I was sure that rosebush wasn't going to survive this time. But damned if it isn't squirting out little green leaves after all. I think Im saying normal things to her, reasonable things, but really I'm saying the kind of negative, accusatory things THAT I SAY TO MYSELF ALL THE TIME WITHOUT FULLY REALIZING IT. And, she has the self awareness and presence of mind to have let me know that when I do that, they echo in her mind over and over like the "tape of negativity." I've been doing to her--them--what I do to myself. That's why when I thought I was just letting them do the garage sale thing and staying out of the way, which would have been fine, I was actually also kind of sucking the joy out of it to protect not only, maybe even not mainly, them, but myself. #megan like for instance. i just woke up at 4 am, head aching, thirsty, having to piss, the worry engine starting to turn over and rev up, and I said to myself, "You always have to have that last beer, don't you. That's why you're fat." Can you imagine saying something like that to a child in your care? And yet, that's the way I talk to myself ALL THE TIME!!! Why the hell wouldn't that same kind of judgmental negativity be coming across to them, even if I'm careful enough most of the time, or think I am, not to come right out and say it in so many words??!? #megan you know what was probably the coolest part of the whole weird evening with all of them over here? when i came into the kitchen, Shane was looking at my taped up list of ways to be good to yourself, and said, I like that. That's cool. There's maybe more to him than I had admitted there might be. Okay here's the thing. Maybe not so much a peace offering but (or also) some kind of power play. Like I accidentally won some kind of weird mind turf war or something. Or they did. Or neither party knows who won or whether or not we're even playing it. It fighting it. Maybe that's overly sinister. Maybe just a kind of balancing. In the midst of the usual background of unease There's nothing romantic about longing. Longing is the imprisoned soul who feels helpless to escape. Longing is the great gross undercurrent of wrong that haunts the consciousness. Longing is the dullness that remains when the pain of daily failure, of separation from the true home, becomes second nature. 050813 Pain. Stuff that's obviously not right. Don't have time to go to the doctor? Embarrassed? Or don't value yourself enough to take proper care of yourself? 051013 Lonely tired anxious worried down doubting poisoned with fatigue and crackling with unease, I just want to stuff it stuff it stuff it but I can't 051213 "Professionalism" comprises a social code of which I am aware but not, whether by choice, subconscious, preconscious or otherwise; uncompensated-for predisposition; or untreated defect or disease, in anything consistently convincingly resembling control. It's full of shifting meanings. "I appreciate your honesty" may be provisionally true at 3:30 in the afternoon, but transmogrify into "You admitted that you suck" by 7:00 the same night. 051413 Dimpling rain mixing with someone's remains of barbecue fire, kids in bed, this little stack of atmosphere smells perfect right now. 051613 Feeling like a complete and utter retard because I can't get this stupid bent wire puzzle apart. Or the other one back together. Obviously I'm not smart at all and have just been kidding myself all these years. But that's not news. Opportunities sail by like fleshy meteorites. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of the backside of the tail of one, and a twinge of regret sizzles up, skirls in the flatulent breeze, dissolves into stale air. All those potential relationships that I just let die. Just walked away and let them wither on the vine. So afraid of humans in professional settings. So convinced I don't belong, can't belong, shouldn't belong. Libby's a highly self-aware learner. I thought someone should be telling her to jog faster when dribbling the soccer ball, but I looked up later and she had increased her speed, modestly, on her own. Like she had some kind of sense of the importance of getting a grip on the technique first. Like she can sense what way works for her. 051913 Got a little sun under my shirt and a long bike ride with the girls and there was some serious friction between millie & megan (& me w/my crybaby buttons pushed) but it feels like summer and libby has a new bike and it's yellow and she didn't like it at first but now i think she does and she rode all the way to culver's and back, and now we're hanging out and brett dennen is on and it sounds good and feels like summer and this morning's slow-motion panic about all my failures feels a little faint and far away like a black sail on a blue horizon and you can't quite tell if it's coming closer or fading over the curve of vision but either way it couldn't possibly be your problem right now, could it? not when there's a beer and a computer and a damn fine song and kids and bugs and it's coming on evening and we're going to have supper and I don't even have to work tomorrow, just go to see my therapist, and millie's having little spells where her heart