110712 about to make my farewell old fashioned; eliminating alcohol budget to save money cuz “what are you willing to give up for it” and we all know what “it” is. 111012 Longings, yearnings, and a particularly spring-fall-weird-summery-smelling windy evening. We had a bonfire with a few leaves thrown in. Grilled some chuck eye steaks; now that's an affordable cut I can live with. Xavier went home because he said "I don't like fat." Yeah, fuck you too you little shit. JK. I've been off alcohol for a few days now, and it feels a lot like when you first get off cigarettes. I've been irritable. I'm trying to be forgiving of myself for having been impatient with the girls this weekend. Megan and Millie have been very hard on each other again. Millie's still very angry and guarded. Everybody's sensitive. There has been what I've perceived to be an elevated amount of crying and whining this weekend. It's been hard. I pulled hard on my hair a little while ago. It didn't exactly help, but maybe it did. Megan said she felt bad because she wanted to be able to make it better. Sedewitz's spectre came up chanting "parentified, parentified...." I'm trying to be patient and forgiving. With myself, and then of course with the girls. Tomorrow is another day. There are a few dozen contradictory things looming on the schedule. Don't want to call Sharon. Only Celi has asked about her lately. Ugh. Gotta print. Could call her; I suppose it would be obvious that I was just calling because I could use some babysitting, but then who the fuck cares. She can say no. She could call me too. I suppose it's not any easier for her than it is for me. Wonder if the bitch got the stuff I mailed. Wonder what prison is like for her. The wind and darkness and leftover fire smell and some word I just read makes me think of Peter, Pam's friend, "Pot Pete" as I called him when I was stoned, and you know what happens to me when I get stoned. I miss him. I missed so many opportunities, with him, with others, and it wasn't even my fault. But I am full of longings, yearnings. To love a man. To love a man. To love a man. 111412 God that sounds so gay. Ha ha. Today Millie said I love the others more than her. Megan said she does everything wrong (again). Libby cried at bedtime because when she asked if she would have to have money out of her jar for not being quiet, I said be quiet. Cecilia actually had a pretty good night but she cusses like a damn sailor. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Is there nowhere I can go in this desperate alley of a house that doesn't have some visual or aural or psychic ticking? Hey wait--today I read you're supposed to count your blessings, so, let's just remember how horrible this house USED to be in the noise department, and maybe the stupid bird clock isn't so bad after all. I could take it down. Hmm. Wonder if the girls would care. Is that really the issue, though? Would I care? Actually, yeah, I think I'm ready to be rid of the damn thing. I think. I think. I think. Tick. Tick. Not sure, though. Maybe it has something to do with my guilt. Maybe it has something to with her soul. Maybe it has something to do with the way I feel more like her mother than her husband, if only in the way I can't forget that she was a child once, too. That she had innocence and hope and laughter and sweetness, and it was crushed by forces, powers beyond her control. Who is she? Is she the criminal, or was she a victim long before I met her? And the crucial part: *is the child still in there, horrified, scared, alone?* Because I don't know how I can handle that. Kinda like, are there two of her or one? Is she what she is, or is she what she was plus what she is? (Is anybody?) Is there a third she that she could possibly become? Do I care? For the girls' sake? Really? 111612 this room i’m in now at lake denoon is filled with vague, oracular exhortations & exaltations. One of them is even from kenny rogers. It’s like a movie where it’s really a dream trying to tell you something, and EVERYTHING’S A CLUE! So i’ve added a couple of my own to the stew: Do you even know what success looks like? Would you know it if you saw it? Reading about autism spectrum and asperger’s, with the quiet old question still flitting around: “Why am I so smart but so unsuccessful?” And old blind Joe still flitting around, echoing the single word, “psychotic...psychotic...psychotic...” in dream-sequence flashback swirly mode. And this: what does my real voice even sound like? Going all the way, committing, is a kind of soul death. “Genius” is so often defined (probably mostly by people who have no clue; are bullshitting) as the ability to do or be this or that, but what if it really has something to do with a true *willingness* to see what was previously unseen; to stop making yourself not see that which is so contrary to your expectations, your demands, and your *needs* that it is utterly, there-is-no-bottom, vastness-of-space *terrifying.