8.23.23 Two dreams one nightmare
Which is which? Really? Dream logic being such that the scary ones make you better and the pleasant ones make you worse. And an old hag sitting on my chest. Ain’t that a bear. Only they all care so much that I can’t really blame them. I’m seething but I’m not mad. As John told me those weeks ago, sometimes when we cling to what we think we want we miss the left turn that will take us where we’re supposed to be going. Of course that enables a predestination that may or may not be true.
I just had an argument, one I won’t detail here. I don’t feel good, I just feel numb. I feel bad about what sparked it, but not that bad. Sometimes when you don’t have anything you care if you lose you just feel free. Because God is good, you know, and They will take care of you especially when it seems bleakest. From within and without, even if from within and without also they will take away your life in the end. But that is Mercy™, ultimately.
I’m going to cut this short, and hope that everything turns out alright. It’s not the end of the world, even if it is. And I feel fine.
TTFN,
Dick.
8.26.23 Interesting start, no?
Didn’t even make it out of the title before posing a question, eh? So much for this installment I am just typing for the sake of adding to this thing, because if you don’t water it it won’t grow. So I guess it is like a plant, isn’t it? That’s a lot, there’s a lot going on, and I’m not privy to much of it. Who would believe that Hera would show her face after all these years? Would believe that she would waft her scent across the bar knowing that I would sit there stone faced as I always have. That’s the reason that she loves me, I think: that restraint.
I hope this is old news by the time this drops. We’ve got most of a month, so let’s make use of it. No more silly little flings, no more summer love. It is coming fall, it is time to bed down for the cold months. That is the world I want to live in, isn’t it? Someone to call my home. Is that too much to ask? Maybe it is, maybe it is all I can ask to not die. That this hallucinatory swarm of biting flies will leave me alone. Because Io, for those of you wishing to know. Not my fault, by the way. Who knows.
This thing is turning Greek, and I don’t know exactly why. Because maybe that was the ultimate cosmology, but I suppose ultimate means only last, and that one purportedly ages ago. But who knows about past and future? Not this guy, that’s for sure. There is only this expansive present, and I still slightly stoopid from last night, still just chanoogling forward as if there was no tomorrow. Disease be damned, I’m no leper. There is something about this thing that I don’t know what to call, but could be called honesty I suppose. Something so many of you are lacking.
But in earnest I will cry myself to sleep. No someone else is doing that but I can’t do anything about that. Or maybe I could but that wouldn’t be honest, would it? So I soldier on into the breeze that tells the coming of Septiembre, porque la idioma de la Revolución es la lengua de la gente. Y mi lengua no tiene brotes. Soy un idiota que nadie ama, pero soy un hombre que creo soy mas que un hombre entonces hay muchas ideas que era loca en mi cabeza y no me importa.
How was that? How did I do? Could you follow my pidgin tongue? I couldn’t, that’s for sure. I’m very certain that I have been fucking up royally, and with any luck that won’t come back to bite me; only maybe if someone would only bite me I would attain the immortality that I was promised. All those years ago by that same witch who set a broken curse on me not three days ago. Sorry I didn’t recognize you sweetie, you just changed your face since the last time. Only that whole line of thinking is a trip I don’t subscribe to. I don’t subscribe to many things, but I’m still paying for netflix I guess, even though I have no chill.
That’s quite a bit about nothing and I have some actual art to work on–Look at ME!–but what can I do? The arrogance of I is enormous, and yet somehow tempered by humility. That is a paradox, but they say that paradox is the path to God. I don’t know about that, but shit happens, and I’m not going to apologize for drunk Richard, he’s innocuous enough I think, even if his reputation says otherwise. Goodnight L&G, there’s nobody coming to take you home.
Dick
8.28.23 Consider the Capistrano
There’s something beautiful about the way this is all playing out. I’m not in control for all my posturing about being God or whomever. But that doesn’t matter, I’m fucking nuts, you should know that about me by now. Who am I really, what is my role in this grand comedy? Dramedy, I guess. Maybe there is drama, maybe there is not, I’m just along for the ride.