hurts and i think it's panic attacks but i'm not sure and that's really scary but i think it's going to be okay and megan's on minecraft and the littles are playing big long storylines with the neighbors and there's still music playing. Did I mention apple blossoms are falling all over the trail of crushed limestone and dirt? and blackbirds land on cattails in the swamp under the giant power lines that cut thru everyone's backyards. which is fine but don't neglect that little voice, the one that wears a helmet and is little and vulnerable like wubbles on a new little bike. it's saying, yes and yes and yes and yes and and it doesn't have the vocabulary to openly beg you not to just get drunk and forget about everything. there's still work to do. can you still have the feeling, the summer feeling, but also do the work you have to do? it's up to you 052113 Almost an hour. Relax. Almost an hour until you need to get up from this steaming cup and wend your way through these cultivated redneck European streets toward the courthouse. Over an hour til you will, hopefully, get your oppor-- --we interrupt this journal entry to report that the gentle bear that brought me my sandwich was, i'm pretty goddamn sure, and you know how hypercautious I am about these things, flirting all to hell with me, I shit you not. It was really nonthreatening but titillating, just plain nice and secret and intriguing. Holy-- Reminds me of the frog's leap merlot. Okay. Ahem. Now back to our regularly scheduled journal entry-- --tunity to ask your one question. And Megan's black and white lo-res pic in the car is sitting there saying, "I learned that I could help someone by speaking up and not being shy." Oh my god I'm free. I don't even have to hate women. In fact I love them the more because I don't have to prove anything to them, FINALLY. Mozzarella wrap and a side of mango & pineapple. And no, I'm not wearing a jacket and tie. I wore all that the last six times I tried to do this. Fuck it. "And would you be the lucky number thirteen?" The sandwich bear asked. "I am," I said, handing him the card. A transaction of kindness. He returned in a moment and brought me some napkins-- "just in case." I didn't even have to ask. ps: just looked again at Meggie's picture... Actually "I learned I can help kids by not being shy." Exactly. I like going to sleep with the doors and windows wide the fuck open and the ceiling fan above my head grinding gently at the night. It's my downstairs and I'm going to breathe it in while I'm still young and old and fat and thin. 052413 Wow. Reality tv. My dad called it years ago, before the genre had really even bloomed: "just a high tech freak show." What I said to the little man-woman-snake-beast in my mind's coffee house: "Okay, then I'm going to go. "Because I said I'm bisexual, and you said you're not sure, you think you know me pretty well and you just aren't sure I'm being completely honest or clear, and I have to say that I just handed you a central tenet of my very essence, a pulse in the heart of my individual and collective identity, and you are questioning it. It's like I started out a conversation with you and I just said the word 'the,' and you were like, 'No, I can't quite agree with you there...' "What then could we possibly have to talk about? I've decided I'm going to be brave enough to be bisexual. A bisexual bear. A fucking pirate. Fuck it. This is who I am. And I get to decide what that means. I didn't know Marco Vassi died of AIDS in 1987. That makes me incredibly sad. But I'm so glad he's one of the contributors to the hideously expensive book on bisexuality I just bought. the advance of claiming bisexuality for me is profound, both in loud and quiet ways. i am a minority but not a freak. "my kind" have been more erased than overtly oppressed. we are not a reality-show spectacle i have loved women deeply and well, and to try to bodily convince myself otherwise in service to a monosexual safety net or fad diet or psychological panacea is just plain foolish, and my body knows it and even my mind knows it now. I have also been in love with men, some of them quiet and smoking and tragic, one of them dead, and I didn't know--I didn't know what to--how to-- "The answer of the moment" never really quite suits. There is no quick-fix diagnosis for me. I've been through the fire, through a couple of fires even, and I'm not as stupid as I look. :) but I'm starting to know. And I'm not dead yet. I mean, dude, WTF, OMG, you can just tell the truth. That's bisexuality to me. It's relinquishing the stilted urge to throw out data that doesn't fit someone else's expectation of whichever side of the acceptable dichotomy you think you would be happier belonging in. It's like, which half of the bullshit sandwich do you want. There is beauty and freedom in the solar incineration of the attractive fake narrative. It's a refusal to carry the guilt any longer for anything. And brother, sister, that's fucking huge. I BECAME guilt. I got on board guilt like a fucking airplane and I rode that thing into the sea and beneath the waves when it fucking crashlanded. I was still strapped into my seat as I watched dead bodies