Category: Diary

Know my friends that you are valued above all, that so many of you have come to me out of these bad circumstances, and where I once stood and viewed this all as sheer horror and detriment, I now see as a whole new opportunity, another step in growing up and growing closer. I value you all in your kind words, and sympathetic sulking, understanding bitching, and well-deserved, mutual, bitter humor. I felt for so long that I was alone in the feelings I was harboring over my stupid fucking situation, but I realize that we have all been drug through the horse shit before, your testimonies have shown me as such. Thank you so much for the wisdom you have imparted, and for the constant reassurance that saying “fuck it” is not bad, in fact it is preferred, and for being there to show that there is so much life to be had after moving on – that waking up from the nightmare can bring such joy, hope and promise just from realizing you are finally awake again.
Was playing: How Fucking Romantic by The Magnetic Fields

“In Israel, nubian ibex prepare to duel over a mate… These are actually young males, but their fights are dead serious. The loser may never get the chance to breed.”
– Discovery Channel’s Planet Earth: Deserts episode

We were never truly happy

Do you know how to pronounce it? It is Or-y-gun not Or-uh-gun. Does that side of the country seem like a dream to you? If he had arrived after a letter of arrival you would not have had the charge as much as you have had. If you had not protested as much, I would not have known the extent to which you love him. I have made myself available for random babysitting rendezvous. The occasional frozen pizza and mix-up of heartache. Did you ever think we were practicing, or at least auditioning for some role that we wanted, but no longer believed we would fulfill? I could feel so many things, and fill so many things, including yours, if you would allow. But those places where my body has been exist in a world more adult than childhood dreamers, fairy tale fantasies. I wanted that too, foolishly. I will roll around on this chipped wood carpet, and wait, and wait, and wait. YOU ARE NO LONGER EVERYTHING. You may indeed be nothing at all. A blip on the screen that never landed. I can feel the movements. The dance numbers have begun. The world has shifted. I have been asked into matrimony, and I do believe my response may be yes I will yes, I say, yes, I say yes, yes!

Why do you have to take a picture of every fucking thing? I’ve got a whole computer, because that’s the way things are done now, full of pictures to remind me of things that I would be better off forgetting now. Oh yes, in case you have not figured it out, the heartbreak came back today, not like a lamb but like a lion – this month that began with my birthday and ends with the biggest case of emotional déjà vu I have had in over a year. You see, I thought I was over G, or at least I fooled myself into believing it was so, but the events of today have arrived to show me how far from the truth that thought was. I am so fucking mad at myself for not being there, not following all of your advice, but I finally have no other option, so in the end you all will proven correct and I will be proven wrong again. If we could only believe in the wisdom of family and friends from the outset our lives would likely be a lot more fulfilling. I am a mess, a thorough mess. I pretended Zen, that I was so good, that I was beyond desire where all pain starts. I am a stupid boy. I should go to sleep now and put this day to rest but I continue to intake caffeine to force myself into this exhilarating punishment. I promise I will not continue to bore you with all of this. I think there’s a James’ song in that somewhere. I will instead bore you with my lackluster ruminations on books, movies and the state of American politics in the near future, because you should keep your true feelings hidden deep inside so your vulnerability can go there and die too.
Was playing: Keep the Car Running by Arcade Fire

Because I believed in words
over braun the whole world shut down.
I thought your way of tilting your head,
of telling me you love me,
was beyond reproach,
but I thought the way in which I wrote it
was was so much better still.
I gaze the navel,
I bring the end about in everything I do.
I don’t know who you are but
our team didn’t win tonight,’
except, perhaps, yours did,
and, in that case
was it really our team?
What does it matter what they
said when it was Britain,
and it was 1765?
Only a serve and volley make the difference now.
Oh, the word can topple empires.
The pen is mightier than the sword?
I can talk all night and you
will still not understand me,
you will choose to not even try,
but your sword, oh your sword,
it is made of steel,
and it’s slice is final.