But consider this: What if I am not who I say I am nor who you think I am and am in fact some secret third thing? Wouldn’t that be a trip? It would be accurate too, probably. Because there is no time like the present and the present, for all our pandering hopes, is not infinite. Because nothing is truly infinite, is it? Not even the vast expanse of time. The longview still makes a perfect sonnet, doesn’t it?
That’s not exactly right now, is it? See so many fucking questions. They say it’s because my mercury is in cancer, but those words should both be capitalized and I’m not going back, not looking back no more, not holding back, just forging headlong into the brave new world that’s waiting for us around the bend. So far gone, too soon gone, what other forms of gone can we fathom. ‘Cause I’m gone, in one sense. The person writing this is not the person who started this project five months ago. For though this is the sixth month of it only five have fully elapsed. And who’s counting anyway?
I’m counting the hours, counting down the words. Counting down to ecstasy, I think the Steely Dan album suggests. I’m not taking any more ecstasy, pretty over drugs to be honest. With a couple licit exceptions, cause shit still needs to get lit. And I need to stay sane, if such a thing is even possible for me. The trails narrow, the exits close. There’s only one way out, don’t you forget it. That’s enough for now, I’m sorry I had to write here at all honestly, this warm up to being a literal monk and copying down sacred texts. That’s what I’m sorry for, but that is the thing that will get me where I’m going.
Grandiose incompetence, gross negligence, and greedy bastards on the other line. I won’t be intimidated, I won’t be scared. I’m feeling something like free these days, so riddle me this: Would you still love me if I was a tapeworm? Asking for a friend:
G’night,
Richard
6.29.23 Breathe (6AM)
I’ve had music blasting in my ears for over eight hours, which is how much I’m supposed to sleep. But I did sleep in that interval, and I would do it again if I could live the last twelve hours again. Only there’s also a chance I would kill myself if that happened. Not that they were that bad but one of those nadirs that keeps you pinned down beneath a focal point of the moon’s gravity makes you feel so fucking low and it comes in fucking waves and…nobody wants to hear me rant about suicide. I’m really just being dramatic even if it does hurt, and feel like there’s no way out and my cries for help are met with laughter. Mine too, that is, and so I brush it off even though I truly don’t know how much more of this I can take.
Like a cloud his fingers explode. That’s how I feel sometimes, like the only thing worthwhile I do on this planet is sit here with the blank page. All the other kindnesses amount to nothing even if I have it on good authority that those are the things that God is keeping track of. And all the bottom dollars in the world not enough to pay my debts. So far underwater, no cash to settle my immediate debts. I’m at the end of my rope, truly, in a lot of senses. So maybe let yourself fall, maybe let the end of the line be the end, though not like that for those of you about to blow a whistle. Though truly there’s only one person with access to this live, who will remain nameless and likely isn’t reading it all that often. If you do see this, you’re welcome to call, but really I’m fine. Just trying to make myself feel better by spelling out how bad this feels.
That’s kind of a trip, huh? There, a question, two whole paragraphs before. I want to cry but haven’t been able to since that last shot of haldol. Before that it was multiple times a day every day, and it felt good. And now I can’t even get antibiotics. Not that I’m sure I need them, but I don’t want to die of an obscure infection, that’s for sure. I don’t want to be diseased, don’t want to be sad, don’t want to feel alone. Because I feel very alone right now, my only friends being busy with their own shit and the people I’m used to counting on no longer an option for me, by my own choice. But still, alone, in the morning listening to the rain with one ear and a sad song with the other.
I’m tired of this fucking bullshit, honestly. Why are we allowing ourselves to flounder in this mediocrity? Why can’t we rise above like it is written that we will. And the stalks begin to sway. Corn, in the breeze, and I ash on that same breeze, blown around by the breath of God. Or the breath of Earth. I am tired of God, of gods, of trying to govern the natural world, of trying to transcend. It’s all happening right here and I am lost in space. I have always been lost in space, mind you, but it’s gotten worse and then better and then worse again. Maybe something will happen that allows me to make a decision for myself. Because I don’t know what I want.
