The Daily {W}Rite March 2o16 WK o3

My battery running low. Just enough energy to open my eyes. Just enough desire to move out of bed and stagger to the kitchen. Coffee on. All I need to do is press the "brew" button. Done. Bouncing off the hallway walls to the bathroom . . . done. Life in mud. Thick cold mud. This body shivers a bit, its bones would cry if they had voice enough to do so. It's ending. You feel it ending. The climax of this play came and went a long time ago. Nothing left but resolution.  Just a tying up of the loose ends. No extra bow, no encore before the audience disappears and the stagehand drags out the ghost light and shuts the doors. Darker than night the closing of a show.

Random thoughts:

Machina
The Robots had taken over.
One by one the humans gave in. Those who did as they were told were sold into slavery. Yes, even the Robot Kings needed someone to change their oil pans once a month, dust off their internal workings (easy enough to do, human hands being quite tiny). Besides, humans were cute, particularly the smaller ones, the ones they called "babies." And if any of the walking "water bags" got of line, easy enough to dispose of them. The robot authority had no qualms about offing any Flesher who defied the will of their metal superiors.

Death Light Saving Time

Hmm. The news just reported that when Daylight Saving Time kicks in on Sunday "old" people's chances of having a heart attack increases by 23%! Damn you, DST! Damn you to HELL!

Dog Freedom
We make mistakes. Hopefully we learn from them. Sometimes we keep repeating ourselves, the same response to an action. Others find fault in our limited ability to ever "get it right, damn you," but have even less respect for us when we do change. Ignore them. That flip-flop congregation: "Thou shalt not change. And even if you do, we will treat you like dog." I'm tired of being the dog. Scratching at a gang of flees who I can never, ever please. I break the leash you strapped on me. I run free, free through this wilted word. You will never catch me again.

Sleep Herder
A sheep herder's sun, its hooves pounding out dusty clouds of desert sand as it rounds up the strays that gather haphazardly along the dreaming river, red with sleep. My mind won't comply tonight (or is it already morning? What does that matter.) running free upon the muddy banks running wild through the brush, the grass where the sparrows roam and the crows stampede whenever they are startled. You cannot tame my mind, break my mind.

Restless

Oh, I hate the rowdy memories that always start rattling around inside my head right before I've decided to go to bed. Too much life cluttering my thoughts. It's a wonder that I can recall anything at all that didn't happen in the distant past. My bicycle pump, my wallet and sunglasses! I lose them all the time in the apartment because my elderly mind is too busy remembering that lovely day in 1984 when we got caught-up in a hellish Oklahoma spring rain two miles away from home. We didn't run, we didn't bother to cover our heads with our hands, we just strolled along laughing and dancing just like Gene Kelly in that movie you always loved. Funny. I can see all that with great detail as if it happened yesterday. . . and still I can't remember where I put my damn house key!

Wednesday, March 16, 2o16

Trapped in the house, in the apartment for three days. Afraid to look out the window, afraid that if I pull the blinds up, the world will have disappeared, vanished as so many friends have in the past when I didn't pay proper attention to them. Hell, Rapture could have happened and I'd never have known it. Afraid to raise the blinds and stare oblivion in its black, cold face. I don't know why. I lived in a void of my own making for the last three days! Why is this nonexistence that I created for myself less disturbing than the one I imagined just outside my door. My door. Too many doors in my life. Too many keys to carry, too many steps down the stairs to the white, freshly painted portal that leads out into . . . what? Time has caught up with me. Time forces me to think in ways that defy the natural order of things, of life. Time is a demon that sits on your shoulder from the day you are born. Time is a circling vulture waiting for its moment to strike.

Thursday, March 17, 2o16 4:00 a.m.

I've accepted this late hour in same way that I have accepted that of the matter. Yes, matter doesn't matter anymore or less than it did before I decided to not sleep. As young man I feared sleeping. Not so much did I fear the idea of going to sleep and never waking up. My youth could not conceive such a thing. Death, dying was something old people did when they grew to tired to wake anymore. No, that wasn't my reason for hating sleep. I was just afraid that I might miss something. A party. A chance to see, to experience something . . . grand and glorious. Life was such a wonder when I was a younger man. I know what your thinking. Be positive. Life is what you make it. There still wonders to be experienced. I'm sure you're right, you are always right. Maybe that's why I can't sleep. Sometimes I feel that punk kid inside me desiring to recreate itself, take charge burn the fucking candle . . . no the cigarette at both ends! Hell of a way to try and smoke. Smoking! I miss smoking. Yes, I've gotten use to the nicotine gum, I grown accustom to the lack of stink my fingers produced when I changed smoked my way through time. BUT I still miss it. I miss holding a cigarette between my fingers, letting the grand ghostlike smoke drift up into my nose . . . inhaling, exhaling . . . yes, I miss it. The whole ritual. The friendliness of tar and nicotine.

