Every day and every night is exactly the same for me. It's a rehearsed scene that I play differently each take. Like a nightmare version of the movie Groundhog's Day. I have the same paralyzing fears, the same bewitching weaknesses, the very same stories to tell.
Notice that I don't often speak of others here? What does that tell you about my thought process?
I'm ready to do the big thing. Make a leap. Actually, it's a tough time to be dramatic, because the world is ready to put a face on the one that will be its end. So whining about poor, poor pitiful me isn't really going to rake the old muck too much now is it? But I'm willing to take up the challenge. I need someone...that's strange, I was going to type the word "something" but "someone" just kind of came out. Anyway, I need someone to live for, something greater than the me that obviously isn't inspiring the hell out of me right now.
A cause, a belief, a person. Someone to lay my offenses down in front of, who can hear the delicately whispered acts of my contrition and not judge me too harshly. Perhaps I just need a villain. Or maybe I am the villain, and I need a hero to make me complete.
Every night like this, every night I'm supposed to be out looking for a wife that I spend inside, I feel like a little bit of me has become more isolated. It feels permanent. The parts I lose aren't ever coming back.
I talked to a married friend, and he asked me what I was doing home on a Saturday night. The honest answer was too sad to discuss, so I just told him I was doing nothing. I had a good day despite sleeping too late and not accomplishing anything of substance, and I wasn't about to get all touchy about not having a date. But it's true that I've been doing nothing. Except becoming a cliche. And proving all my detractors right.
I learned a few new songs on the guitar that I wield like a cap gun at a bank robbery. I only ate one real meal, and that consisted almost entirely of the parts of a pig that even starving, feral animals are wise enough to ignore. Then I washed it back with the new water. Let me just call it Coke and cease to be surprised by my consistent tooth decay (I like that people with bad teeth don't speak in euphemistic terms, there is no tooth decline or tooth impoverishment). I spent time the way Bill Gates spends twenties. But it was all at this desk, looking into this screen. Just like the one you're sitting at, I bet.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not whining about my own choices. I just have to put things in proper perspective considering that I have a job to resign from, car insurance to ascertain, a new job to fill, a business to attempt resurrection of, debt the size of a before ad, and the social skills of a rodent suddenly awakened from his sleep in the bottom of a tea-kettle by the wrinkled, gnarled hand of a thirty-year alcoholic.
I want to be clever, and romantic, and inspirational, but I also want to be mildly successful. There is no new thing, no starting point. Not this time. It's all the same old songs, just played by a slightly older, and more road-weary band. And the worst part is, they're all cover songs.
manic enough to know better
There is a little ache at the base of my skull. It's not like any headache I've had before, and I'm almost positive it is a result of the recent quandary I've been in regarding work. I need to work, I want to play. I don't like sitting around at home all the time(if being on disability has taught me anything, it's that). I lull too easily. My sleep has been up around the ten hours a night mark. Been a while since I've done that.
I could sell cell phones. I could pretend that self-employment equals self-enjoyment. I might have to work at the Wall Street Journal. that is funny.
Button-down shirt hides tattoos. Change from stainless-steel tongue stud to clear. No more "Fuck Art, Let's Mosh" T-Shirts.
I can live with all of this.
But when do I become self-sustaining?
It never occurred to me in high school that the molds I didn't want to fit into on general principal could have been used and thrown away.
Imagine me as a college graduate, I'd be devastating to the status quo. If I was full of knowledge instead of shit, I could turn anyone on. Light up the minds and bathe in the glow of their euphoria.
I guess I've always lacked focus, except when I was nine and wanted to be a cop like my dad. Even that life would have been more stable. I have romantic notions of a blue-collar, but I wouldn't ever be truly happy being collared at all.