How many times can one arrive at that juncture in one life? How many times can you think you know and be wrong? Will I ever get it right? Is that too much to ask? Is it too much to ask that any of the beautiful women who want you be right for you? Because it certainly seems that way from here. That it’s too much, that is. Maybe I just need to get out of this town, maybe I just need to move on, only then I would have less support and be less comfortable and would likely find myself just as alone and then subsequently in another relationship that would fail in five years or so. And then I’d be almost forty, and who wants to be in that boat.
Noah be damned, I just want to get drunk before noon. Only I have actually been on one, and need to slow my roll. Everyone can see it even if I’m keeping it together pretty well. To say nothing of the thing I’m going to say nothing about. Which is to say something, I suppose. But not very specifically, not telling you what I’m afraid of. Not that I’m that afraid, it’s not the end of the world but it certainly contributes to the malaise. Because I don’t really feel like I can trust much of anyone right now. There are people who care, sure, but they have their own agendas, their own interests, their own lives. They don’t know how it feels, to quote mister Petty on the subject.
Because it doesn’t feel very good. Not even when I’m loaded. And when I’m staring at a bar full of bottles it’s not hard to say no, because I know that none of them will soften the blow even slightly. That is to say that I don’t feel better, or more relaxed, or anything really different, when I’m drinking. Only I talk more and so feel worse about it later. Because I say all sorts of crazy shit because I’m a crazy person. There, does that explain it?
Only I really don’t think I’m crazy. On another level maybe, but crazy? I don’t really think so. I’d like to find someone who concurs with that opinion who isn’t crazy. Because I don’t think I have that right now. So come pick me up, take me out, fuck me up, steal my records, screw all my friends. Ryan said it well on that one. Because you reach a certain point when love doesn’t even matter to you. Nothing matters, do with me what you will, I don’t fucking care, I’ll be fine. I’m fine now aren’t I?
Only maybe we need to ask for something more than that, not because we want it, but because we deserve it. Now the tears come, the heavy release that leaves only lightness in its wake. Only this is not a wake, I’m too stubborn to fucking die. I’m too stubborn certainly to take my own life. Fuck you God, and all your tribulations, your little stupid tests for me. To those of you who don’t believe in Them I suppose that is me just cursing the void, and maybe I am. I’ve seen that void, tried not to stare. And if you do believe then maybe I’m just blaspheming, violating one of those commandments that I was able to explain to Bern the other day in layman’s terms, like a young JC explaining the law to the rabbinate.
But I’m not him, not Him either. I’m just a man. A man who is feeling very despondent and wants this day to be over and the next couple too, and then maybe a few more after that. There I go, wishing my life away. That’s not what I want either, I just want to feel other than this, something, anything. This is too much for me to bear, truly. Too much pain, not enough joy. Even the prospect of making it holds nothing for me right now. Not love, but making it as an artist, as a writer. And who fucking knows, publishing is such a crap shoot. And I can’t seem to get anywhere for all my talent and my persistence and my arrogance about the whole thing. Maybe that arrogance is the problem, baby. Who are you calling a homo?
Because this feeling won’t go away, won’t slip off like a snakeskin, or a nightgown, or a soiled prophylactic. I don’t want what I want, I just want to arrive, you know what I mean? Because the journey is shit, I don’t buy that interpretation that it’s everything. The path is uphill both ways and ends in a grave. I just want to go somewhere that feels like home, because I don’t know that I’ve known that feeling, truly, in my 32 years. Going on 33, which is a good sight older than the young nazi in the sound of music. Rolff I think his name was. But that is not important.
Maybe that’s too much to ask but by the grace of God I pray it isn’t. I pray a lot, honestly, to nothing in particular. To the cosmos, to the sea. To the sky, to the moon. I guess you could say that this is a prayer of sorts, a prayer that I might be seen and understood and so feel less alone. Only none of these has more than 25 views yet, so good to know I’m really reaching my audience. But that’s not why we write, is it? It starts in here, with the very discontent that I’m lamenting. That pain, the broken bone, that laceration of the heart. That total eclipse of feeling, lost in the shadow of the mind, of the drug, the sun that is the heart, only longs to be useful.
