firearms raze the summer i started getting headaches every day, i convinced myself there was something wrong with me. something inside my head was killing me. renegade cells were banding together and growing into a better weapon so they could blow my brain apart. i pressed my fingers to my eyes and saw a red gun hanging upside down. polymer-framed, short recoil, locked breech, tilting barrel. maybe it looked like that. i sat for eye exams and x-rays and ultrasounds. no one found anything. tension headaches, one doctor said. i wasn't tense. i couldn't remember ever being less tense. the pain always wrapped itself around my left eye and squeezed. just like that. like a tiny fist that held me in my bed. all i could do was lie on my back with my eyes closed, with the lights turned off and the shades drawn, and try not to think about anything. i couldn't do it. i was always forming pictures inside my head right where it hurt the most. i would think of people i wanted to see and things i wanted to happen. i had to have something to look at while i was waiting for it to be over. and my eyes had to move deeper into the bones that locked them in place if i wanted to see anything. i had to hurt myself to get away from the dark nothing i needed to live with to stop myself from hurting. what made the pain worse kept me from eating myself alive. the headaches stopped after a few months. but sometimes i feel a familiar tickle when i close my eyes and try to paint a pretty picture. i can shoot myself a thousand times and never die. 211019 ... tender_square from “book of symbols” for gun (p. 498): “its automatic conferral of phallic one-upmanship in standoffs and its seemly surefire self-protection make a gun’s brass cartridges and intricate firing mechanisms especially seductive to men. even a small boy understand what a gun does to its target long before he understands what death is. … “we live ‘under the gun,’ we go ‘gunning’ for our goals and figuratively ‘hold a gun’ to someone’s head. in both dreams and fantasies, the gun concentrates our fear of an unknown self or channels the aggression of violent complexes that threaten to annihilate our defenses, while bolstering the ego’s capacity to master and depotentiate the constant menace of criminal violation. … “the progressive mechanization of our innate primate violence sits balanced uneasily on a trigger; only the counterweight of human consciousness can determine if it will sometime be pulled at the target behind our eyes.” 211020 ... tender_square annaliese and i went to the firing range because we found a groupon and figured why not try something out of the ordinary? we drove a half hour to some small town we’d never heard of before, whose name escapes me now, in the middle of the week. the woman behind the gun counter pulled out a vintage silver revolver and taught us how to hold the weapon properly, described what it would feel like in our bodies to pull the trigger. “it’s not at all like the movies,” she said. “you have to keep two hands on the gun at all times and firing it is going to feel difficult at first.” the gun was a beast, the barrel was long. the groupon gave us twenty rounds each. the employee slid the ammunition across the counter and handed over noise-protecting earmuffs to use in the gun range. we walked to the back of the gun shop and stopped at the range’s door, peering through the glass. we put our earmuffs on, took a few deep breaths, and entered. it startled me to hear a weapon fired at such close range. a man was a few stalls away from us shooting repeatedly into a target. the only thing separating us from his loaded weapon was some flimsy pieces of wood to demarcate the individual booths. looking towards the paper targets of human bodies, i noticed the white walls were riddled with bullet holes. i flinched every time his weapon fired. annaliese decided she wanted to try first. she took her time to load the chamber as we’d been instructed, she found her proper stance, then she held the revolver confidently in her hands. she tried to pull the trigger. “it *is* harder than you’d think it’d be!” she yelled. she attempted again. this time, she fired and hit the corner of the target, let out a whoop. she wanted me to try. i stepped up to the booth and held the gun. it felt unnatural in my hands. i tried to use as much force as my index finger would allow, but my body resisted. i returned the gun to the ledge, barrel facing away from us, and backed away. “you take all the ammo,” i told her. “are you sure?” “yes, i’m sure.” i couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there. 211020 what's it to you? who go blather from