change is gonna come

im broke, and have bills that will need to be paid and bills that should have been paid and debts lurking in the shadows waiting for just the right moment to spring out at me. it is a tricky combination of things —that i have been in worse financial shape, that i know others that are in more difficult situations than i, that this is simply the american way— that prevents me from getting overwhelmed with worry about it. i have a job, so i know that money, even if it is meager, will be coming in. i have friends that, if my back were against the wall, wouldnt let me suffer too greatly. and i have part ownership in a company that, even if we couldnt afford it, has reserves for me to dip into if worse came to worse. all this keeps my head on straight. all this keeps me somewhat sane.

this still doesnt mean i am comfortable.

every penny counted and not a dollar saved. i buy cheaper beer and eat deli sandwiches for dinner. ive limited my stool time at the bars. i watch movies on television instead of going to the theater.

ive never been to concerned with fashion so my tattered threads have more than sufficed. i dont smoke much weed anymore so its not like im aching for a hit of green. music comes free to me, and i have plenty of books to read. but entertainment, regardless of my economic situation, has always been hard to come by.

i wonder if its time for change. if perhaps my job has gotten to small for me. if maybe i need to go out and find bigger and better things. i have talent, intelligence, and experience in a variety of fields. ive held myself back, waiting for the right job to come along, but this passive approach towards things may be what is holding me down.

what does a man that is about to turn 35 do when he decides its time to change careers. especially when he already has three, and is too deeply involved with two of them to let it go.

but also, what does a man do when he is about to turn 35 and has three jobs yet is still broke?

i need to reevaluate my life.

my five minutes is up.

five more minutes

I never write at night anymore. I just can’t ever bring myself to do it. I sit down and I put my fingers on the keys but I cant press down on any one letter. It is as if I'm afraid to. As if I’m doing something wrong. Like cheating on a lover. or taking a drug I've said id never do again.

I have my theories why—

(one being that I’ve never had a singular voice. I’ve never had a strong argument. I go all over the place, and I began to wonder just who I was and just what I was saying with all this. I have this feeling that if I’m writing with no meaning than I’m wasting my time, my life, my breathing. That I’m an exercise without purpose. I have this feeling that if what I’m passionate about has no focus, then I’m doomed. I’m a wandering vessel, meandering aimlessly.

And at one point I thought I got on a roll. I thought I had figured something out about how I wrote and what I wrote and what I wanted to write. I produced a series of stories, and parts of a story, that all a certain satisfactory quality to them. They had a tone to them, a style. So I decided that I would designate all my writing to writing like that. But then that stopped me from writing whatever I wanted. Which stopped me from writing almost altogether, especially at night.)

—but I don’t know if they’re true or not. Or maybe my theories, of which there is more than one, are all true. This still doesn’t get me writing at night again, does it?

Oh well, guess ill continue trying during the day.

five minutes

i hate working. i dont know what i hate more about it, the actual work part or the having work to do part. i guess the having work to do part, the work itself is just a process. once im involved with the work i just do it, but its the getting started and the KNOWING i need to get started that bothers me.

i need to start playing the lottery more.

no. no. that would just be an exercise in disappointment. the futility of hope clouding my realities. ill never win the lotto. just like ill never die in a plane crash. im not that lucky. im not that special.

the work im doing now - well, the work im supposed to be doing now - isnt so hard. im supposed to be writing. im supposed to be communicating with others. im supposed to be active.

im just so lazy. im trying to get myself into a routine. im trying to create a pattern in which i am happy to do work.

but its hard. so hard.

i much prefer being distracted. i much prefer the surprise of non entertainment. the tedium of reading meaningless articles on the internet. of laughing at silly pictures. of having mundane conversations.

i cant rely on anyone to ease this. and the fact that its all on me makes everything even more difficult. i cant even write nothing, musings and ponderings, for twenty minutes anymore. i write for five minutes and then i get bored with it all.

welp, five minutes are up.

pushing it down

im dumbing myself down. or at least it seems that way.

i avoid movies with heavy themes. if there isnt shit blowing up or people farting or super heroes and lasers i dont have any interest in it.

i listen to the most popular music and without paying attention i nod my head along.

i read books, but not as many as i once did. i mostly read magazines these days.

i watch television, but mostly only standup and sitcoms, perhaps the occasional reality show. i dont have the patience to invest in any hour long dramas. they are never good anyway.

i let work distract me. and when im not working i let other things distract me.

i dont write. i collect new music.

i need a new routine.

barflys

we only see each other during the happy hours. this, even when we are sad.

and with us are only memories and these memories go untold. the images of them faint and vague like reflections in a foggy mirror. the whiskey film at the bottom of a glass. the past left to haunt us and the comfort of our ghost. we swallow.

