Long Time

Damn, it's been a while since I've spent this kind of time on the page. Need to loosen the pants - oh, let's just change them altogether.

I've eaten so much in the last 32 hours that I feel bloated. I went on a selfish bender - I ate three pizzas, ice cream to begin it and end it, and some soup and some wine for good measure (not all by myself, though - Berta was my accomplice). I shopped with someone else's money, I took pictures of other people's houses, and I was rude to the lady at the museum that was rude to me first. I wore a dress that was comfortable and less than socially acceptable. And I farted out loud.

I also found black lions. I listened to a woman orgasm. I saw a man that I like and felt like a fool and a young girl. I remember other times I have packed to stay away from home, I feel a heavy ache in my chest for relationships that couldn't last, that couldn't become what I long for them to be. There is a sadness that permeates the ache - it is made of a thin, sheer layer like a curtain that hides all but the barest bits of possibility. Only the brightest, most brilliant maybe's and could be's were visible through it, and now that what comes before and after are in view, it's hard to know if it was all imagination or if the possibility really was there at some time. Was he ever reaching out for happiness? Was I really important or the least bit comforting?

The fingers of panic move just out of sight, making the most unnoticeable ripples in the mist of the thoughts. What if all this imagining and dreaming is just internal torture? What if I look back in another year and find that I've started the cycle again from the beginning? What if this business is going to be just another unfinished project in my pile of undisciplined life? What if I can't do it? Will I run? Will I ever be able to trust someone enough to tell them I love them?

I did, I do. I share that with someone that I can't tell about. I'm ungrateful. I can't figure out how to appreciate what I have, how to keep loneliness from spoiling good things. Is it really all that big a deal to listen to live music? To sit in a calm crowd and watch a simple baseball game? To talk to people who do things I've never done? To want to live in a nice house with someone who has enough money for him and me both? Do I really have to do those things? Why can't I just go to the same rooms every day, and greet strangers every day, and clean things and move them around, and keep my ears open for thieves and those in need and bullshitters? Why can't I just wait around and do laundry and clean things until one of my kids needs me to be somewhere? Is that really not enough? What does it matter that there are biting bugs outside in the sunshine? Why do I want to be there anyway? Why does this toxin have to pour out? Why can't it just flow by like the breeze and disappear into nothing?

I want to be a writer but I don't feel a purpose. I could call myself an artist, too, but that doesn't make it work or important or worthy of the name. Short stories, essays, what? Do you even know what the possibilities are? You've been so sheltered and so afraid to fly - now what?

Will it take plodding and patience, or will it take exploding onto new horizons? Which one? Can't be both at the same time, can it?