091518 it’s a squeak storm, captin! i been awake since six forty four because of it, rolling and tumbling along with the billowing laundry of half dreams in the breezes of waking up; because of the squeak storm that jags its way through my newborn consciousness every sunrise in this fragmented house but enough about me. Did you ever notice that sometimes you sit down and there’s a wick for this lamp? Sometimes you have an oil-soaked wick just drawing up the celery blood of the fragments of your dreams, and all you have to do is touch a match to it and the fragments bloom; the discarded potato chunks turn into a new potato plant; the echoing emptiness of the abandoned auto plant becomes a lovingly restored model T with a brand new hydrogen powered engine and plush seats for your lady friend’s fine ass and you can tool around, high and proud on the high proud seat, fresh sea breezes teasingly messing up your hair, never going back because there’s no reverse, down past the old warehouses. down past where the waterfront docks used to be where the boys used to be naughty at night. Now they got like a boring sports bar there or something, i dunno, some kind of generic tombstone of a macho reglar bar with all the trimmings. Big wood. Black mirrors. TV’s. Big knobs on the beer handles; knobs that look like big dicks which is ironic because they changed the bathroom doors a long time ago. I don’t know why i’m avoiding saying anything this morning. Damn, this keeps happening. It’s like my mind is sick. Has a cold. My mind has a cold. I think it was caused by the squeak storm. Would it be any different if I had gotten up at six forty four? Maybe. It just gets frustrating when I can feel myself doing it but I can’t quite stop. I can’t quite get into or out of the groove. That’s the curse of past magic. You sit down to write your fifteen minutes or whatever, and a few days in row that thing happens—that thing where you’re like, oh yeah, that totally meaningless bit of wordy nonsense reminds me of this--and THIS makes me want to keep going, keep writing, spilling my guts until I puke up something beautiful and secret and surprising and touching and gemlike. That happens a couple times in a row, and you get to thinking that’s what’s SUPPOSED to happen, and so it builds up the wall of expectations, which is why you get to where you’re afraid, or suddenly too tired, or kind of dreading the next time you have to do fifteen minutes or whatever, which is funny when you think about it--you turn something so ridiculously easy into a big scary thing that your brain has to innoculate yourself against by kicking in the procrastination response! A tiny sliver like typing ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING that isn’T PURE NONSENSE for fifteen minutes--yeah, that’s it, that’s really ALL YOU HAVE TO DO--it’s a sliver, a tiny sliver that’s that tiny, and it gets lodged in your brain and your brain is like oh shit. I’d better start coming up with frowny, rough, tough, world-weary, cynical self-loathing, nihilistic, fatalistic reasons why i shouldn’t do that, because it’s stupid, you know, and of course the real reason your brain is doing that is not because it’s stupid, not because it’s pointless, not because it’s even boring, not because you have a job, a real job that you know pays the bills and makes money and gets us rap-traddley squeaky ass place to live--the REAL reason is that you have set yourself up for success and so therefore you feel this responsibility to repeat it. You feel obligated to have accidental magic happen. Ain’t that funny? Your brain is basically saying something like, well, I caught these huge beautiful rainbow trout the last three days in a row, and so I’d rather not go back to the lake because what if I don’t catch one today? I’m going to feel like an idiot, just sitting there by the side of the lake like an old black man in milwaukee, leathered, timeless, slow moving, raisined by the sun, stepped around and ignored by all the roller bladers and carriage pushers, just standing there by the lake, outlined by a stochastic rigging of fishing line and pole and cheap aluminum lawn chair, just standing there in timeless time as the sun does its grand slow arc and the lake does its black mirror act and the concrete is slimy and the gulls are restless and i keep getting distracted. I keep spiralling away and away further out from the point. It’s like my trajectory was set wrong this morning. Whoever was the engineer that set my initial trajectory, velocity, vector, and all that shit, that engineer was an idiot and should be demoted or perhaps fired or maybe if we’re feeling generous even killed. what a fucking moron. He’s got me backspacing, rearranging, second guessing and hiding my golden hair in a bunch of awkward not-quite-what-i-meant pseudo poetry. God damn. Where is that son of a bitch? Bring him out here so I can stab him in the ribs with a shiv. But then they brought him out here, and it turned out he wasn’t a he, and he wasn’t even an engineer (yet); he was a she, and she wasn’t even old enough to drink, let alone graduate or get a real job. No, she was a young Jewish girl, still in high school and far away from home, a little anxious, a little nervous, a little acne going on, a little bravado in her words to make up for how scared and alone she sometimes feels, so far away from home when home is full of conflicting memories, and she shyly comes up and says, yes, you wanted to see me? And she says, looking down and away before looking back up with an awkward blush and half laugh, I’ve heard great things about mr. schulte. And you’re like shit. Shit. OK. Shit. Great things? Shit. How am I possibly going to live up to that? I’m not great. I don’t have or do great things. I barely even know what I’m doing. I procrastinate, I avoid. I’m half awake. My house is squeaky. I can barely even get out of bed sometimes. How the hell am I supposed to-- but she’s standing there looking at you and you don’t even know her but you’re a human being after all and not a COMPLETE piece of shit after all, and so you say OK, hey! It’s nice to meet you. I’m happy to be here, doing this, and even when it doesn’t work, it’s true. All you have to do is try, you tell her when she falters, and even though it’s a cliché, and not big astonishing poetry, and even though you don’t always even believe it yourself, saying it out loud to someone else makes you able to, at least for now, for one more morning, believe it enough to keep going. And find out what the next thing is going to be.