and like pictures.

… so, see you.

harder to hit a moving target …

there isn’t really enough time to consider something truly lost, is there?  life, in addition to being nasty, brutish and short, has the wonderful propensity for being enormously subjective; the mind works in wondrous ways.  there is enough emotional real estate bursting at the seams in my head to keep me occupied for the better part of a month. i’m tired, in many ways. when i find the sort of energy that makes pecking at the keyboard an endeavor that produces nice things, interesting things, evocative things, sexy things, it’ll happen.

i shall say something when i am ready.

i wondered, at times, what exactly was keeping me away.

first, there was the small matter of actually feeling to tired to indulge in self expression, as i had more than enough work at the time to sap anything out of me resembling creative, nay, thoughtful, energies.

second, i honestly couldn’t imagine a situation, in this world or the next, that deserved my brand of  description.

third, i am actively questioning what i’m doing when i choose to do this.  it feels artless, which is bad — because, if anything, i wish for nothing more than this to feel artful.  it’s not representational — the words stand on their own serifs.  it’s not ironic or challenging; it isn’t engaging a novel concept.  i blather.  now, you may not think the last point to be a barrier to entry — i am a first-rate complainer — but if i’m becoming self-conscious on account of it, i betray something that has been, to this point, pretty central to my character.  what’s the use of presenting something credibly artistic if it isn’t genuine, it isn’t something i don’t find believable?

finally, if it isn’t artful, it is confessional, a diary.  i stopped the practice when i was in college for a particular reason that makes particular sense if you know the seinfeldian aspects of my personality, which i’ve already noted.  complaining for me, you see, is basically equivalent with self-aggrandizement.  as long as i’m a victim, there’s a grievance! there are ears!  such wonderful irony, this coming from a “brother.”

the only thing for which i’ll puff my chest a little this week is my admittance (i.e., my becoming licensed).  thing is, people expect that to happen.

what else can i kvetch about?  my mother is scared of my neighborhood. i have stuff that i don’ t need but can’t seem to get rid of.  i continue to youtube dj to myself, mumbling how the next track will make me feel before i even hear it (i’m doing it right now to pacific division’s “the mayor”).  my hands resists hand cream.  i become someone’s fan within three seconds of looking at them, but am so disaffected i forget my zeal as soon as i leave the premises.  how is someone supposed to be memorable if i forget how they make me feel?  i almost forgot “cherie” completely were it not for a weird moment where i attempted to ferry my mother into the subway this week (she fears and loathes that about this city as well) and she was behind us.  i figured out why i don’t see her anymore — she didn’t go to the boro; must’ve moved.

nothing about this is artful. heartburn, a pint, or ibs are the only potential results from this exercise, as it is currently fashioned. or crying. yes. maybe i could be driven to tears.  history, however, bodes well for some mixture of the pint and heartburn.

one thing that concerns me is that i, as a writer, have basically no facility with writing in the language of intimacy.  all i know is the language of longing and infatuation.  i can pretend range; why can’t i write of all that wonderful mushy and potentially censorious stuff if updike can venture to successfully ape the contradictions of the black power movement in small-town mid-atlantic america? who knows.

inspired by these several sightings, i penned this wonderful little handwritten tome one morning in my office while the words were still being blown across the desert floor of my mind. i placed the piece of paper betwixt the last page and the rear cover of a paperback i’ve been carrying around (the short stories of john cheever — his narrative sadness gives me a sick joy) and have not taken it out since. i am pretty sure that i don’t need to see it. oh sure, maybe the words, strung along as they are, might look beautiful to someone. i think, however, publishing it encourages me in the wrong way. i will be faced with the unappealing stink this sort of escapism breeds in me.  i cannot write myself out of this particular funk. i can’t sleep it off or exercise it off or eat it off, much less kiss it off, for i would surely love for have it do exactly that as much as anything.

one day, though, i will make her look into my eyes, and i will be ready.

i take all of this into account when i experience what must be cognitive dissonance by some other name on (very sustained) occasions. for as time passes more all the more quickly as i get older, there are discrete but comparatively small periods of time that stretch into the interminable horizon. an eight-hour workday feels like three; a five minute subway commute takes thirty. i stir in my sleep at 6:00 a.m., rising hours later at my alarm’s command, which curiously indicates that it is 7:00 am.

i took a small vacation not too long ago to shake out these cobwebs and destroy the cause of my temporal rootlessness.  it hasn’t worked.

i hope this weird displacement recedes to the point that i regain something that can at least be mistaken or perspective (read: the right kind of perspective, which, if i’m honest, is the version of reality that exterminates the discombobulation i desperately want to end).

of course, i take my first true tumble of the day no more than 500 yards from my place (i also let the machine fall out from under me rounding a turn off north 3d; i did not hit the ground).  my riding partner that evening suggested that i learn to properly skid, chop my ungainly (and now mildly mutilated) handlebars and think about adjusting my hub ratio.  my bruised arse (or is it the bones parked somewhere in my arse?) agrees.

i had trouble sitting in my chair today at work.  my wrist, which feels sprained, was a lot more important in conducting my daily affairs that i gave it credit for.

on a more reflective note, i’ve been contemplating ink – a bit of text inside my bicep.  given my fetishization of latin, my nuanced appreciation for words and hip-hop culture, i thought “verbum” (meaning “word”) would be particularly appropriate.  another competitor — in english, with a french -> latin root — arose:

“travail.”

the idea of toil, in its more sordid aspects, appeals to my sense of melancholia.  there is an aesthetic elegance to its graphic and phonic representation.  it also represents, in a way, my life outlook — a successive series of trials,  some more painful than others, pointed always to subsistence, to the suffering that self-awareness bears so grudgingly, to the simple promise of a good sleep or a moment of rest.

the word is gaining traction in my mind.

on saturday in philly, a beloved place of previous residence, a bartender insisted that i greatly resemble kid cudi, who she saw in concert not too long ago.  after my companion was satisfied that i did not look like the guy (i needed no such persuasion), the bartender asserted that it must be my styling (jazzy madras, skullie, appropriate ironic glasses, well-fitting jeans and gently abused vans).  will i be mistaken for spank rock as well?  maybe theophilus london if he were to ever reach critical mass?

additionally, i have now heard from at least three different people that i remind them of eeyore.   it’s certainly not an fml moment, but it doesn’t smell  like irish spring, either.

i now descend from my whining stool.  soapboxes are for blowhards; i am merely a mumbler, a roller and cutter of eyes.