(no subject)
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"To be able to lead others, a man must be willing to go forward alone."
- Harry Truman
Willing as I may be, I can go no further on this fine Ohio morning.
Confronted with repetitive news reporters and a nearly total lack of drama, the most exciting activity in which I've engaged recently was trivial conversation with college girls. Sixty days and nights have passed since my last cigarette, two long months since my last drink, and I've nearly forgotten the nasal burning after a line of the Cocaine, let alone the smell of burning crack. My life is lived in one-hour increments, running back and forth, a daily 18-hour litany of work, meetings, piss tests, driving, and updating this website. And as much as I hate to admit it, the time is starting to pass quickly.
I fear I may be assimilated into the Burb.
On days like this one, I awaken and lie in bed, wanting the unconsciousness of sleep and knowing I may never enjoy that again. The drunken slumber as my liver tries to sponge away excessive amounts of Jim Beam. The listless sprawling of limbs across a bed shared with a woman to whom I ought to be apologizing. No, now the noise is back, that white static in my head reminding me of all the responsibilities I have, the fact I'm constantly running behind, and the realization that this may very well be as good as it gets.
But I'm not going back there.
A year ago, I was a fool, an aspiring writer grasping at some ghost opportunity with a magazine, travelling too much and losing my grip on this reality. In six short months, I was absent from this fine place as well as my own home, my finances were devestated, my daughter wanted nothing to do with me, and I had nurtured a fledgling crack habit into a full-grown carnivorous dinosaur. Twenty pounds had been shed off with the Jenny Crank diet, and my piss was the saffron yellow of a dialysis patient going into renal failure. Though there was plenty to write about back in those days, I was not writing about any of it.
Through there may be nothing to write about on this day, I am writing about it.
I see the luckier ones, or unfortunate ones, depending upon your perspective. Young people throwing back the shots and smoking the Ganj, falling down to rise again. We play with loaded guns, the traffic and the drink, the unsheathed cock and the credit card. We do not look both ways before we cross the street. We do not look behind us before we change lanes. This is the circus in which nobody notices the elephants. Instead we watch the clowns, point and laugh, paying no attention to the trapeze artist who dangles over a frayed net.
The clown is in the mirror. The trapeze is this life.
Less than 3% make it back from the edge of broken glass and rock coke, the badlands where Indian squaws fill tequila bottles with piss and peyote, the war jungle from which even veterans tell no tales.
I will tell mine.
To think you cannot change the world is the thought of a broken man, who believes he lives in a broken world. As children, we fancy ourselves as shooting stars that light up the sky, when in fact we're meteors destined to impact the earth below. Our days are wasted, presuming we have more later in which to address these matters, and with time you resign. Resigned to the genocide and flawed political machine, the way money moves, the fact you may not have an orgasm every time. You become accustomed to that which you hate. The weather. The husband. The position. Nothing is new, the color fades, and you find yourself standing in a black-and-white landscape, staring at your empty hands.
This demise need not be yours. That is not what your hands are for.
The way of the distraction is the simple one, friends, a path strewn with television and liquor, debt and shitrag magazines. Internet porn feeds. Doomed relationships. Your entire life is a conditioned response, and until you bite the hand that feeds you, you'll never amount to more than another one of Pavlov's dogs, eating and humping and breeding and dying when you're told. I say chew through the chain and run rampant, eat everything, and shit on the White House lawn. Because to say you're autonomous while you're living that hollow life, is to lie in a coffin of sitcoms and late nights, and tell me you're still alive.
My time is up, that world beckons me, and I must don my suit of wool to fool the sheep. But when this day is done, I will not drop my guise and run with the wolves.
I will hunt them down and consume them, one complacent predator at a time.
On point,
Thomas
"To be able to lead others, a man must be willing to go forward alone."
- Harry Truman
Willing as I may be, I can go no further on this fine Ohio morning.
Confronted with repetitive news reporters and a nearly total lack of drama, the most exciting activity in which I've engaged recently was trivial conversation with college girls. Sixty days and nights have passed since my last cigarette, two long months since my last drink, and I've nearly forgotten the nasal burning after a line of the Cocaine, let alone the smell of burning crack. My life is lived in one-hour increments, running back and forth, a daily 18-hour litany of work, meetings, piss tests, driving, and updating this website. And as much as I hate to admit it, the time is starting to pass quickly.
I fear I may be assimilated into the Burb.
On days like this one, I awaken and lie in bed, wanting the unconsciousness of sleep and knowing I may never enjoy that again. The drunken slumber as my liver tries to sponge away excessive amounts of Jim Beam. The listless sprawling of limbs across a bed shared with a woman to whom I ought to be apologizing. No, now the noise is back, that white static in my head reminding me of all the responsibilities I have, the fact I'm constantly running behind, and the realization that this may very well be as good as it gets.
But I'm not going back there.
A year ago, I was a fool, an aspiring writer grasping at some ghost opportunity with a magazine, travelling too much and losing my grip on this reality. In six short months, I was absent from this fine place as well as my own home, my finances were devestated, my daughter wanted nothing to do with me, and I had nurtured a fledgling crack habit into a full-grown carnivorous dinosaur. Twenty pounds had been shed off with the Jenny Crank diet, and my piss was the saffron yellow of a dialysis patient going into renal failure. Though there was plenty to write about back in those days, I was not writing about any of it.
Through there may be nothing to write about on this day, I am writing about it.
I see the luckier ones, or unfortunate ones, depending upon your perspective. Young people throwing back the shots and smoking the Ganj, falling down to rise again. We play with loaded guns, the traffic and the drink, the unsheathed cock and the credit card. We do not look both ways before we cross the street. We do not look behind us before we change lanes. This is the circus in which nobody notices the elephants. Instead we watch the clowns, point and laugh, paying no attention to the trapeze artist who dangles over a frayed net.
The clown is in the mirror. The trapeze is this life.
Less than 3% make it back from the edge of broken glass and rock coke, the badlands where Indian squaws fill tequila bottles with piss and peyote, the war jungle from which even veterans tell no tales.
I will tell mine.
To think you cannot change the world is the thought of a broken man, who believes he lives in a broken world. As children, we fancy ourselves as shooting stars that light up the sky, when in fact we're meteors destined to impact the earth below. Our days are wasted, presuming we have more later in which to address these matters, and with time you resign. Resigned to the genocide and flawed political machine, the way money moves, the fact you may not have an orgasm every time. You become accustomed to that which you hate. The weather. The husband. The position. Nothing is new, the color fades, and you find yourself standing in a black-and-white landscape, staring at your empty hands.
This demise need not be yours. That is not what your hands are for.
The way of the distraction is the simple one, friends, a path strewn with television and liquor, debt and shitrag magazines. Internet porn feeds. Doomed relationships. Your entire life is a conditioned response, and until you bite the hand that feeds you, you'll never amount to more than another one of Pavlov's dogs, eating and humping and breeding and dying when you're told. I say chew through the chain and run rampant, eat everything, and shit on the White House lawn. Because to say you're autonomous while you're living that hollow life, is to lie in a coffin of sitcoms and late nights, and tell me you're still alive.
My time is up, that world beckons me, and I must don my suit of wool to fool the sheep. But when this day is done, I will not drop my guise and run with the wolves.
I will hunt them down and consume them, one complacent predator at a time.
On point,
Thomas