and there we were like young children carving our names into the canvas of the bar. pristine teeth and bloody gums and smiles that stretched from coast to coast. stories of drinks and the drinks that had drinks and the ink on the papers we refuse to throw away. the sentences that said everything and the looks behind them. the rounds the rounds the rounds.

and the impressions left upon us. stark and vivid.

and the sensations still linger like a surprise from yesterday.

bored and unaccomplished

in the morning i wake up with beads of sweat crawling down my shoulders from my neck and face. the sun is boiling above nostrand avenue and the air is suspended in a grip of heat. i get up and rub my eyes with my fist and then blink a few times and yawn. one of the kitties jumps from the bed and walks to a shadow and lays down lazily. it is another day and another start to it.

at my desk i fire up my computer and sit in my leather office chair and a thick wet cloud of summer surrounds me. i open up my email and survey whats new and decide nothing is important and delete it all. i check my friend list and wonder who i want to chat with and wonder who wants to chat with me. there is a mutual vague interest between me and a few people so i open up a couple windows with a greeting of sorts. i dont have anything interesting to say. neither, it seems, do they.

i get up and i make coffee and feed the cats, who circle my feet in the kitchen with a slow, unaffectionate distance. when i open the fridge the cool air seems to lure one of them in and he jumps into the bottom rack, which is empty, like the rest of my fridge, and sniffs along the corners and rubs the edges of the crisper box with his face. for a moment i am jealous of him. of his size and the comforts of his luxurious life. of the ease in which he lives and breathes. sleeping when he wants and eating when he wants and demanding all he needs and getting every bit of it. now, in the merciless haze of summer he is in the coolness of my fridge and he is rubbing his face on things, making them his, and im staring at him bitter and tired and he isnt paying any attention to me at all.

i grab him by the skin at the back of his neck and pull him out and he falls to the floor and walks two steps then lays down casually. my other cat sits on the top of the garbage can staring curiously from me to him, a slight impatience in her wide eyes, waiting for the food to come. i pull two cans from the cupboard and open them up and spoon the contents into their bowls. chunks of fake beef and turkey in a syrupy gravy sauce. they eat with a greedy silence.

i sit back down at my desk with a cup of coffee in my hand. i roll a cigarette and think of the day. of all that it will bring. my head goes blank and my eyes glaze over and in a dream like state i let the sounds and the heat and the blur of the city wash over me.

coast to coast

trip was great. california shit, and because She showed up two days after i did, in black and pink airwalks and her hair let down and her sister and her camera and her accent in tow, i did some touristy stuff i never do and rarely ever did. a visit to the art institute to see a diego rivera mural that covered the entire wall of a church, lychee martinis on the embarcadero, the view of golden gate bridge from a designated lookout point. we got drunk in the mission and i had a friend get us some cocaine and we went to the bathroom in twos and threes and did bumps off her hairclip while getting hypnotized by the graffiti. i took her to the get burritos on valencia and solicited on haight. we got stuck in traffic and listened to bay area hip hop on the radio.

i didnt plan on her being there, it just happened that way, but it turned out ok in the end.

before She got there though, i agreed to meet an ex girlfriend. one from high school. she reached out to me on facebook, married and with three kids, and wanted to hang while i was in town. we met at a bar and ended up at another. she told me she was still in love with me and it was because i left her that she'd been trapped in a miserable marriage for thirteen years. she said she fell in love with being in love, and grew desperate and latched on to the first guy that wanted her.

i stared at her blankly and sipped my jim beam and swigged my blue moon.

she told me i should have fought for her. that i should have wanted her more. she said that she didnt leave me and that i didnt leave her, but that we began to drift and i allowed it and that ultimately, because i was arrogant and self absorbed and had a short narrow focus on my future and my life, that i let her go. i let her go. that is the reason we arent together. that is the reason she is so sad.

then she tries to tell me that i dont understand what its like to be fought for because my mother never fought for me. that this is why i let her go. because i had never experienced what it felt like to be wanted so bad that a person would do anything to have me, so couldnt really appreciate it.

at this i put my drink down and stared at her. my mother did fight for me, i said, tooth and nail, always pulling me back into her life. but it was a mistake. she never should have. i was better off without her.

she said nothing to this and then slid closer to me and purred, i dont want to fight. after that i had a few more drinks and we continued on with some small talk, but i knew then and there that it was the last time id ever see her again.

that was the only hiccup. the rest of the trip was fab.

She and i went to my moms and sat by the pool and baked in the sun and i read a book and she did too. i took her there not to meet my mother but because its so out of the way we would have no other option but to relax. uncontrollable laziness. we drank coffee every morning and then beer by noon. ate a lot of fatty foods and watched a bad horror movie and had muffled sex so my mother wouldnt hear. in the early evening the temperature would drop and we would drink wine from a front lawn patio and watch the sky as it bled and bruised into night.

so this was my trip. now im back. the streets are dripping in heat. i cant tell if its good to be home or not.