And I do miss love. Or at least, what I thought was love. Yes, a very bad bringing up from parents who never cared much for each other. That's probably not fair. They loved each other . . . once. Drinkers they were. Met in a bar somewhere in Long Beach, CA during WWII or just after it. There was a portrait of my mom and dad taken when they were very young. Mom's red hair was blinding, dad in his sailor suit. The portrait had been touched up a bit, the colors added after the picture was taken in some studio, close to my father's base. But they were beautiful. Children of the '40s. the "Greatest Generation." I shouldn't be too hard on them. They lived their lives the best they could. Besides, that my life sucks or doesn't suck is due only to my actions my way of thinking. It has nothing to do with my parents.

Friday, March 18, 2o16

There's a beautiful eeriness that Bowie's last album, Dark Star, hits me with. A Fist of Sound made even more powerful with the knowledge that it was Bowie's last album and that it was released on the day of his death. Bowie, quite the showman to the end.

I've come to a cosmic conclusion about my existence. You've heard it before from someone, somewhere: "I am what I eat." I know, don't get all over me about it, it is a cliché. But saying it and realizing that, for me, it's totally true, well, that's two different things, isn't. Just recently I found out that I feel better, have more energy, am clearer in my though process IF I eat "light." No burgers and fries, no fried chicken, no ice cream, no heavy, heavy food intake. A salad (light on dressing) makes me feel better. Apples, pears and other fruits are just good for me, AND veggies, lots of veggies. A little yogurt is okay, but like potato chips . . . I have a hard time just eating a little.  Popcorn is actually okay as long as I don't use butter OR oil with it. A little salt is also okay. So, the thing is can I make this adjustment to "healthier" living through "healthier" eating? We'll see.

Saturday, March 19, 2o16

A cool breeze almost knocks my Porkpie hat off my head. I shouldn't wear it. It's a little small for my head these days. My Bowler has suffered the same fate. Sad, they are really good hats, I paid a lot of money for them. I'm hoping that my wearing them will stretch them out a bit. I'm pretty sure that they have tightened up a bit since I bought them, and It's not that my HEAD got bigger. I need to find a hat stretcher. But if it is my head that got bigger, maybe a headshrinker. {laugh}

Anyway, a good day. Finally got David out of his cave and we drove around a bit. Every time the girls at Old School Bagel see David come through the door they head off to get his "special order coffee." They don't ask him. I feel jealous. They always wait for me to tell them what I want even though I always have the same thing, toasted bagel, pimento cream cheese, toasted and a large cup of coffee.

Like I said, a cool breeze today. I wore a long sleeve shirt and a hoodie. The sun not too bright. We ramble along Main St. stopping at Sprouts to get David some muffins. After that we head to the Speeding Bullet Comic Bookstore. There's a local artist there hawking his computer created comics, $5.00 a pop. I buy four. "Do you want the author to autograph them?"
the teenage cashier asks. I look back at the author and he smiles a giant comic book smile and, yeah, I want him to sign them.

Monday, March 21, 2o16
Last day of the third week in March, and I haven't written much that's worth much of anything. Sadly, the imagination is taking a ghostly holiday. The Muse too has gone abroad to find another writer to bless. Damn them! To hell with them! I still have fingers, I still have consciousness, I can write without the gaudiness of an imagination, or the sexual foreplay of an artistic Muse. I can write, damn it!

Had the weirdest dream last night! Yes, I had a dream! Well, one that I remember, at least. I was at this mansion somewhere talking to a kid (18-20) that (I'm guessing) lived there. And I'm trying to talk him down . . . about what? I don't know . . . well okay, me in the dream knows but "I" the dreamer hasn't a clue. Anyway I'm saying something like, "Look, if you're having problems, you can always talk to me . . ." He slams the door in my face, I start to walk away and then the door opens and the kid I was talking to has a handgun and he starts shooting me and I'm yelling, "DON'T!" and waving my arms in front of me trying to swat the bullets away before they hit me and at the same time I'm kicking at the gunman and . . .!  I wake up, my arms and legs flailing about! I think I actually said, "DON'T!" out loud.  Scary? For a moment, maybe. But I started to laugh uncontrollably! I haven't had as vivid a dream as that in a very long time.

So, his the end of my blog for this week. I'll try to be better at this next week. You know how it is. You write and write and write some more, and like that monkey at a typewriter, sooner or later you'll write "Hamlet." [smiles}