* To see this, to actually be brave and vulnerable enough to let it make an impression on your actual brain, to let it rise above the subliminal, is to condemn to death and allow to die your most precious version of yourself, your narcissistic mosaic of warm, internal systems--to force it down on the steel examination table and cut its pulsing throat while it gazes up at you with bewildered, trusting canine eyes. 111812 What am I avoiding? Why have I left my boys in the canoe to wander pointlessly, soullessly up tributaries that don't exist? What the fuck am I doing/not doing there? The good thing about it is, I will find out tomorrow. SEX! Fuck Kate. Her game playing. It's a game you can never completely quit playing, but it sure does fade and I sure am tired. She just always wants to have me at a certain distance. Always has, always will. Whatever. Fuck it. And yet. No really, fuck it. And yet, why do I still check that shared dropbox folder every day? Because then I can say fuck it all the more vehemently, and prove I'm winning the game by saying more convincingly that I don't want to play. So yeah, basically, like I said, fuck it. And fuck her too. That was fun. Hey! That was fun! I barrelled thru my 500 tonight ("13 Second Tributary 1118"), and almost nothing happened. It's a weird exposure, kind of like one of those close-ups of the parking lot that barely shows a cigarette butt and some strands of too-green grass next to the chipped-up wheel stop. "MILWAUKEE" the label says. There's another one that's a picture of some rust and part of a bolt and some cracked concrete in the shade of other concrete. That one's labelled "CHICAGO." These are all just cities in your mind, after all, right? This week's episode is brought to you by the word "psychotic." Old blind Joe, fooling people into liking him and listening to him because he's blind. Nice try, dickhole. All you do is wait until everybody else has spoken, then you pick one or two of the comments and slowly say it all over again with slightly different words, as if it were your own. It's the slowed speech of the pontificator. Getting a patent on someone else's invention. I mean shit, we're all just regurgitating lit-crit 101 already, right? The least you could do is have the decency to sound like you have your own opinion. Nice fucking job, you think no-one notices? You think we're all as fucking blind as you? Fuck that. Yeah, I got your "psychotic" right here, cheesefuck. Bite it. Nah, but what the hell. You seem like a nice enough guy. But then what do I know--I'M PSYCHOTIC!!!!! Is that enough exclamation marks for ya? Dudes, if my shit sounds like an acid trip, I'd hate to live one day of your boring-as-fuck, squared-off, one-room cabin of a life! I never wrote a "normal" story, and I probably at this point never will. What's the point? Even if I'm getting paid to? Let's just be cantankerous tonight (not drunk, ain't that something? and it's very noticeable to me how significant that is; I am surprised) and say even if I'm getting paid for it. I'm going to be a balls-out son of a bitch and say I'll get paid (in something) for doing it fucking my fucking way. "You have a unique voice," they say. "Love the voice." Damn right. I have a voice, motherfuckers. I have a motherfucking voice. They're barking up other trees. I'm not going to say the wrong tree, but it would be the wrong tree for me. They're trying to photograph the real? They're taking pictures of what's supposed to be there? Help me out here. They're-- Let me try this from the other side. I'm-- You know, I don't even really mind psychotic, I just don't want to be pathetic. The thing about the river, the always-disappearing river, is just how ephemeral it is. Tangential. Insignificant. You have to be able to navigate the unnavigable bits. The droplets. The spray. The trickle under the refrigerator. But ALL THE WATER IS CONNECTED, DAMMIT! I'm SURE OF IT! I just don't want to be a perennially impractical, useless piece of bloated head. What if my therapist's just saying shit to make me feel validated? What if I'm really just as full of shit as I think I probably am? What if I'm reinventing the lack of wheels? I'm not a damned scientist. I don't have hard evidence that what I'm pursuing is a) real, b) of any interest to anyone, and c) not something that a few dozen million people have figured out eons ago, because it's so fucking obvious except for the parts I'm not even touching on because I'm so uneducated and *illiterate.* Funny how I'm right back here again, isn't it? That snake always has a way of tricking himself into thinking that pointy, wiggly steak really *isn't* his own tail this time. Ah, that's okay. Let's recall the visceral. Hey, I'm a damned artist, right? I can do that--*it's all right if it feels good,* right sis? Let's recall how illuminating and expansive and how the words just slipped out like a young man's firm turd: I'm a writer. I'm an artist; I'm a writer. I have to do it or else get sick. It was the twin of the other verbal tower from a few weeks before: I've always known I'm gay. Bam. There it was. It just came out, uncoerced, unconsidered, just as real as a june bug falling out of the couch cushion. That's kind of enough for me to go on for now, because I'm a pathetic pussy fag artist dirty hippy freak, I guess. I'm also going to be REAL TIRED tomorrow, but what else. I wonder if I'll ever get to where I can do with eating and sleeping and all that stuff what I've done with alcohol? And how about rage? And impatience? Wait, is impatience a quantity? Or is it just a symptom? Aren't all these little things symptoms in some way? Uh duh, I don't know. The underlying DARK MATTER manifests in drinking (well not anymore), staying up too late, caffeine, overeating, what the hell is going on up there? A slightly whimpery Celi on the stairs having woken up. I almost goosebumped myself rushing up the landings to her silhouette; sometimes I catch a glimpse of what it's like to be a kid, just like I once saw the onrushing traffic from Dexter's point of view. Got the sweaty little creature back in bed. Two cats down here being denizens of the night, watching. No one but the fish cares about my two cats, right? Oh Fuck it, I don't know, I'm going to bed and masturbate and stretch my back. Sucks to get old but I'm still kicking like a degenerate mule. 111912 Again Peggy said, "Keep doing what you're doing." God I hope she's right. I feel like I'm going out on a limb that's thinner than