Silence

I'm avoiding the world. I've realized that sometimes it just needs to be done. I am not hiding my pain from the world, or bottling it in. I'm not going to be ashamed of my need for solitude, but rather embrace it, like a monk taking a vow of silence. The solitude allows me to reflect on the pain, concentrate on healing, and gather a reserve of strength for whenever I might really need it. Lately, the pain has been pretty unbearable and nothing seems to dull it. I take my medicine with due diligence and allow myself to sleep whenever my body requires it. I focus my energy on fighting through it and staying positive and keeping whatever sanity I have left. During these times I allow myself extra indulgences... dark chocolate, sensual fantasy, extra long baths. When life allows you so few pleasures, so get your jollies when you can. But listen to me... I'm really not complaining I swear. Life could always be worse, and its that thought that keeps me in 'half-full' mode, and as it gets worse, which seems inevitable, then I will have to decide whether to resign to the pain and come up with some other excuse. Woe is me. Woe is me.

Moody/PMS

My mood has been cycling rapidly the past two or three days. I'm chalking it up to hormones, or maybe even this week's full moon. Maybe it is because the weather has been a bit bipolar, changing from cold and rainy to beautiful and back again. Maybe it's because today was actually so nice, I was actually warm, and God knows I hate being warm. Maybe its because I hate the thought of being alone on yet another major holiday.

I've already had to apologize for my snarkiness twice. I need to learn to keep my mouth shut. I find myself becoming irritated with people who can usually do no wrong. I think I just hate people. That must be it. It doesn't matter if they are beyond real or characters amped up by my vivid imagination and lust to escape. In the end, they are all the same and they all ultimately disappoint. Maybe that's why I lean more toward the day's random encounters. A brief vignette, a few lines of dialog, and soon that snippet of mundane can be amplified into a grand opera. Without the context of life, everything seems more exciting.

But I'm rambling.

The point, if there is one, is that you really can't trust anyone, not even yourself. Even as predictable as people tend to be, we still allow them to hurt us... even when we saw it coming! Like that old adage, "fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Nobody wants to wake up from the The Matrix. Nobody wants to know the truth. Not really. Maybe that's the answer to it all: There is no truth. Or maybe the answer is 42.

You decide.

Breakfast of Champions

No, but I would have killed for a bowl of Wheaties.

This morning for breakfast, I got to enjoy a dixie cup of ice cold radioactive scrambled eggs. And not even real eggs. Eggbeaters.

I asked the tech if radioactive eggs come from radioactive chickens. She wasn't amused. I thought it was funny. After eating my nuclear breakfast, I got to enjoy a nap in a very large, very loud machine. What a way to start the day!

Some Days Are Better Than Others

I think I have bird flu. Or maybe SARS. Or Anthrax. Or possibly even ebola.

Today is just one of those days where my entire body seems to be on the warpath. I feel generally flu-y... achy, stiff, tired. I slept most of the day. It doesn't really hurt unless I, well, move. I'm pretty sure I have a fever. Ok, I'm done whining now. That is all.

GMA

So, as I watched Good Morning America this morning, I happened to catch a segment on the latest in plastic surgery trends. Liposculpting, Doctors go in, suck out the fat, then re-inject it into places for 'enhancement'. Now you too can have a well defined six pack. Or shapely ankles. Or a bootylicious onion.

My first question is, who is it exactly that is getting these surgeries? Celebrities? They hardly count for enough of the population to make this something 'everyone is getting'.

I know a lot of people. I've lived in seven different states. I have friends in NYC, LA, everywhere in between. And never have I met anyone so vain, so shallow, so self absorbed that they would even consider having elective surgery to improve, oh say, their toe cleavage.

My second question is: is this really what Americans are spending their money on? Again, I don't know many people who have random wads of cash to blow on such things, but of course most of the people I know are struggling for their art. But in a time of hurricanes, tsunamis, famine, disease, war, corrupt government and rampant greed, people are actually spending money on this bullshit? It makes me sick.

Saving Daylight and Other Fables

This whole changing the clocks thing screws with my system. My body clock had no idea what time it was when I woke up this morning, and now I'm sitting here at... what? 5:30 am and I haven't been to sleep, nor am I even tired. I'm smoking a little weed and listening to Zero 7 trying to lull my body into a state of exhaustion, but I'm starting to see little point. Why go to sleep at all? I mean, it's not like there is anything dire waiting for me on the other side of slumber. Most people go to sleep at night to re-energize their batteries so they can be fresh the next day... for what? ...work, school, family, society, life. But I have no pressing appointments, except those of my own making and I arrange those to suit my needs. I'm a big fan of flexibility.

I'm actually thinking about making a pot of coffee. It might seem I'm just trying to be contrary now, but something warm sounds good and it is no time for cocoa. Cocoa is for days spent sledding with pink noses and frozen toes, not for nights filled with menthol cigarettes and self doubt.

It's been a very strange year. I now know the meaning of traveling without moving, and I'm a bit exhausted from the trip. I still have quite a while to go, but I'm hoping I've at least learned to read the map. Well, maybe not, but at least I know its no longer upside down. Its funny how things can change in an instant. There isn't a single person who is the same as they were before. Everyone is different, like seeing ghosts of people from another life, they are almost transparent. There, but somehow not, camouflaged against the background.

I've been thinking about the disappearing boy. He's never really that far away. I've put him a book where he will become a bedtime story for my children's children even if I bare no offspring. A fable about a prince who lived beneath a waterfall at the edge of the world in a beautiful castle made of ice. I had a dream once that I met him underneath a single street lamp. It was raining and the light created a wavering mirage like effect on the wet asphalt. We just stood there in the beam of the lone light in silence watching each others faces. I'm losing that face. If I could draw I'd sketch it on a million pieces of paper.

If time doesn't matter, and all memories eventually turn to ash, maybe if I send a message in a bottle a miracle will carry it upstream. I want to find you before I shed my skin again. Are you listening? You deserve to be more than a ghost, more than fiction. Maybe you weren't even real. Only a figment of a psyche stretched too thin. I have no proof of your existence. But I honestly don't have faith in my own imagination to create something so unique. Was it you that was crazy, or was it I? I no longer remember.

A Revelation

Happiness is a strange thing. Some find happiness merely in the contentment of their routine lives. Happy because there isn't something specific to make them feel otherwise. Glass half full is you will. For the rest of us, happiness is something we seek, something we feel eludes us. Not satisfied merely to be so, but looking for a reason to be happy.

For the latter group, life presents a rougher terrain. Analyzing every minute detail, scrutinizing every triviality. It's a sort of madness really. Like a case of acute OCD, ADD and NAACP. Oh wait. That's something else. But seriously, I have spent countless nights in bed, lying in the darkness, pulling apart fragmented memories, searching for the meaning of my life. As if I were so important.

But you have to hit emotional rock bottom before you start to realize that all you are doing is whining. I still take some pleasure in whining now and again, but I've come to understand that it isn't a matter of obtaining something, but rather of letting go. That's the key. Allow yourself to understand and you will.