bang bang

I woke up so disoriented this morning. The past few weeks have been one thing after another to make me feel a bit surreal. It's the cumulative effect of the holiday season that crept up on me, ninja-like, and the news that I have been receiving as of late, and too many painkillers for an earache that won't go away (which affects my balance in no small way), and waking up from dreams of shooting people to find a gun in my room that I certainly did not remember putting there (results of an overnight guests mixup on where to put it down for the night) I didn't even know he was packing. He had crawled into my bed thinking he was in Deb's room, but I had steered him in the right direction later. Apparently the gun had been forgotten and I didn't bother turning on the lights before turning in. I had these crazy dreams about being a contract killer and I was shooting people for money. At the end of the dream just before I woke up I was thinking "I know where the gun is". I wake up, in pain from this cursed earache and go walking to my apothecary cabinet in the corner to get some painkillers and there is a rather Large 45 sitting on top of it. I immediately got a little nervous, as I have done a fair amount of sleepwalking in my time. It took me a minute to figure out what exactly had transpired the night before.

i feel like i've been sleeping, can you wake me?

I feel so out of touch with people lately. I needed to take a break from everyone, and so I did and now I feel like I am in a little cocoon. It's probably the best place for me right now, and I feel like I am healing up nicely. I have been sleeping well and remembering my dreams, though to tell the truth, the dreams have been a bit disturbing. Some of them were amazing though. It's little wonder I was going insane when I wasn't dreaming. I cannot say how damaged I was earlier this summer. All I can say for sure is that I changed... I changed into whatever I was when I crawled into this cocoon. I feel like i have changed even since then. Maybe that is what is coming this fall??? turning into something strong enough to bust back out of the cocoon?? emerging and unfurling my wings?? It's been such a very long time since I had a time to shine. It's a singular time. It's why I had to divest myself of any kind of codependence and get to where I am now. It almost feels as though the planetary aspects are supporting this endeavor. For once I kind of feel like my ruling planet has my back by being in it's retrograde phase. I feel like I am tying up loose ends in order to move forward. I keep having the feeling like this fall is going to be amazing.

I feel like I don't want to do a damn thing tonight. It's that feeling like you just want to sit in a dark room staring at the light from the streetlights thru the blinds. It makes me feel like drinking alone.
" I am not sick, I am not well" My first impulse is to go fling myself at one of the neighborhood bars, see who is out and about and get into something that will distract me for a time. I wish that I knew what it was that flung me into this feeling. I was supposed to go and blow up leftover fireworks with my best friend, but I feel a bit too weird for human consumption this evening. I don't even feel like going to the dive bar over on Broad that I go to when I want to go out alone.

step into the light and see the trouble i'm in....

The past month has been chaos. It mostly comes down to a mass of cords that I have to sort out to decide which ones need to be cut. There was this sudden realization that I have been taking on too much damage and that for the sake of self preservation, some people have to be taken out of the picture, one of them is one of my sisters, but she has been unrecognizable to me for some time now and I just had to throw the towel in after a while. I am finding that the reconnections and new connections that I have made are a lot more satisfying than I had previously understood. Ultimately I am learning some things about myself... some good, some not-so-pretty, but I am learning. I am redefining my borders.

One of the hard things today is that I recently re-connected with Liz. We lived together when I was 19 or 20. She and I hung out the other night because she wanted to apologize for the way that tings played out when we parted ways back in the day. She told me that she was seven days clean off of speed, morphine, and bathsalts(???) and she was just amazed by my life. My life is pretty no frills. I work my ass off, I stay off heroin (and have for 13 years), I try to do good by people as often as I can and I try to enjoy my freedom. She is still living off of other people and generally making a mess of her life. The other night she ask for help, I said that I could spot her a little money, and give her a ride somewhere, because I know better than to trust her in my house. She was in really bad shape, so I gave her a few dollars instead of the fifty I was planning on, because I didn't want to give her enough to get high on, though it was obvious that she was high as hell and paranoid when she sat in my car. She told me that she was out on the street again and that there were people following her,and that some man had taken out a life insurance policy on her. She looked at what I gave her and said that she didn't need the ride afterall, because she could "do better than that" in midtown. Then she admitted to me that she was going to prostitute herself. Then she went home with some crackhead (no, really he came up to the car and ask if we wanted to go smoke)
and I realized that there is no saving some people. I really wanted her to be okay, but she isn't, and I don't think that she ever will be. It really reminds me of Shannon, it's almost like you are just waiting for them to die, so you try to detach yourself from them. I wish it were different.

