19 July 2014

Weeks have passed since I last made a post, as each one passes faster than the last. Soon I forget that I'm a writer and the thought of setting out to complete any piece is daunting, at best. The fact is, I have written, I just haven't finished anything. At the moment I have at least ten drafts which are 1/3 undone, sitting, waiting to serve some purpose. Even if their only reason for being is to placate me. Sometimes I'll take a few pieces, cannibalize them, and allow something new, more current to emerge. 

Summer unfolds with warm days and cool nights, on which I like to sit outside, in the dark, and stare at the sky and completely lose myself to it. The night thrusts upon me a calm, as it demands my attention I have no choice but to live in the moment. Living in the moment is fuckin hard, y'all, it goes against the way we as people are wired.  What makes it even harder is when one tries to rewire their brain, everyone else around them is still plugged in to the matrix. Yes, I still reference stupid, old movies. 

So, I'm still alive and functioning and I haven't been feeling very creative. That shit comes and goes, I try not to stress about it. Oftentimes getting out of my head is the best thing I can do, but in order to write I have to brave that territory once in a while. Just not right now, I'm kind of enjoying  the quiet.  

Rabble-rousing

It's Sunday, just before dusk, I don't have much in mind to write about but something tells me I must.  Magnificent hues does the sky hold, I'm high, with hopes of leaving some kind of legacy.  Yesterday a man told me that I saved his life, I humbly accepted his thanks, but I don't like being in the spotlight. "Sixteen years ago today," he told me, "you saved my life."  I didn't know what to say, I was kind of embarrassed because it was a party and he said it quite loudly. When I think about it, I didn't save his life, I just made him see that he didn't actually want to take it.  He was in a bad state from drugs, my best friends father, though we weren't really friends then, I just talked him away from a trigger.  But until he mentioned it I had never thought about it, and I'm forever connected to this man on a deeper level because of it, life does some funny things.

I call those defining moment's.

And it makes me think of the summer air, my teenage years, when I learned that books were the gateway to understanding.  I was careless back then, mad at the world for being alive, and a heavy a chip on my shoulder.  School had pretty much thrown my ass out, I was on my own. If only I was as wise as I thought I was, people talked to me, but I had all the answers. And I suppose that's more or less normal, learning things the way teenagers do. I was at a disadvantage, however, I had never had much guidance. I was a latchkey kid. 

And speaking of that, I recently had conversation over coffee with my oldest friend. We were latchkey kids together. But we were laughing at how neither one of us is likely to ever let our kids go unsupervised like we had for so many years. I think of all the stupid shit we did, and of all the opportunities we had to kill ourselves doing something stupid. I now know better. It doesn't take but a few seconds for a 10 year old boy to think of something that will most certainly land him in trouble or hurt. Or, like me, I was always the one to convince another to do whatever stupid thing we were doing so I could find out what happens without getting hurt.   Not a foolproof theory, but I made it out of childhood with all my fingers and toes. 

I'm just happily rambling right now.  Daylight is struggling to keep the moon at bay, I could get infinitely lost among the starscape.  The vastness of it all, at times I can feel how loud it is, I know that doesn't make sense.  

I probably say a lot of things that don't make sense. But it's cool. 

Abecedarian

I forced myself out into the light of day, and I definitely needed it.  My blue eyes have always been sensitive to light, but more so today for the dark I'd been sitting in was vicious. Although I'm not out the woods, so to speak, I have let a few things leak from the closet. The weight on my chest had been lifted and, quite possibly, my apathy is going up in smoke with it.

In a minute. 

First, let me finish. I got lost for what seemed infinite. About to take off I caught a glimpse of my own image, realizing that with dawn comes a new beginning. Pretty simple shit and it is easier said than done, we all know. In some way, shape or form I think that anybody even reading this silliness just knows. 

Am I write?

As the saying goes, "woe is me."  Boo hoo, bitch you've been given a golden ticket in my life and she goes by the name of Gwendolyn. Really, both of my kids but her in particular. She's one with my soul and when I need her most, with her silly faces and sayings, she saves me from my own head. Always there, at the top of the stairs waiting when I get home, and the greatest thing is she has no idea she's doing it. With her signature little pink bow, it's inescapable the way it changes things in an instant.