Aren’t we on a trip tonight to the place of the unknown, or we should be. Weekends like this do not roll around that often. I’ve got a cat, a borrowed cat, a borrowed car and we are heading south of the border. How can we make this thing makes sense to the people who have never had the desire to steal a car and go that direction in the middle of the night. Let’s start the weekend early and go bowling, and warm up to scores respectable. Let’s pretend you and I are believable beasts. Let’s talk of the things we would do if we had perfect time and money, and let’s pretend we don’t need an alibi. Let’s commit the crimes that they will sooner or later accuse us of. Let’s get off the hook.
When they tell us that we are not aging well… when they tell us that we are not who we are supposed to be… let’s tell them that there are women that things didn’t work out with, that we still hope might work out, and that those women might find it in their heart to love us for us, and to love the fact that we deny, deny, deny that impulse that was not ours, but someone else’s totally. That we can deny, deny, deny this thing for a little while longer, and maybe more.

This is the one in which we are milking the worms, but not of milk, but of crud and animal parts, the things it has eaten, like sticking our finger down their throats to induce vomiting, except we are really are milking are milking, squeezing it out of them like a tube of toothpaste. The Bangladeshi man encourages us on. Promises good meat. The skin rolls like a treadmill and we try not to be consumed by these worms as they rampage. These firehose sized worms… And then we eat. Thee slices are battered and fried and those of us with the Western palate do not take to the indulgence too well, despite the oversell. We have, perhaps, seen too much. We know where this food has been and that is more than our stomachs will allow.

It’s a day and a day, and perhaps there is too much oxygen, and perhaps there is too much nicotine floating in the air around the great Manuel’s Tavern, Highland Avenue, and tonight (and today for that matter) has proven to be, so far, the hardest of the days so far, and I wanted a cigarette after teaching that class, even though I am “great” and “the guru,” and even now as I type this I cannot believe that I cannot step onto the porch and have a cigarette. I rub very hard, with fingernails, on the nicotine transdermal patch on on my left shoulder. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is on and I think I may need one, and I may need one just because I am not in bed yet, and before I read that book, and that movie is on which I left G at home for last year and she called me back from and told me she was leaving this house and R told me it was better that I didn’t see it (worst moment in cinematic history), that it was better that she called me home to tell me she was leaving here and me. Can I have a cigarette? Should I suffer this movie in the two ways that I will suffer it? I think I should cash it in for the night – pillow turned long – a prayer and a page and lights out and a new tomorrow where I will not want to pay the retainer to RJ Reynolds.

I have officially been longer without a cigarette now than I have since my feeble attempt at quitting 8 years ago. In about an hour and a half, I will have made it for my first 24 hours. Despite the anticipation that I had of how hard this first day would be, it was not very hard. I expect that things will get harder along the way though.
Today I had no real cravings. No freakouts because I was going through withdrawal or anything like that. It was just those times of the day, like when you get a task finished at work and are not yet ready to start the next one, a little break would do, a cigarette break, but then I would have to remind myself that that is not possible. Or when I was rebooting the computer this afternoon and thought it would be a good time to have a…. or when the TV dinner is cooking in the microwave… It wasn’t that I craved the cigarette, it was just those periods of downtime that I used to fill with smoking. I am glad I resisted the urge, but I cannot say that it did not make me sad. Just like the last one last night made me shed a tear or two. It really is like breaking up with a lover, splitting ways from a friend.
Things I have discovered today is that yes, I am craving food more, and that the box of 100 Pop Ice popsicles I bought 3 years ago indeed have a purpose other than delighting the occasional child in the house. I have had two of them late tonight and they seem to be somewhat of a surrogate for the more cancerous things I would like to be putting in my mouth, albeit I am not sure how safe that artificial coloring is.
Now Sigourney Weaver is smoking a cigarette in Death and the Maiden and it looks so pleasurable. Hell, I know that it is pleasurable. I am trying to take comfort in knowing that my carbon monoxide levels are half of what they are last night, and in the thought that this will get easier.