Because I feel that all my love’s in vain right now. I don’t want to be in love, I don’t want to think about it. I just could use a friend. A real friend, someone who can make me feel like I did when that young lady held my hand the other day. Only I hear she is unavailable. Another in a long string of those. Just my luck I suppose, but maybe it is my luck. Maybe none of that matters, maybe I’m not mistaken and this is something different. Only I thought that last time. How many iterations will go awry, how many hopes dashed like a crystal vase on the kitchen floor?
Am I useful, does anyone care about this? A lot of people have told me they care about me, and I believe them, but what use is any of that to me? Fruitless, tired of myself, tired of this town and everyone else. I know I’m the problem, I can see that clearly, but I honestly don’t want to change. I’m just the way I am and that’s how it’s gonna be. And it’s all just happening.
There, the platitude I pray starts my next chapter. Because I’m turning a page with this one. 2AM and she calls me ‘cause I’m still awake. Only I was sleeping last night, and will be tomorrow too, I thinks. There will be many long nights to come, I hope, and with any luck I won’t be spending them alone. But I’ve already said way more than I should, haven’t I. Confessing to suicidal ideation on the internet is not a great look. Luckily you won’t see this for almost a month, any of you with one exception. And that person knows me well enough to respect my process. And is also too busy to hawk my updates.
So fuck me, fuck you too, and have a great day. I’m going to go get some espresso and get this show on the road. Ah-ha, push that bus. Put some whiskey in your whiskey, what can it hurt?
TTFN,
Richard.
9.1.23 False Start
How many letters of the alphabet do you want to cover, how many hoes can you have on your dick before you realize you don’t want to live that life anymore? And hoes can be nice ladies too, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to disparage anyone’s character here. But I hurt, and I don’t want to any more. I don’t want to die, I don’t want to do anything. I want to dissolve into the ether, to be the dust on the wind that I was prophesied to become. Not me specifically, but all of us, grist for the mill as the saying goes. Because mortality is everything, even to the gods.
What a strange start that was, wasn’t it? It was everything and nothing, all at once. I’m home, at the desk where so many words have been written. My teeth hurt, my back hurts, my head hurts. I want it all to stop, to be something other than this. I want somebody to come sit on my lap, or maybe sit on my face. Who knows, I’m tired of being alone, of feeling lonely, isolated, unreal. Because when the things in your head aren’t what other people are concerned about there’s no telling who you can piss off. Who can see the real you if you don’t speak your mind. And if you speak your mind, who will hate you? Because it often feels like everyone. Because I’m crazy, I guess.
Only I don’t think that’s right, I think there is more to the story, and that I’m not the one in charge of this, This, or this. I would like to sleep, I think, would like to lie down and rest my head. I could use more of that. Less of this, this tired missive about nothing. I’m going to call it for the day, because I have nothing I want to say. I could bitch and moan like I have for all the virgo season entries so far (see a pattern there?), but I won’t. I’m just fucking tired, and I want to go home. But going to sleep for a minute might be an almost adequate substitute. Maybe tonight won’t be bad, but I doubt it. I’m going to hate it, almost certainly. But I don’t care, that’s just the time today.
Tomorrow might be better but I doubt it. That’s fine. Fuck God, They can’t tell me what to do. I surrender to my personal power and defy the spirit that moves me. I will do nothing in the face of this strange weather, take a nap, and then fire ze missiles.
TTFN,
Dick
9.4.23 Take the Long Way Home
Supertramp baby, the endless harmonicas, the endless summer I’m contemplating. Who gives a fuck what anyone else thinks, really? I’m exhausted, but I’m on the home stretch, ready to progress beyond the confines of what I had been considering possible. You realize at a certain point that you actually do have control, that you can do what you want if you know how to ask and who to ask. Interesting that those words have the same few letters, huh?
I really am severely disinterested in this project, and yet it continues to grow. I suppose that makes it destined, or me persistent in spite of myself. Or maybe that is just resistance, as the War of Art guy (Stephen Pressfield?) put it. Pure resistance, as the boys put it. But that’s a story for another day, it’s all just happening and we’re going to be better than we ever could have imagined. A bigger flower than we ever could have dreamed. Rather I will be a tree, giving shade for a thousand generations of men. In the sense of humans, that is. It just sounds better in that context, I think, despite the whitewashing that we’ve done to gender in the twenty-first. But that’s none of my business, truly. How you identify is up to you, and I have myself felt different ways about that at different times, if you want to know the whole truth, or rather part of the whole truth.
