the piece of paper in the typewriter says:'what the hell was i looking for anyway?'
i am spending money i shouldn't spend on chinese takeout at 9:30 on a monday night, the remains of a large mug of coffee cooling on my desk back in my fourth floor apartment; a five room apartment with four windows. one of them is in the shower. i am here taking a break from one of my life goals, one that is in a constant up and down of passion and indifference. at the moment, my muse is manic, and there is a full cup brewing to replace the cold one when i return with my fried tofu and broccoli. i am telling myself that staying up all night will be fun, listening to music and fantasizing about the house i'll be moving to in four months. the life i'll be moving into in four months. i have plans for paintings already; paintings i don't have time or reason to do at the moment, art being mainly clicks and shapes for now. this is what they will pay me to do, and no it does not feel like work, but it is not the same as carcinogenic blue paint behind my ears in the small hours of the morning. it is not dancing like a monkey alone in the seventh-floor studio, painting, kinetic, kinetic, kinetic.
i have a moment, while sitting on the toilet actually, a realization that i have become a person with habits, quirks, personality. i have foods that i like to eat. someone, naturally, is buying my groceries, and it must be me. i have chosen orange flavored toothpaste. my bedroom is dominated by plants and musical instruments. the other day i cut my hair. i cannot remember how many days ago. i have nearly succeeded in the complete atrophy of the left half of my brain. i have a record collection.
i do not know how or when any of these things happened.
my friends tell me that i have gotten much better at playing the piano, but i tell them i was always this good, i just had to practice, which of course made perfect sense at the time. sometimes i think that i have been practicing the wrong things, unwittingly getting better at getting worse, but this is only sometimes. usually i just get distracted and play the piano instead, or i get distracted from art to buy chinese food and write, poorly, because i am thinking about playing the piano.
i enjoy commas as a punctuation mark.
there is a place in the park, next to the oversized stone frog, where i like to sit, stare at the trees and the expensive people, and drift. it is like watching clouds move slowly in a warm spring, or cool summer. i think about the things that i've written sitting in the same place over a course of now nearly four years. i think about the people i've woken up next to in the morning and the person they woke up next to. it is all third person. it is all scribbles in margins and binary on my computer that i can't remember creating, and this doesn't bother me. i feel full; not just with four pounds of chinese food, but full man, full. full like full of the cheaper wines and the darker beers. full like full of two-steps and stoned-rooftop conversations. full like full with the reflections of headlights and streetlamps on the river while sitting on a transplanted boulder, hood up and legs crossed, smiles. smiles, man, i am full of smiles. say what you like.
i have a moment, while sitting on the toilet actually, a realization that i have become a person with habits, quirks, personality. i have foods that i like to eat. someone, naturally, is buying my groceries, and it must be me. i have chosen orange flavored toothpaste. my bedroom is dominated by plants and musical instruments. the other day i cut my hair. i cannot remember how many days ago. i have nearly succeeded in the complete atrophy of the left half of my brain. i have a record collection.
i do not know how or when any of these things happened.
my friends tell me that i have gotten much better at playing the piano, but i tell them i was always this good, i just had to practice, which of course made perfect sense at the time. sometimes i think that i have been practicing the wrong things, unwittingly getting better at getting worse, but this is only sometimes. usually i just get distracted and play the piano instead, or i get distracted from art to buy chinese food and write, poorly, because i am thinking about playing the piano.
i enjoy commas as a punctuation mark.
there is a place in the park, next to the oversized stone frog, where i like to sit, stare at the trees and the expensive people, and drift. it is like watching clouds move slowly in a warm spring, or cool summer. i think about the things that i've written sitting in the same place over a course of now nearly four years. i think about the people i've woken up next to in the morning and the person they woke up next to. it is all third person. it is all scribbles in margins and binary on my computer that i can't remember creating, and this doesn't bother me. i feel full; not just with four pounds of chinese food, but full man, full. full like full of the cheaper wines and the darker beers. full like full of two-steps and stoned-rooftop conversations. full like full with the reflections of headlights and streetlamps on the river while sitting on a transplanted boulder, hood up and legs crossed, smiles. smiles, man, i am full of smiles. say what you like.