float up and away all around me. I don't know how the fuck I survived. Does anyone? Who the fuck knows. Also you're just some guy standing kind of slanted in the kitchen making popcorn and none of this matters. But that's not always quite as fun to write about. Is it. But that note, that realization if that's what it is, does serve, can serve to level your flight, give you the possibility of continuing over the foggy mountains and exploring further, if only because your extreme angle would have crashed you into the rocks & pointless surf inhabited only by jellyfish and gullshit. so be grateful for the quieter less overtly ecstatic voices inside you. they are there for you too. see? i'm actually learning something. "at my age". I'm actually learning a new thing. Listening to the less strident voices within. It feels like it's actually making a difference. i am praying to the leviathon sex demon that it is not too late to live just a little bit more, to take my shirt off and be as fat or skinny as i may be, to live just a little bit more and fuck just a little bit more before i cash it all in. i have lived and i have partly died and now i want to live a little again. is that so much to ask? (refrain) i've said it before and i've said it again: i'm more alive now than i've ever been This is what I am. I KNOW I EXIST. I'm not some kind of fucking paramecium that was born a couple of days ago. I'm not "wise" cause you can't say that without proving your foolishness, but I do know this: I exist. I can SEE that, and if you can't, well that's your blindness, not mine. There is an infinite difference between 99.9999999% and 100%. At this moment, I have 100% no doubt that I know WHAT I AM. And here's the cool thing: The number with all the nines in it? It will never be satisfied, it will never COME, it will never fully live. It thinks it has to be that way because of the innate uncertainty of what it thinks it comprehends as "the universe." What it forgets is that the number with the one and the zeros CAN JUST AS EASILY CHANGE ITS MIND. It could completely believe 180º differently tomorrow. Just wait and see. EMERSON, bitches, RALPH FUCKING WALDO EMERSON SAID IT BEST A LONG FUCKING TIME AGO, AND CONVENIENTLY HE SAID IT AGAIN WHEN I WAS 16 in ENGLISH CLASS: "Speak what you think today in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today." A-fucking-men, brother. It all makes me really want to go back to the river. Can I? and at the same time, i hate all this shit. all this bullshit marriage and relationship crap. who the fuck cares. i just failed bedtime again, at 11:00 at night with tears and frustration because i've been sitting here drinking and letting them play stupid games way too late. and all this shit is just so much self-absorbed gross ridiculous bullshit. and my ass itches and i'm just fucking tired and none of this bullshit matters. i miss my fat horrible wife. i miss my horrible, evil life The idiocy of intimacy. Just so sick of it. Stupid men saying crocodile cliches to pandering women. 052713 Alcohol is incense for the small white-walled apartment of my brain. I dont feel like working at all these days. Just want to go off and be alone and lick my wounds or pay someone to lick them for me. Maybe drink, maybe smoke, just disappear into a summer sidewalk crack with butts and rain and the absolution of the reappearing sun. The brilliance of refractory raindrops disappearing. Nevertheless I am grateful. For lima beans and corn and the late hour of the sunlight and children who are relentlessly beautiful and trying. just wish i could stay drunk stay drunk stay drunk but i know it wouldnt work that's the little voice that's the fixation with the frothy surface foam that's only the loudest boys in gym class yelling and being commanding yes you love them but you also know what else is going on 052913 Humid. Printer just made a noise. Tera bolted thru as I opened the screen a catswidth. Pure huntress. Diana. Savage. Amoral. Wish I had a drink to keep me fat lazy and sedate. On edge. Humor burnt. Poor. Bored & boring. This can change. 053013 Okay so here's my rant for the day. Besides panera's 30-minute wifi limit, that is. Gah. First the dudes at wheel n sprocket didn't even know what this lady's 3rd hand was. She was all like what is this and they were all like *shrug*. So I told her what it was for. Then the older dude was all like, yeah, your shifters are probably 15 to 20 years old, they're just toast. And he was sure to say they're probably 105's (they're not), cuz you know you gotta know model numbers if you're an expert. So yeah. First of all, i'm either going to fix them myself or else go somewhere where they know what the fuck they're talking about. Second, oh my god, nothing lasts 15 years! Are you kidding?! Throw that shit away! What's wrong with you!?!?! (Anyway, they're only 14 years old, max.) Who the fuck is max ha ha. , Look. I'm trying to talk to you and you keep trying to define your brand. Can you just. Just stop that. For a second please? After all these years, I finally like my bike. And those vacuous cubs at the bike shop just make me like old bikes more. I still miss my Kathmandu, tho.