The Daily {W}rite December 2o16 wk o2

I've been thinking . . . that's not true. I rarely think at all. Again, not true. I'm constantly thinking, my spiritual being (if there is such a thing)  focused inside my head where all the miseries live. A regular Treasure Island, a godless cove where  for all the years that I can remember my memories, from the day I was born, have shipwrecked, crashed against the rocky reef that reality has built up between the open seas of life and the sandy shores where truth speaks in tongues so wicked that language refuses to supply it words to express its blasphemies. Condemned, a castaway, a pale ghost forever haunting itself, haunting itself into nonexistence. That is what thinking gets you. A nonexistent existence . . . if there is such a thing. I'm no more human than I am dead. Whispers echo through the coffin I built for myself.

Wednesday, 14, 2o16

Anyway. The gossip that Russia may have "fixed" the election in favor of Trump was too much "not enough information for me" to handle without at least listening to one news program, and so I chose to watch Rachel Maddow because I trust her more than any of the other news pundits, And I  started to get all freaking out over Trump and his merry band of Nazi wannabes, and ALL the Liberals caving in and saying, "Ya know? A Trump presidency may not be all that bad . . . " WHAT? Yes, freaked out that President Trump will get us nuked and sent into concentration camps and . . . Okay. I finally stopped myself. I again stopped watching the news and decided to just create art. And get back to writing this blog!

And yes! I'm feeling physically and mentally well today. And yes! This feeling of well being may not last for very long. And yes, yes, yes! I plan to take advantage of it and write away on my blog for as long as my "Body and Minds" allow me to feast at this creative smorgasbord. A few interesting observations I have made in the last week AND even more interesting observations I'm making as I write this blog entre:

1. The Army football team has a wide receiver Named Edgar Allan Poe.
2. David hates it when you say, "I'm sorry, I can't hear you." He yells at me whatever it was he said that I didn't hear.
3. Some of my "friends" on Facebook are clinically insane. I'd unfriend them, but I'm afraid some of them might seek psychotic retribution against me, they all know where I live. 😰

4. The Christmas decorations around town are psychedelic-trippy this year. Or was that fuzz on the banana I just ate actually mold?
5. The hawk that drifted above us as we drove to Kohl's looked more like a kite than a hawk.
6. I'm listening to Howlin' Wolf and wish I had seen him play. But when he was alive, I didn't even know he existed. All, I had as a kid to listen to was Elvis and Pat Boone. My parents abused me . . . musically.

7. Without my goatee I look like a 68 year old  Charlie Brown.
8. I talk to much when I'm in a public place. Especially when I wind-up talking to some girl. If she gives me an in, I just start talking loud and as shrill as an overweight Chihuahua. Please, some one put me down. And she does with a sharp, "Well, good bye now." Believe me, it's the most humane treatment I've gotten from a women in a long, long time.
9.  Alan Thicke died yesterday. He was 69 years old. Six months older than me. Sigh.

10. I'm jealous. An ex-student of mine is up for an two Academy Awards, one for Best Actor and one for best Actress this year. A bunch of my actor friends are acting in  plays here in Norman-town and OKC and I do nothing but sit at this computer and  write this stupid-ass blog. And now I'm feeling like a shit because I'm envious of the success of others. Sigh. No, I'm actually NOT jealous of other's success. I guess it's more like I never accomplished anything artistically . . . Okay, that's not right either. I have created a few things that I'm very proud of, but proud in the sense that a couple times I'd really created art that seemed to work for the audience. What I'm feeling right now is a sadness that I can't seem to do that anymore, create art that people can really get into.

Thursday, December 15, 2o16

A strange thinking pattern developed in my mind the other day. Driving along with David, I started thinking about one of the storylines for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo novels. All of a sudden I realize, it's not a storyline from the series. And then I think, well, it must be the storyline from one of the books.
Maybe it's from The Girl that Kicked the Hornets' Nest . . . but no, that's not right. This was something else. I couldn't figure it out. I knew there were three books in the series and none of them had this storyline! And then I thought, "maybe I made it up?' Bullshit, no way. And around and around my thinking went, looking to fill the blank spot in my memory. It was on my mind all yesterday and today. I mean I knew I had read this story but I couldn't remember reading it. Finally, after thinking it over awhile (a very LONG while), I realized that there had been a fourth book in the series! DAMN. My brain really threw me a curve. And JUST as I realized I had read The Girl In the Spider's Web written by David Lagercrantz (not the original author), a commercial for Alzheimer's Disease came on the TV and . . . that freaked me out a bit. It's been happening a lot lately, little glitches in memory, holes, gaps, blind spots. It's scary to think you might be losing your ability to remember.

Friday, December 16, 2o16, 5:20 a.m.
Another restless night for my body. I try sleeping but too many aches and pains forces me to get up off the couch and write until my body finally passes out. Here's something I started tonight:

God, Apes and Ripe Bananas
Something or some things are pulling at me tonight. Not sure what or who it is, is it real or imaginary? The fingers of God, perhaps, pulling at my existence, that other invisible thing that I call me. I know some don't believe that God exists. Nor do they acknowledge the soul. But that's okay with me I'm not offended like some folk are offended when our fellow apes dismiss the spiritual life for the solid, predictable reality of a ripe banana, but back to my point. Something or some things are tearing the metaphysical energy out of my body. I fight against it, this numbness growing inside my head.