the thinnest part of the river when the river is a barely visible trickle. And all I have to sustain my faith is the word of an old dead curmudgeonly coot who said all water's connected to the hem of the high priestess's gown. I mean, that is some made-up shit, right there. If anything is. "Living the dream." I'm staking everything I have or might ever have on a literal dream. And the hee-larious part is, I don't even fully realize I'm doing it yet. (There are so many dramatic lapses in the above, I don't even know where to begin. "All I have to sustain...": false. I have plenty to sustain me. But the part about not fully realizing it yet? Yeah, that. This is the first time I've ever REALLY begun to "fake it until you make it", or less crudely "become what we pretend to be.") [Why] is it necessary to throw out so many words just to catch the six or seven that really matter? I like my tiny (by current standards) TV. I think it says a lot. I like my upturned gooseneck lamp. I think it's very cozy. I like my mostly quiet kitchen with most of the dishes washed. It feels domestic but not oppressive. I even like my stupid cats, and the tan one's flipping out over the catnip I just sprayed on the scratching surface I just rubber-banded to the wiry legs of the little yellow mosaic-topped end table, which I also like. I've exhausted my other perceivable options, and now I'm [finally] trying becoming who I am. That shit's crazy, dude. I mean, by that I mean, not crazy at all. 112112 Why is it that cheapo Windows USB keyboards ARE NOT supported but DO work with the iPad adapter, but Apple's own USB keyboards don't bother to pop up the NOT SUPPORTED message, and instead just either DON'T WORK or else CRASH THE IPAD?? I can't never not know just how dumb that shit is. But I'll tell you this much: I'm going to bring my cheapo USB windows keyboard home and stick it at one of my desks! Yeah, not everything works. You can't bring up the onscreen keyboard except by unplugging it, and the number pad is just numbers, and Page Up/Page Down don't work, and there's no volume and brightness, but dude. Still. 112112 What if it were not about sex, but love? What if it were not about sex, but love? What if it were not about sex, but love? What if it were not about sex, but love? What if it were not about sex, but love? That's the part I always forgot. I get the gay freedom feeling, and I dance around with it for a little while feeling powerful and free and full of music and honesty. Then I notice that I still like looking at women and I still have some of my old weird fantasies. It morphs into fear that I'm not allowed to be gay; my gay card will be revoked. I try on bisexual but it just feels hollow and pointless. So then *I* start to feel hollow and pointless, and about this time is when I start to recall the hips-moving, free-dancing, blue-sky-with-towering-clouds, Duluth-Minnesota feeling that I had, back *ages* ago it seems by now, when I said "gay." And then I wad the whole thing up like a bad rough draft and stuff it in my colon for another 10 years or so. # But not this time. This time I'm saying hey wait a second, what if the free feeling is the *real* part? What if the sex stuff is just surface details? That free feeling, that's who I by god *am.* I could have told me that on top of that tower in Duluth, Minnesota, and as a matter of fact I did. I just I guess let it slip away from time to time. I guess I kind of forgot from time to time, maybe because in some twisted way it was necessary to do so. My puffy-cloud-soaked tower over that electrically incredible screamingly clear great lake had to go into hiding. # But not this time. It's so much smaller and quieter than putting on a new pair of pants. The pair of pants yells at you and "validates" you with its flashy ass. But your knobby knees will poke through soon enough; soon enough you'll have to change your underwear again, and then you're really still just naked old you under there after all, aren't you? But naked old insignificant you is *free.* If you want it. And I want it. Every time I look at a girl's legs in a high school, I get stuck on this weird inevitability. I say almost audibly to myself, *but I don't* want *a relationship with a woman!* And then off I go onto the same old dry trail of boring, specious what-ifs, like what if I'm a closeted straight guy--no wait, I know, who would *be* that, right?--but what if I'm a closeted straight guy denying his feelings for women because he doesn't think a constructive, stable, happy life is possibile in *that* kind of relationship. I mean, WTF. Then it comes down to, why is it not possible? Can't be because of societal disapproval, dumbass, the other side has that. So is it not possible because I'm a failure at it? Just a weak pussy, the kind I learned to jerk off about being while I was in relationships with women? Or is it possible that it's not possible because I *don't actually want it?* And that's a key question in a *lot* of my life lately, isn't it? I mean, don't you think it's funny that I do all this work all the time? It's no wonder I wasn't able to do my *other* work when I was a teacher! Who has mind space left over after all this self-torture!? It's like this elaborate scaffolding set up to distract myself from taking responsibility for just choosing what I want and committing to it--*out* of all the fun-house-mirror closets. Think about it: if I just had permission, would I need to prove myself gay in order to be gay? Would I need to feel miserable about the possibility of failing to prove myself gay? Would I have to feel this sinking feeling every time a high school junior wears a pair of fishnet tights? 112312 oh. My god. Are you fucking kidding me?