Almost Real
I think I have regretted the life I haven't lived since before I was living any life at all. Perhaps my expectations have always been too high. I am a dreamer after all. I will crumble to dust with such sour tastes in my mouth.
Life continues on this week in the usual haze. I have done next to nothing at work. I spend hours a day staring at my laptop screen, surfing the Internet and doing little to any work at all. My commutes involved extensive staring out windows towards the outside world going about its business. I don't feel a part of it, which is a great irony considering I am one of a million tiny gears turning and moving the machine along.
I was able to somehow trick myself into a realm of normalcy for a few weeks. Having a clean apartment will do that for a man like myself. It makes you feel you have a home and less of a prison. Though I dare to think I will ever consider that residence a home. It is more of a rest stop on the way to some other destination.
My awful neighbor is still gone. It almost feels like a cruel joke now. When other neighbors come in now and I hear them stomping the snow off their feet outside it plummets me into the depth of anxiety. I mute my TV and listen intently to see if the footsteps go up the stairs and find themselves above me. This is of course not normal behavior. But sooner or later she will return and my tolerant mood will depart.
In the past several weeks, more than the past several months, my body has expanded. I am pushing 200 pounds again and I feel it. But in the dead of winter, even a mild winter, I am often on the couch eating pasta and immobile. Though I can admit great anticipation to getting out and riding my bike again soon.
With the Super Bowl having been in New Orleans and Mardi Gras this coming Tuesday my heart aches more than ever to be in the Crescent City. I still dream of what a life would be like living down there. Believing it of course to be some epic release from the awful stresses of Chicago.
I feel my detest for this city is expanding exponentially as I continue to witness the "suburbanization" of the urban landscape I once adored so. The breeders infect like a cancer and supplant all that was great about city living with their sterile, Disney-fied, upscale idea of what they think it should be like.
Truly the greatest negative force in the history of civilization, straight people have wiped out cultures at varying levels of severity since the beginning of time to make things they way they think it should be. Not that I'm saying the destruction of my urban vision is anything compared to say the genocide of the Native American people... but I'm entitled to be annoyed.
I digress.
I wondered in the shower this morning if I was even alive. And if I were about to die if I'd be afraid or thankful. There is no life in my life. It has no flavor. I'm an inmate to it. And any other metaphor one would like to apply. Nothing I will do about it anytime soon.
Life continues on this week in the usual haze. I have done next to nothing at work. I spend hours a day staring at my laptop screen, surfing the Internet and doing little to any work at all. My commutes involved extensive staring out windows towards the outside world going about its business. I don't feel a part of it, which is a great irony considering I am one of a million tiny gears turning and moving the machine along.
I was able to somehow trick myself into a realm of normalcy for a few weeks. Having a clean apartment will do that for a man like myself. It makes you feel you have a home and less of a prison. Though I dare to think I will ever consider that residence a home. It is more of a rest stop on the way to some other destination.
My awful neighbor is still gone. It almost feels like a cruel joke now. When other neighbors come in now and I hear them stomping the snow off their feet outside it plummets me into the depth of anxiety. I mute my TV and listen intently to see if the footsteps go up the stairs and find themselves above me. This is of course not normal behavior. But sooner or later she will return and my tolerant mood will depart.
In the past several weeks, more than the past several months, my body has expanded. I am pushing 200 pounds again and I feel it. But in the dead of winter, even a mild winter, I am often on the couch eating pasta and immobile. Though I can admit great anticipation to getting out and riding my bike again soon.
With the Super Bowl having been in New Orleans and Mardi Gras this coming Tuesday my heart aches more than ever to be in the Crescent City. I still dream of what a life would be like living down there. Believing it of course to be some epic release from the awful stresses of Chicago.
I feel my detest for this city is expanding exponentially as I continue to witness the "suburbanization" of the urban landscape I once adored so. The breeders infect like a cancer and supplant all that was great about city living with their sterile, Disney-fied, upscale idea of what they think it should be like.
Truly the greatest negative force in the history of civilization, straight people have wiped out cultures at varying levels of severity since the beginning of time to make things they way they think it should be. Not that I'm saying the destruction of my urban vision is anything compared to say the genocide of the Native American people... but I'm entitled to be annoyed.
I digress.
I wondered in the shower this morning if I was even alive. And if I were about to die if I'd be afraid or thankful. There is no life in my life. It has no flavor. I'm an inmate to it. And any other metaphor one would like to apply. Nothing I will do about it anytime soon.