"it's a beautiful beautiful beautiful day, and the sun is still shinning shinning shinning shinning over the James"

I've had a lot on my mind lately, and I think I've been using certain vices to alleviate the pressure that builds in my heart from doing exactly what I am supposed to do. There's always been this instinct, in my mind, I guess, to do the wrong thing. Not bad things, or evil things, just the opposite of the right thing. Play with my friends instead of do homework. Skate instead of study. Call out instead of go to work. Go to Canada for breakfast. Buy a guitar instead of pay off my credit cards. Get tattooed and let my insurance lapse. Fuck all, do the wrong thing. I don't really know where it came from. Most of my family is very grounded. My ancestors were all working class, blue collar folks who did their bid and made good lives for themselves and their families. In these uncertain times, I sometimes wish a bit of that had found its way into my DNA instead of this irrepressible wild streak that continues to send me astray. I'm a real "fly by the seat of my pants kind of guy" (to paraphrase Julia Roberts) and it will almost certainly guarantee me a more difficult life than I could have, should I ever decide to buckle down.

I work part time, granted, it is at two jobs, six days a week, but still... I make pretty good money, but I'm not really all that up on what it costs to actually live in the world around here. I could never afford a house, I barely have a car. My motorcycle is still in pieces. I can't afford to get my dog to the vet. I'm really a mess. Yet I've won and lost more money gambling in the last month than I make in that period of time. It's not even compulsive, I just keep having the dough to blow. Usually I win, but when I take those winnings to pay off my last bit of credit card debt, or the monthly loan payment, there's no satisfaction there. I'd rather take it to the next poker table and see what else I can make of it.
I am a damn good poker player, but I think I have to slow down. All of this may be indicators of a problem looming on the horizon.

The worst thing lately, is something else that's been dwelling on my mind since the end of the summer. Did I make the right decision regarding my relationship with Lauren? There is a great debate raging between my head and my heart. My head is the honest one, realizing that all I want from her is a romance and that anything else is gonna involve a lot of me trying to shape all our time together one way. And heartache every time I have to accept that she doesn't want that at all. Then my heart is the more quixotic one. She's a great girl, attractive, intelligent, talented. Fun to be with, and she likes me too. But it overlooks the nature of those feelings. She likes me as a friend. We tried the other thing and she decided she didn't want it. So I am relegated to second tier, relationship wise. Her reasons are valid, though they range from goofy to accurate to downright insulting. So my heart says labor on, wait her out, she's just young and afraid. My brain knows better. Leave it alone, she made up her mind, move on. Better off not mixing things up in that area. 
And there are other options...

But that's for another time.

In any case, I don't know what to do about her and I. And I'm not so sure I'm ready for the police academy, should some miracle happen and they take me. So I need to work that much harder at the gym. And I'm still very bad at being a writer, so that dream is on a respirator in the same hospital room as the musician thing, which actually has a feeding tube. And I keep getting farther and farther away from my childhood, which is a good, natural thing, but makes me sad none the less.

Let's try some extemporaneous Thanatopsis/shite.

channel 9

in a mixed media dream,
easeled on steel bones, exist
wax paper documents behind a shield of
cat's eye marbles.
the constitution of the republic of fear;
signed by each and every childish soul.

we are waiting out the floundering fathers.
expecting a sequel to an
unfinished work. whistling the tune
of a demon piper, leading us down
the mountain trail around bends of shame,
through caves littered with dead
potential.

finally reaching the bottom, we close our
eyes in a last ditch effort to ignore
the fact that every one of us loses this world.
work. word.
dying is not un-living is not burying is not loss.
living is not un-dying is not carrying on is not winning.
each is the cool side of the other's blanket.

invite no fear.

11.9.04
manic