Fifth Wheel
tripped all over my friends at once as they were starting to unwind
had a feeling i was losing 'cause as they moved along i was falling far behind
i've got a frame full of good intentions that i left back at home to rot
thought that to stay underground and go streamline i'd be strong now i know i'm not
every day's a week now a search for identity the ground below my feet has got the best of me
and i'm tired of always changing i'm tired of being seen
the path is leading homeward bound only god knows where i 've been
i got sick of all my friends at once as they were starting to unwind
had a feeling i was losing 'cause as they moved along i was falling far behind
i've got a box full of small inventions that i left back at home to rot
thought that to stay underground and go streamline i'd be strong now i know i'm not
many months i've been gone now i've learned from all i've seen
turn around and face southward bound this has got the best of me
and i'm tired of always changing i'm tired of being seen
the path is leading homeward bound only god knows where i 've been
i'll keep looking for an answer until my eyes have gone blind
i've run myself in circles and made it through this time
with one foot on the platform one foot on the train
i'm going back to richmond to wear that ball and chain
and i'm tired of always changing i'm tired of being seen
the path is leading homeward bound only god knows where i 've been
It's impossible for me to determine what I will be like tomorrow, but I'm relatively sure that I'm not going to be feeling better. It could be depression, it's got that amorphous feeling. That cloud that has descended, but I think the manic part is over-rated because I don't have too many highs. Moments at best.
Any living through chemistry.
missing ... someone
regretting ... things that were me-misinterpreted
loving ... the only way I can, completely
shaking ... like an addict
detoxifying my soul minute by minute
there is no methadone for necessity
There's that Bible passage. They read it at weddings. About the time to put away childish things. It's strange at first to think about, that at a time when everything seems to be beginning, we turn to a passage about the end of something. But then you realize that every beginning comes after the end of something.
I don't feel like anything is ending, but it is. I've delayed putting away my childish things for so long that I don't even remember why anymore. I still fight growing up. "Young 'till I die"
Or so I thought. Part of what I believe in this world has to do with facing and accepting my own mortality. But I think that I've been lying my whole life. I think I've been afraid to grow up because I am afraid of the end of my life. It's crippled me in a lot of ways, because I'm not helpless, I've had opportunities, and I blew them every time. Like it was a game I could just reset and play again.
Of course it's my birthday soon. Why else would I be talking like this, right? But it's more than that. It's time for me to grow up. I can always do the things I love, even as a grown up, and I never even considered life in those terms before. I've been blind to how a man has always had to life his life. Meditation has taught me the simplest type of acceptance of my fate, but I'm still at a loss for what to do with the future. All I've done so far is accept. I know that one day I will be dead, hopefully by the time that day comes, I'll know that I've been alive.
I'm a rich and powerful person. I have all the world at my fingertips and my whole life ahead of me. There is nothing anywhere in the world that I want for and cannot have. My mind is a weapon for the good of the world, and I am a hero to everyone I meet. There is no such thing as a problem. Chaos and opportunity are aborted siblings of a beast I slayed long ago. I can accomplish anything. I am unstoppable. I am superman.
No, this isn't some new sneaker commercial. It is simply the spew of a mind that feels like he's never been all that high and feels as though he's already on his way down. Irony for the soul. Greatness is reserved for only a chosen few, hence the title. but how about goodness?
I love people. Mostly family, and friends that are as close as family. I haven't felt love for anyone new in a while. or ...there was that girl from Utah... but no. We never met.
All work and no work makes Jack a dull shit.
there is nothing bright and shinning about this soldier. I'm a dirt merchant. A bug. Clawing through the filth of the world and finding the scraps that I use to sustain my existence (prolong my lie?) and scrape out a life for myself.
of myself, for myself, by myself (to paraphrase)
manic
I've met the enemy it lives inside
It's fear and hatred and it grows on our pride
- Vision
When you say you will, it really means you might
When you don't come through I shut up, it may start a fight
Feel like such a fool. I believed in you
I compare the likes of you to the things I do.
Then the bother builds. I go through it at times.