I am still sure that I made the right decision about Lloyd. I have had a lot of people ask me what the fuck is up for her and I just tell them that she went bug-nuts crazy and that I can no longer take the damage that she is dishing out. The other night I finally had to admit to B that I am fragile right now. I don't like admitting it, and I don't like the fact that I let myself get this way. I guess that in the state I am in, I can only do so much and whatever I did for her wasn't making things any better.I just refuse to let anyone drag me down because they are drowning.

In happier news I was in touch with my two favorite black eyed boys from tipton co. I was texting pretty much my entire shift with one of my old friends,Todd. He is doing a custom painting for me. I know he needs the $ to make the trip to Memphis next month and I am anxious to see him. Apparently I got all psychic on him and ask for the painting that he was about to do anyway. He does these beautiful seascapes. I wanted this one that he had done of some jellyfish, but it was already spoken for, so he says he could do one custom, and I ask him to do something with a seahorse, because seahorses are very special to me. They remind me of Gabriel and he has been on my mind lately. Todd tells me that he was actually already starting a painting that incorporated a seahorse, and that they were important to him as well, because the males of the species are the caretakers of the babies. Said it was his totem. It made me think about that fact that Gabe's actually name was Todd, and that he once told me that he felt gyped that he was physiologically unable to carry a child in his body. He wanted to be a mother, and that was why he had this seahorse tattooed on him that took up his whole upper arm. It was just kinda weird. I miss them both, but I can still see Todd, I am ready to donate to the fund to get him here, and I would love to have art from his hand to keep me company. He is crazy-special to me and has been since I met him back in 1998.

The other black eyed boy that I heard from was C. He called me after midnight EST because it was officially his birthday. I felt like a rude asshole, because Pixi was hanging out with me, dubbing a cassette, but I couldn't tell him i would call him back. He and I hadn't heard each others voices in 9 months. We have been communicating via email and instant messaging since last September. I hadn't realized how much I missed his buzzy, growly voice. I knew that I had missed it, but not the intensity. He wanted me to meet his friend Jenna really badly, so she and I talked for a minute. She seems pretty interesting and I do hope to one day meet her. He's apparently talked her ear off about me. They are living outside the city next to a military detonation range. He says that the trains sound completely different there. Says they are moving to Tampa in the next month or so. I told him that they have to stop off in Memphis to see me. We ended up talking for about an hour, he told me that for his birthday he was going to go and see the ocean for the first time. It was wonderful to actually get to talk to him, even though by that point, I was so completely delirious that I was almost dozing off smoking a cigarette on the back stairs (no one lets me sleep anymore) I told him I was really glad that he made it to 22. Neither of us expected it.

damage waiting to happen

Here's to all the shit that vexes me. I salute you. I have learned that you have to respect anything that can baffle you. I have been feeling that way quite a bit as of late. It's what led me to the realization that I don't have to know everything. I can be in the dark about some things...and that it is sometimes a good thing that I DON'T understand them. I am better off this way.

I am having to make peace with the idea of telling one of my very best friends that I don't like the person that she's become and that I am gonna have to just give up and tell her to seek professional help. It's been a long time coming. She is one of those people who just kinda melts into whoever she is dating and she's hooked up with some "real winners" in the time that we have been friends (about fifteen years) and she's slowly but surely picked up more than her fair share of personality flaws, and at this point I cannot help her, so I have to abandon ship. I can't take on the damage, and she seems to be wallowing in the stuff. I have always believed that if I couldn't help or teach someone something, then they have no need of me in their lives. I am free to go. It also has to do with the fact that I don't take verbal abuse lightly.I have been giving real credence to the idea of demon possession here. I think about everything that I say, so I think that people should think about the way that they speak to me. It's common courtesy.

Two of our sisters seem to think that we needs to have some kind of group intervention, but I just feel that could get awful messy. I am in favor of a mildly scathing email. I should probably say something face to face with her, but she has taken to busting the joint up when she get's in the mood.

I am also making peace with a premonition that I had that proved to be right. I didn't want it to be, and I held out hope that maybe I was wrong.....but alas. Fuckinfuck. I am left with this feeling that I might have seen someone face to face for the last time. And even if we come to see each other again one day, it won't be the same person that I saw off that night.

It's weird when you know for sure that you were there for someone's peak, it's beautiful and rare, but it's bittersweet, because from there the trajectory is easy to see. I have seen enough of them to know it when I see it.

It's the people who haven't peaked yet that keep me guessing. Erin seems to think that is the reason we seem to be trading up for a younger set of friends. I love seeing people with the light in their eyes. I still have it and I see it in a few others who are my own age (or older) We have a fucking blast.

i'll be so nonchalant,you can call me cold if you want

I have been having a kinda surreal day. I went over to see my ex-wife to say goodbye. She is moving with her new husband (my ex-lover) to North Carolina. They have been living in a house that I lived in back in 1994. I had a hard time going there when she moved in because the memories there are hard ones. I was a very hard person back then, and the act of saying goodbye to that house made me realize how far I have come and how much I have grown since then.

