The Daily {W}Rite January, 2o16 WK o1

Monday, January o4, 2o16
Energy sucked out of me. My being a faint dream moving through the gym, a deflated balloon, pushed about from free weight to Nautilus machine by an air-conditioned breeze. A burning sensation flaring up in my  right bicep.  I think about where I'm at right now, the

10GYM, fighting off the desire to daydream, to transport what's left of me to some cozy memory about being in her soft grasp. SHE. I brush the thought of her out the door and reclaim the pain that IS annoying but is much more real than her ghost could ever be.

I don't believe in ghosts
and hope that ghosts 
don't believe in me.

These days I get too aggravated with the aliens that have invaded my Earth. I need to be more considerate of their three-headed logic as foreign as their brand of group therapy they keep yelling at me. So what if they don't think the same jagged but linear way as I? I pretend to talk their language, knowing all the while that they refuse to believe that I am capable of ever learning their complicated, nonsensical blabbering, those high screeching sounds they make . . . I really don't understand a word of it.   But I do pretend to and nod my head and smile as if they had actually said something very witty, something very charming, something . . .  I've had much deeper and more meaningful conversations with my kitchen Ficus.

Wednesday, January o6, 2o16

This side of the museum is darker than the rest. No direct sunlight on it. "You can take pictures, but you can't use a flash." I did ask why even though I knew the answer. "The flash from your camera can damage the pages." That fear is the same reason why the exhibit is protected from direct sunlight. I like the young guard. He seems so very proud and dutiful protecting such a delicate piece of art although there's not many folks to guard. Me and David and a couple of other old fogies. And to be honest, it's really not that impressive to look at.
There are a couple of used bookstores in Norman where there use to be at least twenty back in the 70s and 80s. Anyone of them have books that look like this: old, brown edged pages, the paper just thin enough that you might be afraid to touch. But what it looks like is not as important as what it represents, or who it represents. Supposedly this is an original First Folio.

David wants to go. But there's one thing I need to do. I read out loud.

To be, or not to be, that is the Question:
Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to ſuffer
The Slings and Arrows of outragious Fortune,
Or to take Armes against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to dye, to ſleepe
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The Heart-ake, and the thouſand Naturall ſhockes
That Flesh is heyre too? "Tis a consummation
Deuoutly to be wiſh'd. To dye to sleepe,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; I, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we haue ſhufflel’d off this mortall coile,
Muſt giue us pause. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of long life:
For who would beare the Whips and Scornes of time,
The Oppreſſors wrong, the poore mans Contumely,
The pangs of diſpriz’d Loue, the Lawes delay,
The inſolence of Office, and the Spurnes
That patient merit of the vnworthy takes,
When he himſelfe might his Quietus make
With a bare Bodkin? Who would theſe Fardles beare
To grunt and ſweat vnder a weary life,
But that the dread of ſomething after death,
The vndiſcouered Countrey, from whoſe Borne
No Traueller returnes, Puzels the will,
And makes vs rather beare those illes we haue,
Then flye to others that we know not of.
Thus Conſcience does make Cowards of vs all,
And thus the Natiue hew of Resolution
Is ſicklied o’re, with the pale caſt of Thought,
And enterprizes of great pith and moment,
With this regard their Currants turne away,
And looſe the name of Action. Soft you now,
The faire Ophelia? Nimph, in thy Orizons
Be all my ſinnes remembred.

Thursday, January 07, 2o16

Been sleep waking the last few days. I have a feeling that the frackers have drilled into my energy deposits and just sucked the physical life out of me. But the good news, I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow to check on how I'm doing. Hope they can give me something to get out of these "trance" I'm in. I've been staying up way late every night getting to bed at eight in the morning then sleeping until two or three in the afternoon. It sucks.

I think I am a bit worried about it. It feels like I'm ending, my physical and dream-self are slowly melting away. My being, my existence turning to shadow. I'm drifting away from myself. Or it could be that the new medications I'm on for my lungs are just to potent. My feet and my hands are alternating from swelling to cramping.  Yeah, it's probably just the medication they got me own. Get it adjusted and life will go measurably on . . . I hope.

11P.M.
There are no rush of words streaming through my finger tips. Ideas, big or little, meaningful

or useless are blocked by a soupy mush, a knot of thought that I can't untangle. I wish by the golden glow of my Walmart table lamp, I pray to King Coffee Cup for just a pinch of original thought. Poetry. Overseer of the written word. Twenty lashes digging deep gashes on the poet's pink flesh if he doesn't produce something worth the reader's time.

Gentleness, a warm gentleness cuddles my beaten dreams. The tortures of the day, the ballpeen hammer looks from total strangers, milky smiles that curdle into cottage cheese as it mocks the humbleness of my sweat stained shirt that strains, groans a bit as it tries to cover the vast waste land my abs have become. 

There are more, of course, more subtle stabs and flicks that cut so thin you barely feel the pain of them.  But why bother sorting through them at 2:15 in the cold, dark morning? A dream is texting me . . . wonders what I'll be doing for the rest of the night.