THe reason I stopped doing 750 words or 500 words or 700 words or a spiralling pattern of fibonacci numbers of words (jesus I was bored) in the first place—the reason I always stop stuff that smacks even a little bit of “discipline”—is that it always starts to feel like work. It starts to feel like I have to think about what I’m doing and get it right, and who wants to do that in the morning? I mean shit, you wake up, your room’s a foreign window, you just had a dream, you still have shreds of the dream hanging off you like cinderella’s rags, we’re all prisoners here, who the fuck wants to step out of an enchanted stream into a classroom where they teach you how to be boring enough to survive in someone else’s boring, handed-down version of “reality”? You’re more alive when you don’t know what to do. WHat was it dude said—imagination doesn’t lead to art, it’s the other way around? or somehting like that? wait was that the guy who says we’re all prisoners and our differences are like the differences in arrangements of taco bell ingredients? Or was it the girl with the bad bitmoji that says novels aren’t necessarily obsolete yet? Either way, I agree and disagree with both of them. But I”m mostly interested in what the prisoner guy has to say. And not just because it makes me feel less guilty about having sent my ex wife to a harsher, more overt level of imprisonment. YEs, I said “sent her” because she probably wouldn’t be there if I hadn’t taken the actions that I took. I used to feel guilty enough to deny it when that crazy bitch her mother accused me of it, but you know what? I don’t think I do feel guilty anymore. BEcause if we’re all in prison, then prison rules apply. I’m better off now. SHe’s not. THe kids? I think mostly are. I mean I don’t want to flatter myself, I know I have severe shortcomings as a parent, both temperamentally, intellectually, socially, and just situationally–the whole atomisation, the single income, the isolation, the not modelling what a happy marriage looks like. I mean of course we weren’t modelling that before either. We were modelling what tragic, farcical appeasement looks like. We were modelling my pornographic depravity. So I’m glad we’re not doing that anymore. If I could choose, would I have it be some other way? Would I have her be some other place? Sure. As long as that other place WAS ALSO, BY STRICT ENFORCEMENT, NOT HERE WITH US. THe fact is, I’m still a little scared of her, of what she’s capable of, even as I’m still a little turned on, longing to still be twisting in helpless lust and rage. I reckon there will always be a part of me that wants to dangle from that particular rope, face reddening, body bloating, choking, gasping, spitting up, shitting myself, and coming hard again and again as she violently thrusts. Remember, this is not writing. This bears as much connection to writing as making tea does to robbing a bank. the boy with honeysuckle in his mouth the skinny boy with dirty jeans and no shirt opens the hood of the car and knows something i don’t know and i see something he doesn’t see but only feels there’s this, there’s tai chi, and what was the third thing going to be? remember, there’s no things, only habits. is it a crime to have not outgrown a distaste for mediocrity? is it a crime to still believe in the possibility of magic, even as i turn more and more toward the state of the pharmaceutical arts? OK so I have tamsulosin for lunch. I can still go out in a field and feel for the pulse of what’s left of the woods. can’t i? today i’m going to write down what i’m worried about again, like yesterday, even though these things never seem to keep working once i formalize them into a ‘today i’m going to’ type thing. But I am going to do it, because it’s a next thing to do, and god knows we’re all addicted to things. Ha ha, that’s funny: god. knows. addicted. things. All white flour and sugar, packaged a couple of different ways with different branding, and put on a truck to come to your town and set up on a cold shelf in an echoey store, waiting for you to spend your prisoner scrip. cigarette? beer? so-called steak? the idea of a tomato? buying groceries has never been more like buying software. you could literally write your own but you can’t because you’ve been so thoroughly trained to think of an app, or a story, or a song or an idea or a tomato as a “thing.” things aren’t things, it’s not imagination that leads to art, it’s the other way around; we create things and then we have an idea of a thing, and then we have to live with that.