Happy New Year The Daily {W}rite January 2020 wk o1

So, the clock struck twelve the old world deleted . . . or put into the archive folder in my computer's memory . . . we start over, reborn into a new world, a new life awaiting us. I cannot change the world . . . that's not a solid truth . . . but true enough . . . but I am in control of how I respond to what the world lays on me. And the world will lay it on me. It will beat me up no more than passed years . . . but maybe more and I will respond . . . but not like I responded in the past. I am a baby born today in this decade. I hope my new parents teach me well.

7:04pm
Allowing oneself to give that which has controlled him forever what already seems an entire life . . . not easy. Giving up alcohol? Well, I did really give it up consciously. After a night of drinking with students and throwing up on the lawn . . . my body not my mind said that's enough of this. And I was done with. Didn't have to go to one meeting of AA. However, smoking? Bigger chore. Quit many times and then went back to it. Tried the patch but that wasn't enough. Got COPD and that sort forced me to try harder . . . still, no relief. I finally found the nicotine gum, which I chewed for about to years and cheating all the time with a cigarette here and there. I would even buy a pack of cigs., smoke one and toss the pack. Yes, I was and with the nicotine gum and buying a pack, smocking one and throwing the pack away . . . I was spending way too much on "kicking the habit." But finally, I quit smoking all together and a year after (or so) quit the gum. Relatively speaking, I quit cigs., booze easily. But old habits, old thinking habits are . . . well deeper embedded in the imagination. It takes more time.

Thursday, January o2, 2o2o

there are too many MEs jabbering at me from inside my head. Too many to count or begin to name. But that's not the problem. I'm tired of living based on those voices  . . . the MEs I once was or never was. They fight for their individual existence. Each wants to be in control, be the ME of me. Out of body experience? I hear people talk about that. The spirit leaves the body and that spirit can see the physical self it is or once was . . . but even more. Once the spirit pulls away from flesh, it can see for the first time . . . the reality of the universe. But that is not this . . . those memories living inside me. I'm not looking for the after-death experience. I just want more of a  . . . out of my mind adventure. Memory is the ghost that haunts us all. And I want no more to do with it.

Friday,  January o3, 2o2o
I get very anxious when events don't happen they way they should. 1. At Sprouts putting my credit card back into my wallet  . . . before I could finish, Joni Mitchell (the costumer looked like Joni) says, "Excuse me." It seems I was blocking her way to the card machine. I didn't get angry. I just said, "Oh, sorry." and moved out of the way. Yes, a great moment for me. I did NOT get angry. However, by the time I got home . . . WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID: "What, lady, I'm sorry. Is the guy with fuckin' cancer moving to fuckin' slow for you? Hey, David! Get a picture of me with this Joni Mitchel look alike. Caption: Joni Mitchell harassing a poor cancer victim for moving too slow!" Aaaaaand SCENE!

Saturday, January o4, 2o2o

Went for a walk. Cancer guys need a lot of exercise . . . but not much more than walking. We went to a new park for us. it was way on the southside of Norman. Lots of spacious horse ranches out there. Big houses. Very rich. We found the park and a warning sign: No Horses on Jogging paths. I had to laugh. and I spent most of my walk looking for hoofprints cause I know no one is gonna give a shit about the sign. But I didn't look for very  long, A hundred yards or so of walking and I was out of breath. What the fuck? I can usually walk the length of Sooner Mall before I had to sit down, and that first length of mall was way more than a hundred yards. But I turned around and started back and realized that the first hundred yards at the jogging park was mostly up hill. The Sooner Fashion Mall is flat. So, I gotta watch where I choose to walk.
9:24pm
1.  I've given up my anger at other people . . . unfortunately my anger hasn't given up on me. It knows exactly how to push me into a manic fit. Sometimes I believe my thoughts need a mental straightjacket.
2.  I know longer feel the nagging need to be loved by another . . . human being. Yes, I am haunted by my failure as a  . . . lover of another . . . person. But ghost is more transparent as each year comes in and goes . . . away. Time is going . . . away from me. the ghosts my mem-mem-memory wishes to court has turned to nothing more than a fine, white dusts.
3.  It's sad to know that I well never be able to actually see myself. Only the reflection of myself in store winds, in the mirror, in the ripples on the lake . . . in a mud puddle. my nose, and mouth and porkpie hat turned into an earthquake as I stomp may way cross the mud's dirty face.

Sunday, January o5, 2o2o

Tumbling, tossed about. My emotional whirlwind. A rollercoaster ride. Up and down, depressed then flamboyantly happy. Can't seem to slow it down. My conscious break system
. . . faulty. My mind? No real control over anything in the moment . . . no control over my thoughts, my erratic, emotional thrill ride, my body, my health. It's all up for grabs. Who wins. The black and white of things. All of it collapsing in on my self-spirit . . . a landslide of muddy thoughts, fantasies, doubt. And it all makes a sort of sense, doesn't it? Living is messy business, like sorting through the dumpster behind your favorite Chinese restaurant. There's something good in here  . . . somewhere. Something worth the digging through all the garbage this dumpster world holds.

Here's a poem I wrote awhile back that says a lot to me.

Me

Me, this is me. A copy of me

from a photograph . . . of me,

which is also a copy of me

from a copy of a shadow

of a stranger of a shadow

of a dream refusing to dream.

This is me being me

dodging shrapnel from

a shattered memory

or two. . . perhaps three?

I can’t recall. 

This me . . . as I am and am not.

Schrodinger's cat in’a meat box,

waiting for the knot to be untied.

This is me. as I am, as I wish I were . . . 

as I'll never be . . . less than a thought . . .

more than everything, the total sum 

of nothing at all . . . becoming what I

never was, what I’m not now . . . Rules

whispered in my ear . . .

my hole existence . . . 

not worth the dirt 

it takes to fill a grave.

Woodie o5-o6-19

10:39pm 

I've been crying since 10:00pm. While taking a shower I just started thinking about the argument I had with my best friend and I just started crying. Crying about how disappointed and angry he is with me because I just can't write something funny for some idea he has about a guy trying to make an app. that creates world peace. I mean, it's a workable idea, but he doesn't write anything down about it, he just expects me and other people to write it for him, I guess. Anyway I got pissed about and he got pissed about it . . . And I took a shower and I just started crying . . . about that, about having cancer, about how shitty my whole life has been. I can't take it, I can't take it, I can't take it. See you tomorrow.

Monday, January o6, 2o2o
A torturous mind melt down last night. Although I have pretty much "oh, well" about the cancer and such . . . last night it hit me pretty hard that I'm probably gonna be murdered by this disease, and go "bankrupt" at the same time. But today I saw the doctor and she told me that there is a possibility that blood count may get better in the next month or so and . . . I might be "out of the funeral parlor." She didn't say that quote. That's all me. So, feeling a bit better than I felt last night . . . although I'm exhausted because I stayed up all last night, and I still can't get the sleep I desperately need.

Tuesday, January o7, 2o2o
A good day today for me, my body, my mind, my spiritual being. Depression over my present situation and depression over those old memories I carry around like a murder of crows  . . . all not knocking about in my head . . . at the moment. I stumbled upon this poem from, I think, 2017. No date on it so I probably never posted it . . . or did I? Anyway, gonna post it here and dub it a 2020 poem. This above, the poem below . . . the last blog posts for the first month in 2020. Made it through the first seven days of a brand new year. P.S. If the poem is to small to read, left click on the pic to make it a bit larger. {smiles}