Only a handful of times have I experienced instances that, quite frankly, make me shiver, every fiber of my body standing on end, tingling.  I do believe in mere coincidence, but more than that I think people have underlying connections.  The handful of true friends I do have this week have proven to truly be so.  Each one has reached out to me and didn't know that I actually needed it.  As well, EVERYONE here that has written to me, or of me.  Sometimes life is ugly, and for whatever reason it needs to be that way.

And it's alright.

Change Ain't Easy

Life is an incessant string of ups and down hastily pasted together, and in the flurry I sometimes become overwhelmed so I take the quickest course to the darkest place I know.  I just want to be alone, but being alone isn't always good, for me.  A drug induced coma and three weeks pass that I don't remember.

That was the point.

Somehow I managed to grab hold of something to stop me from spiraling so far out of control that I couldn't get back.  Now I'm paying for it physically, and mentally I don't quite know what to do.  I mean, I'll carry on as always, but what next?  I am a firm believer that we make our own fate, but right now I'm having a hard time believing in me, or anything, really.  I've coasted thus far and I'm surprised I've lasted this long to be quite honest.  People like me have a hard time accepting the mundane, and in return I'm labeled with a sickness.  Because I can't abide by people's rules, or follow the lead of every other father/husband, there must be something wrong with me.  I struggle as if I were strapped to a bed, and the white walls of life close in around me.  I just feel dead inside.

I won't dwell in this state for too long, I know what it can do to me.  It's time to pull up my britches, quit being a bitch, and do something about this monster lingering within.  Have you ever slain a dragon?  I have, and it's harder when it's of your own making.  What I've created is a place where I've alienated myself from everything, and everyone, around me.  Built up a wall, reinforced by the spite I have for myself, on a firm foundation of self loathing.  All so that people can't see what I see in me.  Anger and disdain.  A fear of putting myself out on a limb.  Hell, I do some crazy shit without thinking twice but I can't force myself to take a step forward, possibly toward a whole new life.

Why is it so hard to be good to ourselves?

I'm at a fork in the road with no insight on which way to go.  Empty handed and at the end of my rope, only time will tell on which road I'll go.  I do know one thing, I can't go back.  I need to do something different from that which I'd normally do.

I'm certain of one thing.  I am going to make it.

Life lately

 I haven't been able to write because my words aren't matching my actions, I sometimes let myself wander a little too far from my own path. It's like playing with fire and I always know it, but there I go, testing the metaphorical waters again. It's like I throw caution to the wind, fall on my face, and do it again. It's insane, and people think I'm a quick learner, but that's only because I fall harder and faster than most people do. Rock bottom is like an old closet I throw all all my shit in, but I make myself sit in it, darkness surrounding me, I give in and go with it. Every time I go a little further, deeper into that hole, and it's a little harder to come back from, I sometimes wonder when it'll be that I don't. And that isn't a question, it's a statement, but that goes with the territory, yo.

Winter turned to spring and although I've been waiting for it I hardly noticed, having been preoccupied with my own selfish demons. It's my self-deprecating nature that'll have me take and swallow a handful of pills to kill the pain. And it does, but only temporarily, and I wake up the next day with a hangover and a pocket full of disdain. I didn't go that route this time, but I'm left with the agony that is this life and no way to deal with it. I stand alone like the leaveless trees that line the streets, bare and burdened, but deeply rooted and unmoving. I often feel almost as if I've traded it for my soul.

What is this life?  I don't where the hell I originally saw it, but I ask myself all the fucking time. Things will look up, they always do, eventually.  This shit I write here really doesn't mean anything, they're just thoughts that pass like the seasons.  Which seem to be a little crazy.

* I started that a few days ago when it was 70° and right now it's snowing.

