120618 ok ok we’re going to do this thing today and i don’t really want to do it but i kind of do but i don’t really but i do but i don’t. I’m not talking about writing; I’m talking about the presentation. I still haven’t gone over my notes. It’s ok; i still have time. I’m going to do this, then I’m going to take a shit and a shower, and then I’m going to do that. Make some coffee in the little coffee pod pot. type up my notes. Have them on my iPad so i can hold that and go swipe swipe swipe. Change it from a heavy script to just the basic points that I know I want to mention. Maybe a specific phrasing here and there just in case I freeze up. I don’t want to be reading the whole time because “phones will be checked” but i don’t want to totally wing it because I’m not really prepared for that. i have to poop. we’ll finish this after i poop. god, WHY DID I EAT MORE DUCK LAST NIGHT? FUCK i think it may be the medication. It just occurred to me... what’s different... why ever since around thanksgiving can i not eat rich food without feeling sick for the next day... that’s right around the time i started taking two flomax instead of one. i don’t know; it might be a coincidence but it might not. in any case, it’s not entirely a bad thing if i minimize rich food, right? Seeing as I want to take some of the jiggle off my tits anyway? it’s kind of refreshing to have things going on that are harder than just making myself type some words in the morning. megan is devastated by love. i think she’ll be ok. she called me in the middle of the night (two hours later there) instead of doing something self-destructive. for that i am thankful. this morning while i was trying to poop out a crispy duck (FUCK), i heard a text swoosh and a hangouts text blip from the other room, i’m like FUCK please tell me it ain’t somebody in trouble or having missed a bus or freaking out or any of an infinte number of other things that could go wrong when you’re thousands of miles away. but it was just cel saying “BYE DADDY I’m OFF TO SCHOOL heart heart” (I guess you can’t get emoji in iA writer;ok fuck you assholes) And for that i am thankful. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to sit here and type this, because i’m reallly starting to get whirry spinny about the pres. God i will be so relieved when it’s over. At least that’s what i predict future me will be, but of course future me isn’t me so i don’t know what that guy will think. or “what they will think” as the kids say. I tried to explain the concept of gender neutral pronouns and english’s traditional lack of them to 6th grade class the other day, and i have no idea whether they got it or not my main worry about the pres., other than just the normal nervousness of being a gazelle in front of a room full of fat vapid lions, is that it’s pointless, inessential, obvious, boring, beside the point, vague, not brilliant or epiphanic, simple, too complicated, too long, preachy, grandiose, dumb--basically any adjective that would make someone go, “oh my god why did i waste my whole session sitting here listening to this git drone on!?” but i guess there’s not a ton i can do about that at this point. ok. for the next like 5 minutes i’m not going to type anything about the presentation or any of that stuff. just out of sheer cussedness, i’m going to type anything at all (else) that isn’t nonsense. Then I’m going to take a shower, make that coffee, contemplate finding some breakfast, and then put my notes together and the rest of the day will be the day. OK, starting..... now... you’re never really ready when it’s time to start. jumping off the high dive walking into that room and turning and facing the assembly getting out of bed letting go of love the greatest gift quote the universe unquote can give you is no choice in when it’s time to start the kitten out of the box the big bang the top of the roller coaster the turbulence on the airplane you’re never really ready and yet somehow you make it through. sometimes you think you didn’t, but you did. you just can’t see the crop circles from down here in the corn. and if you don’t make it through one time? then i guess you’re dead, and none of this will ever have happened. think about it. isn’t that why death is so weird? if i die, then none of this will ever have happened. more black than the forgotten dream. it just never existed. all the stuff we worry about. all the stuff that keeps us awake, makes us drink and eat rich food, makes us twisted with guilt or impotent rage, makes us murderous with ambition-- all the pale blue dot stuff-- in one blink, in one snuff, not just, oh i’m out of the game now, game over, but *there never was a game.* None of it ever existed at all. It’s one infinitesimal tiny bit easier to imagine than infinity, and that’s why it’s terrifying. the breath of the monster on the other side of the wall. oblivion. nonexistence. never having been. when you die you’re the kids you didn’t have because you never met your wife because in 1999 you didn’t go to that bar. but i guess we, this, i-- i guess the pale blue dot exists for now, so i might as well suck it up and lick it up and slurp it up and be alive and go take a shower and take a shit and make some coffee and go over my notes and go into a room and talk to people, and then see what happens next. we’re going to dinner with the superintendent tonight. so that’s kind of funny. all this is kind of funny. i guess if i have any advice before you let all this existence blip into electronic erasure, into never having been, no hard copy, no ghost image, no nothing-- would be let some stuff happen. hold on to sixteen as long as you can. i. don’t know how to love him. in the sweet summertime. there must be. fifty ways to leave your lover. sing about love tonight. hope for a brilliant flash before you hit the earth. you never know. and if there isn’t one, at least you were lying on top of your old buick with your best girlfriend, watching for one. that’s worth something. i am desperately in love with this world, and i just want to say, before it’s too late, i love you, i love you, i love you