Train of Thought Derailment

A poem I wrote about cascading failures

From Wikipedia: “A cascading failure is a failure in a system of interconnected parts in which the failure of one or few parts leads to the failure of other parts, growing progressively... This can occur when a single part fails, increasing the probability that other portions of the system fail. Such a failure may happen in many types of systems, including power transmission, computer networking, finance, transportation systems, organisms, the human body, and ecosystems.”

I’ve survived many cascade failure events as it’s a human experience in everything from programming to social science and even society. A bad mundane morning begins with merely spilling coffee on your dress shirt but the day ends as possibly one of the more memorable crappy days of your life. It’s “shit happens” on a cumulative scale. The nope comes out of nowhere catching you unawares. The nope quickly accumulates like snow, until you’re trapped in a blizzard of nope and the nope is still falling. No end in sight. The nope literally came out of nowhere. A freak nope-storm.

Cascading failures are agonizing and a sublime example of so many tropes and aphorisms- the one bad apple ruins the bunch, too many cooks ruin the broth, snowball effect and even the hyperbolic “death of a thousand papercuts” is a metaphor for the cascade.

Sometimes one single thing breaks/glitches and everything else around it tries to keep things operating. However, the network still collapses. Cause and effect. It’s a slow motion train wreck. I’ve always been fascinated by cascade failures/cascading failures.

I lived through a bad day a while back that accumulated to the level of misfortunes, bad luck, accidents, bad surprises, crazy, tech failures, and more- it became a cascading failure. A simple train of thought derailment I witnessed in abject mortification and shock became the Marianas Trench low of increasing tragedies and pain and at the end of the day- I was simply gutted, spent, shocked and overwhelmed. It was a bad day. It was spectacularly and comically bad.

I just fell apart at days end, when I needed to fall asleep. I felt terrible for my lovely fiancé (who had to leave the room during the train derailment as it was too painful to watch and they were in shock too and powerless to save or help me), because I couldn’t keep it together. But sometimes stressors cause responses we don’t expect, and since sometimes grief and emotional stress is so powerful, humans can laugh accidentally at a funeral; sometimes in distress, sometimes we get the sobbing giggles.

While tears are the overflow valve of the body, and I have cried too much recently, this night a while back was when all my emotional self-regulation and control just collapsed into anxious laughter and tears. I survived and this poem was the lone documentation of the cascade fail. It’s better to laugh than to cry, but sometimes both happen, and the only thing you can do is let it out.

Have a poem about my terrible no-good day and my reaction to it-

Train of Thought Derailment

The wreckage washed away all my plans,

I had no womb to wander, 

but over an hour later,

the internet still not back on,

I’m in hysterics.

I tried to recover from the train wreck,

the twisted body of my self,

my reputation,

my list of publication credits,

all my bulleted lists and meticulous talking points-

my thoughts on transformation horror,

how all universal horror themes

hide the daily real terrors of mental illness 

and bodily alterations within them,

how holistic psychological/body horror terrified the most

as form and plot reflects altering functions,

ghosts reflect mortality and death,

Vampires not just allegorical for sex 

but circumventing nature for health,

wasting and infirmity to become undead

before vital again but monstrously othered, 

blood and genetic diseases reflected in literature, 

horror as a therapeutic exercise for empowerment,

and the role of addiction and slipstream in horror and speculative fiction, 

the New Weird, the style of Burroughs in vogue again, 

even my prepared poems, stuck in the suddenly inaccessible cloud,

one a gift/prank joke for one of my dear ones

and my excitement to read the pieces debut, seeing that fine face, 

hearing the sultry melodic dark mead

of his voice that could make a 

fast food menu reading rival Anais Nin -

All these important things were all floating

downstream from a split tanker car. 

Fare thee well, ideas, raise the parting glass!

Tangled up in pussy willows and

not enough (Jeremy) Reeds by the accident scene,

I swore I would lie on M.G.A’s chest,

doing deep breathing exercises until I grew calm,

let the disaster go, shake it off in silence and stillness,

but then the fattest cat (Sputnik)

lay down on just my toes and started purring

and as my nerves were so frizzled, fried , and fragged

I couldn’t control my ticklishness like usual,

I broke into the giggles.

I could not stop giggling, and once I did,

it began again, nervous laughter

the embarrassing laughter of at-a-funeral giggles

when the hired pastor claims a friend was a “God-fearing woman”

when all who really knew her know that his God fears her,

the uncontrollable resurfacing giggles.

Tears were filling up my sleep mask.

I had a case of terminal giggles. 

Tears and laughter at the trainwreck,

The evening so off track it was in the wrong state,

Off GPS, off the rails from the first few minutes-

It all just finally hitting me with hysterics.

I’ve apparently enough estrogen to mimic a womb to wander.

Watching my preparations flow down river,

poisoned pen gossip and time standing still,

grateful for frozen webcams and a default resting bitch face,

I got up to write it all out - to not keep tearing up,

unable to salvage, halting the pain giggles wholly

so I could decompress, burn off the adrenaline of 

watching a slow motion trainwreck, 

that, yet again, proved foursomes are overrated—

I wasn’t even prophecizing when I made the joke even!

(Two people always wind up sitting it out,

I definitely always wind up sitting out the fucking occurring beside me, but rarer still in some cases, 

there’s pretty much three inactive participants as we wonder what to even do at this is a novel rare circumstance

none of us expected saw and wanted 

and certainly not as advertised promoted by all).

My heart goes out to the hostess caught off guard with us.

Recall preschool, recall recess- 

everyone gets a turn.

We share, we are all in this together.

All voices deserve to be heard,

Listen to others.

Horror is a community.

You can sit at my lunch table, 

(I only bite when asked nicely)

So, take a seat

(and please just ask nicely for consent!)

My review of that day in meme form-