Winter's End

My mind is off in distant places lately, a byproduct of winter seizing an already frozen heart. I prefer the mind bending alternate endings I create in the cold, and nothing less is to be expected am I to be its formidable foe.  Idle time is definitely the devil's canvas and these idle hands, God damn if I can handle them.  People like me don't change, except for the change I affect in you. I'll always do too much of something, that shit's written in my dna, with a family full of drunken alcoholics it's appalling I didn't end up sideways myself.  It's my philosophy that I'ma addict so I might as well choose my battles while I'm at it.  That doesn't necessarily mean any drugs will enter my bloodstream, it's more a frame of mind, so to speak.  You remove the drugs you still have an addict, it's a simple matter of fact that I can turn even you into a bad habit.  I'm a junky for words and all their intricate avenues creating poems and ballads, this beautiful framework as I blather about habits.

And that was only a moment of clarity.

What can I say?

Writing anything recently has been a challenge, it's part of a cycle I seem to go through, which is cool, I don't trip about it anymore.  It is what it is, and I figure when it's ready it'll come back, and it does.  Winter is dark and especially so with the hours I work, it starts fucking with me after a while. The only difference is now I know what it is, and to a certain extent it helps me control the way I deal with it, but it seems as if nothing can prevent it from happening.  Winter here is dragging on, almost as if it's speaking to me personally, but fuck that, I'll make it through. I always do.  Besides, I've got a few ideas steeping in my head which is plenty to get me through until the cold ends.  It's only a matter of time, perhaps even just weeks before it'll break.  We have survived the longest part of it, I do believe. 

Maybe tomorrow

I've had a pebble in my work boot for the past fifteen hours, I almost made it but I don't think I can take it anymore.  An old, homely woman corrected me in the grocery store the other day, "So what if I call Miracle Whip mayo, bitch..." is all I could think to myself.  "Ah, yea, you're right."  I smiled so as not to show I was biting my tongue.  Sometimes I'm fed up with being polite, I'm like the king of euphemisms, right.  We're expected to be peaceful in society, but if I'm not civilized for speaking my mind then what am I?  My mother told me once that I had crude behavior, and language, right before she slapped me in the face, I think I was eighteen then.  Well, excuse me for not taking anyone's shit, and as far as I'm concerned, biological connection or not it ain't happenin'.  It probably stems from being picked on as a kid, it didn't take long before I learned how to control situations, or at least keep them more in my favor.  Dealing with people is a fuckin art, and dealing with me is a fuckin task, I do admit. 

**********

My day to day life is like groundhog's day.  Every day is the same, rudely awakened by an alarm clock, I want to shake that bitch till it stops working.  The snooze button doesn't exist, I rise as soon as it sounds, sometimes disoriented, I've always been that way.  When I was a kid I was always the first one up, I'd eat cereal and watch the news, strange fuckin kid I was.  Catching the sports is why I watched, any bit of basketball fed me.  Well, that and Robin Meade, who made her way to CNN among other things, not that I would know. :)  I no longer watch the news. (But I do still eat cereal, I could live off of it, I probably eat it twice a day) Haha, but she started out on a Chicago news station, anyway, and she's hot.  It's funny, the stuff I remember. I couldn't retain a single bit of geometry but I can remember silly ass details like that, and not just that but many, many more things that may or may not be trivial. I suppose that's up to one's own judgement, to which they are entitled.

Little tangent there, I'll settle down.

No I won't, I don't know how.  Knowing how to settle down is not part of my repertoire.  "If you're gonna be a bear, you might as well be a grizzly."  my friend Jack says when talking about me.  He gets it, knows the way I roll.  If a ten is high I'm at an eleven all the time.  

**********

It's five below and has been precipitating in the form of snow since November, it was a wicked December and January was a freakin blast!  I don't think we've experienced this much snow here consistently, not in my lifetime anyway.  I suppose even in the hottest of summers we can grow tired of ice cream too.  But, it's getting long and I'm becoming restless, cabin fever sets in to  test my resoluteness to not lose my cool in the middle of winter.  Heat from the words I breed, like gasoline, burns furiously.  The depths of the cold must hold my poetry, for it is this time every year I find what it keeps.  The winters drain me mentally and sometimes almost breaks me but I make it and spring revives me.

Suddenly, I remember that I'm still alive.