fighting words

12.19.12 2:18am

As is common these days with no schedule, I sleep for an hour or so then wake so my thoughts can get together and decide that it’s now that I should be considering what to do with my life and tomorrow. What my brain doesn’t seem to understand is that the more it prevents me from sleeping now, the less I’ll be able to accomplish what it thinks I should do when the rest of the city is bustling about with their normal productive lives.

I try to appease it, even wrote on the refrigerator in dry-erase marker what I need to do, but my mind doesn’t seem to trust me. I guess if I were my mind, I wouldn’t either, but at least I would understand that it’s because when the morning comes and the time to do things happens, my mind decides then that it’s a good time to sleep. It truly is completely irrational in the way it goes about things at times…

 

I called and left a message earlier today for my Mother, inviting her to come down for the Hobo’s Christmas. I think that the setting would be the perfect one – amazing people, great music, and if we want to talk we can sit in my motorhome. Nothing forced, nothing expected, as it might feel if we met for the first time in a one on one situation. It would be like… like we’re just old friends who haven’t seen each other in forty-five years.

My, how you’ve grown! She’ll say.

How I’ve grown…

 

It’s really not very considerate. If my mind is going to keep me up, at the very least it could do is let me write a little bit better. It seems to have a angle sensor in it – when my head is horizontal, only then does it come to life and think of clever things to say. Once I prop myself on the pillows against the wall, the words and ideas are drained out of conscious thought and I fight for each line.

I need to figure out a way to connect my brain directly to my computer, so it would simply write the thoughts I have when my head is on the pillow, while the battle for sleep is happening in the background.

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away from and forward

12.17.12

When I quiet my mind, I hear it. Behind the noise of the city, beneath the streets, when I look at the stars, I hear it.

The Enchanted Forest is calling me back, back to find myself again, back to visit the sacred sites, the graves, The Grandmother Tree, the memories of the past and future.

I say The Forest is calling me, but more realistically, it is the road. There is a romance that is generated as the wheels spin, when the destination is unknown, when the city shrinks in the mirror and there is nothing ahead but the night and solitude, the broken white lines and blackness as distance passes by and the future is closer than the past with every passing mile that rolls underneath me.

 

I need to go. Somewhere, anywhere – just away from and forward to the beauty of the unknown…

12.14.12

12.14.12

A day like so many others but one that no one wants to remember, at least not fondly. If we enjoy a day like this, find some happiness in it instead of crying and wailing and professing our outrage over and over, we feel as if we’re in the wrong for doing so. I use the universal ‘we’ – one that means the others, the general public, the media pawns. The ‘we’ that I seldom include myself in; not because I’m better in any way, just, perhaps, different in what I see, what I’ve seen, and therefore how I choose to be affected by atrocity.

The outrage, the outrage, the confusion… the innocents have been killed and the media makes the killer a celebrity. Why? Who was this person? Troubled, deranged, mentally ill… the questions will forever go unanswered, only speculated on. Gun control. Mental health care. Everyone pulls out their soap boxes, dusts them off, and stands  as tall as they can. The outrage. The outrage. The Outrage. Fuck that – it’s the media’s fault, and always will be until the focus isn’t on making the killer a star but instead pulling the glory away and naming, over and over again, the ones killed.

Every single person, every day, all around the world. Would things change then?

Weary of the pawns, of everyone saying the same thing over and over and over to no avail, I turn away. Not because I’m ignoring what happened, but because I’m ignoring the reaction. I don’t need anyone else to tell me what to feel.

 

I look at my puppy, and wish that my life could be as simple as hers…; What’s he doing now? Putting on the thing that means he’s going out the door, wrapping it around his body. Grabbing the other thing that means I’m his, that attaches me to him. Outside! We’re going outside!

She zigs and zags, all the smells, must find them all and taste them. Everything new, everything wonderful and fun and bouncing, and we play a game. I call it training, she calls it something else entirely. I run, stop, run, stop – she runs and tries to figure out when the next stop will be, watching me, letting me guide her in this glorious new game. I laugh, she forgets all the smells and just watches me, smiling, her tail wagging, run, stop, run… and everything else – the drug dealers, addicts, trash and atrocity – everything else goes away.

Five Minutes

12.13.12

1440.

If the math in my head is correct, there are one thousand, four hundred and forty minutes in every day.

Day in, day out, rain or shine, birth or death, asleep or awake, one thousand, four hundred and forty minutes.

I do my best to ignore most of them, and in doing so hope that they don’t see me as they go by. Like an ostrich with its head in the sand; if I’m asleep, they won’t notice me. So I can feign ignorance as well.

It almost works. I look in the mirror and see only a shade of who I am, who I want to be. A shadow, an apparition, a ghost, the fire that once shined so bright and explosive now no more than fire worms as they eat the last of me, the story that once was so beautiful now reduced to ashes as the worms have their way.

I’m certain that I’ve felt like this before, we all have – so why does this time feel so unique? I’m older? Perhaps, but an absurd rationalization. Weaker? No… but it feels as if I have nothing lift to fight for. I fought death and won, twice or more. Though we still have never met save for a few minutes, I found my Mother and thanked her, which is all I really needed to do for me. I’ve done many, many things, but… what now? All I can do is put on the old, worn out false smile, and… and do my best to get out in the world, try to find something new to be.

What pains me the most is how tragically seldom I write anymore. Writing was once my therapy; it found answers inside where I didn’t know where to look, was something that I did well that brought me happiness, and when I fell into the abyss of loneliness or sorrow, it has always been my friend. The one friend that I knew would just listen, let me talk without guarded walls, and in doing so, find my own answers.

So today, I begin a practice which I will do my best to keep up for at least thirty days, hoping that I find discipline again, praying that I find me.

Five minutes. A commitment. Every day, beginning today, 12.13.12, five minutes of writing. I’ll begin there, and more than likely, the words will seed and grow; seven minutes, ten, fifteen. Something. Anything. Just to remember – because I remember the times before when the words saved me.

For anyone reading this, I apologize in advance for times where the words might seem trite, might be redundant, might be mundane, and I have little doubt that they will – but that’s the thing. Once was a time that I could make the mundane beautiful through words…

For anyone who reads this, please refrain from commenting, as this way I will hopefully let go of the desire to please people through my writing – or piss them off. That is, of course, unless it is something absolutely necessary, or if I request it – something like creative work. Something that will give me a reason to pull my head out of the sand, and greet the minutes as they come.

And so it begins.