They are clever thieves, though. They keep leaving bits of a blacker than black void in those hidden places in my brain where I, the I of I, resides. But they (or it) can't fool me because I remember that I once remembered things, experiences and emotions, that in this now, this present state of drifting time, I can't remember one moment of humanness. Yes, and though I believe I have loved another I don’t remember another ever loving me. Anger, however, remains constant reminder that once I smiled at another being, another creature of the flesh not unlike myself. But what it was that made me smile, I can’t recall.

Sunday, December 18, 2o16

I thought I'd take the day and just write. Not much else to do, nowhere to go, all my friends are either sick or working or . . . it doesn't matter. I'm on my own today and it's just too damn cold to go outside, ride the bike around. I mean, if there had been a heavy enough snow storm, if the weather had blessed (or cursed) us with a thick ice storm, then yeah, I might have decided to sling on the winter coat, grab the camera and shoot away! But it's just cold out there. Nothing to write home about. "Nothing to write home about." I've used that phrase a lot through out my life . . . don't know where I picked it up.

I did write a decent poem last night . . . or was it this morning? Yeah, I'm still staying up until 6 in the morning or more. Probably too much coffee late at night is keeping me awake. But I don't plan to stop doing that. Fuck it. I mean, I've given up every vice that I so much enjoyed when I was young . . . er. I don't smoke or drink anymore and I sure loved to do both. Okay, I admit, I chew nicotine gum and that still isn't good for me but it's not as bad as smoking. Besides that, coffee is my only other vice and I sure as hell ain't gonna give that up, so . . . GET OFF MY BACK! {smiles}

Simplicity

Easy enough to close my eyes
dreaming in circles until the dawn
comes along and shakes me
from my feathered grave.

Easy enough to close my ears
and listen to each soft beat
that makes up my heart
that chases me through the dark.

My fingers find it easy, far too easy
to wrap themselves into boney knots
and pound the darkness into light,
the cat cries beat to silence.

Yes, it's simple, simple as snow
curled up on the window ledge,
as easy as sleeping through
a whole day of consciousness.

Mostly life is made up as we go along
mostly made up of breaths and sighs
and wonders of why and why not and
where will we go when it all goes away?

Woodie 12-18-16

My mind feels somewhat . . . frail. Thoughts drifting away on some cosmic wave. Time is slowing down, winding down, the end of a party where the guests linger longer than they should saying goodbye and kisses goodnight and plans for lunch tomorrow with so and so who I have totally ignored the whole night. They're stalling. They don't want to go out into the dark, find the car and drive home. Why not? Because it's dark?

There's no reasoning connected with fear. Fear, a lack of knowledge, that's all. But even education can't supplant millions of years of instinctive training. Man invented fire because he feared the dark. Maybe that's it, maybe that's why I  don't like to sleep because my dreams are just too damn dark a place for me to go. Eyes closed, lying on the back. Maybe that's what troubles me. Sleeping is just too close to death, the dark is death, the murder of light, of consciousness, of existence. And when I close my eyes it gets even darker. No stars, no moon, no reflection from the streetlamp on the corner. Not a splinter of light to be found, just shadows inside of shadows inside of shadows for all eternity. But if I'm honest, the death I describe isn't much different than the life I live. Maybe that's what I, what mankind truly fears, not death but life.

Wednesday, December 21, 2o16
I don't know. I could talk about my "anger issues" in detail. Lay it all out for you. Maybe I will some day but it's still a part of me, you know? I keep trying to fight it, keep it in check. But sometimes it just takes control of me when I'm feeling threatened in some way. Once it's going, it stays with me for days, sometimes weeks . . . months sometimes but not often anymore, not months. You see, I know it's all bullshit. Yeah, it's bull but this anger has been with me for such a long time. And when someone catches me off guard, attacks me in some threatening way, it gets loose. It happened a few times this past week and I'm still dealing with it. Once it's out, it's out and running through my memory bank like wildfire, stirring up every moment in my life when someone, somewhere did me wrong. It takes a lot of energy out of me. And when it's drained me of all my energy and self-esteem, it walks back into its cage of its own freewill. This thing, this monster, my own private werewolf. {smiles}

Birthday Party Massacre

I only came for the cake but you can't just go
to a birthday party, eat the birthday cake and leave.
So, I chatted a bit, laughed a bit and was enjoying
the company of the "other" beings gathered around
the large, round table at Othello's. Very enjoyable, yes,
until the shriveled up drunk dude to my right screamed
in my ear, "Hey, are you a fake vet or a real vet?"
He was commenting on the Vietnam Veteran's cap
I was wearing that my sister had just bought me. I admit,
I got angry. "What the fuck kind of question is that?"

"Well . . ." he squealed in a voice that sounded

not unlike like a baby pig being slaughtered,
"I could wear a hat saying I'm Security, but
that doesn't mean I am one!"

which made even less sense than the question

he’d asked before, before he decided to piss me off.
I should thank him, though. As of late I had started
thinking,  "Maybe humans aren't really all that bad!"
Sorry, but no. They’re definitely brain dead idiots.
Woodie 12-21-16