Quarter of ten at night.
I’ve awoken feeling overheated because the dog was plastered up against my side in bed. Before I slept, I made some personal notes while the rain trickled down like a narcotic lullaby. I said that I miss my old friends from an alcoholic social network and observed what an outsider I am today, not really belonging to any group of people because I can’t commit myself to a particular system of beliefs. I certainly don’t feel like waiting for the Second Coming to have something like happiness with my existence, and I don’t think life has passed me by; instead, it should be just beginning. I’ve spent most of my life being meek and mild, the thrall and victim of authoritarian parents who handed me down to my siblings to control, until finally I broke away from the whole family quite deliberately. I remember having dreams of my mouth being sewn shut, and even in my sleep I tried to speak but couldn’t get the words out because of the stitches. And if not for the power of the written word, my life would still be out of my own control, yet you know it’s a real struggle even now. The world is set up to be a devouring cannibal, always keeping the upper hand and gainsaying my every thought, as if it were criminal to hatch one original idea. But the progress of the human species ultimately depends on original voices, much as our philosophers are stuffed into a bottle and thrown in the sea, a desperate message of distress afloat on the waves towards unknown shores very far from here… or a bottle stowed in a balloon and released on the winds to seek its fortune long away.
Eleven o’clock. I just got an email from my friend Mark, the drummer and composer who lives in the south part of town. He included a link to his Craigslist ad and asked me to call him tomorrow. I can hardly wait until then, though I’ll bridle myself and keep a level head.
robgradens 