When I lived there the first time, I had moved in with Shannon. The place was owned by an ancient woman that lived in the other half of the duplex. She had a catatonic daughter living there with her. It creeped us out to no end to know she was over there caught prisoner in her own body. It was actually the third place that we had lived together. It was at a time when I had just dropped out of art school and I was painting murals and doing dominatrix work to get by. I was possibly at my worst in many ways. I was dealing with a genuine trainwreck of a roommate situation, and there were too many volatile characters about. You could have ask me then why in the hell I had moved into that situation, and I couldn't have told you... still can't. I was on a lot of drugs and I was so jaded that I had no problem putting out cigarettes on another human being for money, albeit a large sum of money. Once while we were painting the kitchen I actually nodded out for a few hours on top of the refrigerator.

I had a soft spot for crazy people at the time. I was playing with fire because I was fooling around with this boy named Brannon, who was a real live crazy indian. His were the first black eyes that I'd ever seen and I fell into them every time we had a moment alone. Not to be crude but he got me off in some of the strangest ways. We had the kind of chemistry that everyone in a room could feel. He had grown up with Shannon and she felt that she has come lease on his soul, and it made for some really odd and intense stolen moments. I knew all along that I was just playing, but she couldn't get past it.

Eventually I had to quit the whole life and that place. I had this idea that I would lose respect for humanity on the whole and possibly die if I had stayed. I decided that being homeless was better and kicked heroin ( for a time anyway) while couch surfing. It something that I suggest you never try. I still stand by my decision to become homeless rather than fall down a well of complete chaos with those people. Half of them are dead now. There are very very few people that I still see that ever knew about that place in my life.

Imagine my surprise and grim curiosity when my ex-wife tells me that she is living there. I had the hardest time when I went into the bathroom and I am peeing and looking at the bathtub that I used to shoot up in, because it was easier to hit my veins in hot water. It fucked with me even though I have been off it for thirteen years. It looked quite different that when I had lived there. Shannon and I had ripped off a few layers of wallpaper in strategic places at different depths (that woman must have repapered that house a half a dozen times) and we then painted a thin layer of paint over it so that you could still see the differing patterns behind it. We had painted the entire kitchen Baker's Pink. I hated leaving that paint job behind. Also missing was the rotary wall mounted phone that had hung over the toilet.

So today, with all of their things emptied out of it. I walked into each room and said goodbye to everything that happened inside of those walls. Some of it hilarious and sweet, some of it absolutely terrifying, most of it in the arms of my opiate lover. I'd had some of the biggest revelations of my life, and many of the weirdest sexual encounters that I'd had at that point in my life (few have come close since) and learned so much about my self in that house. I said goodbye to the giant trees in the backyard and I said goodbye to my ex-wife and my ex-lover. I got in my newly acquisitioned car and I drove away. I feel like I have finally gone around that corner that I have been contemplating for a while now.

whatever you find to be beautiful and trembling with life

Woke from a strange dream to the cold.

There is something to be said for that blaze of extreme youth.It is so tempting,so easy to yield to. I am always held in thrall by the way that their blood always seems to run so much closer to the skin,so much closer to the air outside,held in only by the thin margin of the body.Likewise the way that their emotions run so close to the surface.You can see it in the flush of their bodies,through the cheeks,over the bridge of the nose.I find it in myself, the compulsion to sidle up to the warmth of it, to hear the sigh or hiss at the touch of my cold hands, to feel the heat of all that life unlived soak through me until I am finally warm enough to fall into the arms of sleep.

I need another bedwarmer.

because you're a fire escape

Lately has been weird as fuck.It's the only way to explain.I have been told that when one resorts to using expletives,it is because one has a small vocabulary.I have plenty of words,that is the only one that works.Flaubert would agree with my choice of words if he had an insider's view of my head lately.The Holidays and getting sick did a number on me and I am just now getting off antibiotics.I dream of feeling human again.But I will say that prolonged fevers will bring on some strange revelations.I am keeping most of them to myself,but the ones that I am implementing into life are starting to be noticed (with dismay in some cases)
I think I have decided that there is a whole lot of shit that I no longer give a flying fuck about and I am no longer letting them take up my time.It is an amazingly liberating experience, especially when the realization hits you as a fever breaks.I swear to gods,it was like hitting the reset button, but whole-ly created by a passing illness. Almost holy how this intense clarity grows in you about what is truly important.