every second of it. I want to live another 50 years. I want to die tomorrow. I miss being younger. I want to be older. I need to be older. I have to get older, right? I hate myself right now, but tonight it may be a different story. Where did I go wrong? Can I make it right? Did they have it coming? Did I? Do I? Where do I see myself in 10 years, hours, minutes? What do I have to show for the last 10 years, hours, minutes? Will I ever fucking be okay? Have I ever been okay? What if I’m never okay? Now is not okay. But I’m listening to a record that was my favorite 20 years ago. It’s still here. I’m still here. I feel like there’s something profound in that, but I don’t know what it is. Why do I have trouble breathing sometimes? That’s not how I was designed biologically. Maybe I’m an evolutionary mistake. That would explain some things around here. Could you read this and give me notes? There are always notes, aren’t there? It’s too much too soon. It’s a day late and a dollar short. So many notes. So many opinions. That frame over there on the wall — it’s always, I don’t know, just off. I don’t even know how to adjust it. I don’t think you can. Because every time you do, it’s off in another way. In a way none of us ever saw coming. We can’t ever see it coming, can we? It’s a boring whirlwind. Controlled chaos. Level-headed calamity. What if I gave everything I had so I could shine my brightest for an hour? Would you notice? Would you lose interest? What about 10 minutes? One minute? Can I just ask you one question? I guess I just did. It’s a shame you don’t want to know what I had to say. It really is. Because that’s all I ever wanted. I guess I also wanted you to care. Or at least to see how much I cared. Because I always cared so much. And I still do. What if I imagined a version of you that understood? You didn’t ask demeaning questions. You weren’t embarrassed by my earnestness. You didn’t hate the fact I was still in your life. You just listened. You held my hand and said, “I know what that’s like. I get it.” And then we laughed and cried at the absurdity of everything. I just needed you to understand what you could never in a million years understand. But you have your own brain. Your own mind that needs to make sense of things. That sees a version of yourself in the past, present, future. You are a hero and a failure. Pretty, unattractive, bright, dull, worthy, unworthy. I’m sure there were things you wanted me to see about you that I missed as well. Of course there were. I have a million apologies for that, and I know you heard one of them. Just know that there are more. So many more. Anyway, I know you’re not actually here. No one else is. And it’s probably too late anyway. It definitely is. I see you in my past. But you’re not here now. I can’t even picture your face right now — definitely not enough to pretend you’re in the future. I know you’re not there. I just wish … Well, I wish so many things. Too many things. I’m sure I’ll spend my entire life wishing. That I did things differently. That I will do things differently. That I have it in me to do things differently in this moment. I’m destined to want everything to not be how it is. I don’t like how it is. I probably won’t ever like how it is. That frame on the wall. You adjusted it, didn’t you? It’s off, but not like before. I remember now. How you spent all day wishing it were different. “It doesn’t have to be off,” you said. And you tried — I know you did. Don’t think I didn’t see you trying. I don’t ever want you to think I didn’t notice. You moved it. But you moved it too far in the other direction. And at first, it was wrong in a new way. And the novelty felt different. And we thought we were going to be okay for a while. But it didn’t last, did it? Novelty never does. You and I needed to always be changing in a stable sort of way. Different sameness. Serious humor. Revised uniformity. Earnest frivolity. And so it goes, going, gone. It went. And I don’t know what to do anymore. I guess I never did. But the uncertainty is hitting harder this time. My soul is leaking. And I can’t make it stop. Like a captain going down with the ship, I accept my fate while I panic. A brave coward. A sad stoic. An uninspired muse. I am overloaded with emotion even though I can’t feel anything anymore. I want to be everywhere and nowhere at all. See me, but please stop looking at me. I’m looking at the frame again. I told myself not to, but I did anyway. You always have to look. You can’t help it. Sometimes you can tilt your head, and that frame looks fine. But you can’t walk around with your head tilted like that. It skews the rest of the world. Someone will notice and tell you about it. And when enough people tell you, your neck will straighten. And you’ll realize how much better it feels to see the world with a straight neck. Other times, I look at the frame and just pretend it’s okay that it’s off. Perfect imperfection. A genius mistake. Wonderous wrongness. But you can’t stop noticing that it’s not right. You have to notice. And eventually, you have to admit it: it’s off. It’s wrong. It’s all wrong and can’t ever be right — even though you wish it could be different. And there I go wishing again. I wish it never happened. I wish I could do it all again. I wish it weren’t over. I wish it ended years ago — maybe then I’d be over it. But maybe — and probably — I’ll never be over it. It’ll become a part of me. So many parts of me. So much of me hurts. This painful life, body, mind. My mind always hurts. When your eyes have third degree burns, all you can see is pain. Maybe in the distance there’s a faint tinge of love. Maybe. So many maybes. Too many. Maybe one day there won’t be so many. I’m not sure if that’s better. I’m not sure it will ever be better. All these things are happening all the time — they were always happening. I encompass all of it and nothing at all. I’m composed of stardust on a lonely planet in an impossibly vast universe. Yet I only exist in my mind and in the minds of a small handful of people that happened to be around me at the same time I was here. But they’ve always been here. And so have I. It all means nothing and everything. And I’m both lucky and unfortunate to have experienced any of it. I don’t want it to ever end, but it has to stop somewhere, doesn’t it? Start, stop, begin, end …
Brian Polk is a Denver-based writer, publisher of The Yellow Rake, and drummer for Joy Subtraction and Simulators. He’s the author of Placement of Character and Turning Failure into Ideology. He likes writing, muck raking, yellow journalism, zines not blogs, cheap booze and punk rock.
Morgan Heslin is an illustrator based in Denver, CO. She has a B.F.A. in Illustration with a minor in Dramatic Writing from the Savannah College of Art & Design. Check out more of her work on her Website and on Instagram.
Check out Brian’s December install, Happiness Is Going Like Hotcakes And Other Observations About Life’s Retreat From Sanity, or head to our Explore section to see more of their work.