You'd think I'd be used to it, but I don't have the time
to deal with your deceit or wallow at the feet
of empty promises or it's royalty
I never asked you to change
I only needed you to be there for me
And now I need you to stop taking advantage of me
Well I'm not coming around anymore
You can call it "fucked up" if you want
Smile if you will, a mile if you can
I don't care, I don't need to be the better man
I'm sorry if it's not the decent thing to do
Talk about it. Maybe one day you'll see the truth
One thing that I know. Friends they come and go.
A lesson learned in life and I have you to owe.
I'm growing every day, and fools get in the way.
If I whistle loud enough will you come and play?
when I was younger, like in high school, I was the guy that just tuned out in class. I didn't pay much attention after about sophomore year. I mostly just sat in the back of the room daydreaming and scrawling whatever random bits of angst I could dredge up into my notebooks. I didn't even bring books to class most of the time. I pretty much stopped doing homework all together in seventh grade. It's a testament to how easy it is for a kid to slip through the cracks that I was able to graduate high school at all.
These days I don't have the freedom afforded to a punk-ass teen. I have to work, I have bills to pay. I can't just veg out in class anymore. As a result, I don't write nearly as much as I used to. I think this trend exists for most people who might have been prolific writers as teens. Some might say that as we get older, our lives stabilize and the hormones and pressures of fitting in and all that crap that pushes us over the edge in school ends, so we don't need to outlet all of our emotions on paper anymore. Others might say that as we grow, we learn to express ourselves more directly, to others, or maybe even that we have less to express. I don't know which one, if any is the correct theory, in fact bits of them all might be right. I just know that since I don't write like I used to, more and more frequently, I am looking for alternate modes of expression. I find a song that approximates what I'm feeling and put it on a mix tape, or I'll be talking to someone or writing a letter and I'll quote a movie. Or I'll use a situation from a book I'm reading to illustrate a point. I don't generate thoughts and words and feelings anymore, I just recycle them. This is the second time that I've started a post out with lyrics from a song. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but it might have been better if the song was my own. It might have meant more if the feelings started from within me, not within someone who had a similar emotion.
In the long run, this type of behavior, this database of pop culture expression, might serve to homogenize the communication of human experience. Something has to get lost, and obviously it will be the more deep, more rare, more difficult to express and essentially amazing emotions that will die out. There are very few people out there who care to take the time and put their feelings down on paper for future reference. There are even fewer who do it in such a manner that it's interesting to others. Not that everyone isn't entitled, or even worth reading about, but it's the ones that can do it in a manner that doesn't blend in so much with every other bit of information out there that, I feel, is worth listening to. I'm part of the problem. I'm not the most creative person on the block, but I love trying, so I'll keep at it. I just want others to try as well, because as much as I love to share, I love for others to share with me.
manic
But I missed it. Flew by like a 747. Not that things didn't happen. I just don't have any interesting stories to tell.
Things are really heating up now, though. Business is slow and money is tight. Time at work is getting like school as I try to learn six new computer programs all at once, making myself more "marketable" or something. And I don't have a pit in my stomach. I don't have a big empty hole where all the pain goes. I don't have any pain. There's no heartbreak (except for the tinge of hurt from being hung up on). Sometimes I wonder if there's even a heart anymore. Nobody gets to me. And now that doesn't even make me sad anymore.
All this ambivilance is really turning me off.
ha ha
manic
You moved like honey through my dream last night... - Fiona Apple
It was a dream. There was a girl. I kept asking her out over and over, like mutilple takes of a movie scene. And I kept getting it really wrong. I'm sure this has a lot to do with the conversation I had with Brian yesterday about where our lives are, professionally and personally. I dream alot. In fact, I'd say it's my number one passtime. If I'm asleep, awake, or moving between the two, you can bet that my mind is drifting off somewhere. I don't concentrate very much. Usually I'm off in my mind thinking about anything other than what I'm doing. It tells a great deal about why I am the way I am.
I don't think I'll have the same trouble tonight falling asleep that I did last night. But I wonder if she'll be there again...
manic