I’m wearing a bathing suit and my new favorite t-shirt. I could have a cigarette if I had one. But I don’t, and I’m thankful for that. Because I don’t want to put myself in an early grave, and that particular pleasure will steal ten years from your life before you know it. And I won’t bank on being reborn, this is it. My one shot. Maybe my tenth shot? Who knows, but I’ve been told a lot of things and the only thing I can really put stock in is that I’m likely to die. Not guaranteed, I guess, with science where it is, and God where They are, but who knows. In all likelihood, yes. Death, and then feed me to a mycelium please. Put my genes in the bank, and then I might live again, someday. But not exactly me, would I be?
Because experience does to some extent define us. There is no denying that. And all my experience has led me to a single spanish phrase: No me importa. That’s it, that’s the end, and yet I continue. Because I love this life. I love it more than anything, than any one human. No one can hold me from the world because I am of the world and in the world. Limitations are none of my concern. Maybe we will even learn to fly someday. Maybe that day will even be soon. But maybe we will get a robot hellscape too? Or rather, rather. See what I did there? Don’t you wish you were clever like me. And I just a puppet, or so the illusion of the wee hours, of thoughts that arrive so readily that they can’t be mine.
But I have that perspective and defy it. Jacob, I bet a certain someone takes ice in his whisky. That’s all I’m going to say for now, but I am going to have a good day. And a good week, and a good month, and a good year.
So fuck you if you want to stand in the way of that, I will do all I can to defy you, not by an act of will, but by an act of Self. And that is all.
Dick
9.16.23 Happy Birthday Matty-Boo
What a strange come down, what a strange end of the road. Or should I say line. Phone Bricked. It broke dropping off a roof. I don’t want to tell anyone about that. Still may come back to bite me. May have today, almost, but for the grace of god and the MSP. Still I’ll ice the iceman if he comes for me, just did. And I the same, for all of it. There is a thing broken inside me, that is for sure. And in a lot of other people too. Of that, I’m sure.
I think I’m swearing off women, at least for a while. But maybe forever. Don’t ask. I don’t want to talk about my trauma, and I don’t need to to heal from them, according to Brenda. The good witch of the North, if her quoting Morgan le Fey earlier was any indication. Restoring the Goblins to power in the netherworld, to hell with the dwarves and gnomes. And crows, ravens, and eagles too. I’m a man and I’ll stand on my own two feet, wherever they take me.
I bought some duck socks today. That is, they have ducks on them. And a couple of moose, but that’s another story entirely. Sorry to you that I’ve been away from this. I know you had been happy to hear from me, but I was busy hunting Hera as if I were Zeus. I have more in common with God than that fucker, tbh. But I’m not Him either, just Dick. Dickie too my family, and not so secretly by reputation in this town. Goes to show that nothing ever changes.
But as biggie smalls said: if you don’t know, now you know.
That’s probably back up over the wall. Which is to say enough. For now.
–Dick
I’ve put down enough cigarettes in the last 36 hours to kill an entire platoon of vietcong, and in the 24 hours before that enough to indict an entire legion of Royal Canadian Mounted police. It’s not going well down here, or up there, but that’s okay. I’m not too picky. Choosy, maybe, but only ‘cause it better be choice. Ask Ferris about that. I’m sorry for not writing more, which almost read moore, like the principal who fucked the cop’s wife. Fuck that guy, fuck all that noise. I’ve had enough of crusading, had enough of the good fight. I want to go home and drink noons with my friends.
But I’m not sure I have any left, after all that. It’s been a ride, it’s been a week. At least, if not three. And I still have ten fingers to count on, and nine toes (I think) to boot. But to quote Ron Swanson: I have the toes I have. I’m not going to worry too much about what happens. Just going to record live from somewhere for as long as I’ve got. That’s enough of this for now, I’m tired of coding, I’m tired of life. I just want somewhere soft to lay my head. And for my enemies to leave me alone. They won’t though, and I’m at peace with that.
Alfonso.
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