confayousion

Many days I must remind myself that I am essentially a happy person. I have insight and love and a real need to belong and pitch in and move ahead, fast and foreign and built for speed. Money slows me down, desire definitely does, fear, enemies, loss, momentum, movement, piles of sin, backward glances, pork, and then I'm stopped and then I'm slowly inching backward as if sliding on the scree. And then I'm regressing and a day may be lost to the clutching of bellies and the want for more works of art. I look up at the computer screen and see the thing refreshing as electronic things do and I look for the message. Nothing, so I deliver one. "You cocky bastard, take that!" Boom, done. Silence.

This morning is a terrible one and for those who have experienced it will know the feeling I'm about to describe. It's a dull swoon of headache, like drinking all night but haven't had a drop. The flood of depression chemicals leaking in on caustic waves in a cool wash over brain folds and ash and soot. No desire for much of anything, not even a cigarette (cancer having purged any desire for that shit long ago). Buttercup gone and having no idea what I might want or need, knowing all along that the pull is down. Down down down. Stupid, at the bottom, not an ounce left. Or so it feels. The car fixed but $500 low and with what needs to happen and what I need to come up with I am stuck. This is my last effort and so it goes. I look to the foods, a few boxes of cookies, some pasta, an apple. I think of the week I ate popcorn and laugh. This is funny. Why are you doing this? I think, to prove a point? No, it is the boulevard of broken dreams and most of us are on it. I hear J say, "loser." I hear that loudly because I know what that means. I can't let that happen, I won't let that happen and I can't let that happen. So since I know better I call mom, mom of course understands. Mom always understands, herself unemployed, a victim of the economy crunch at 60 and with no higher education, just experience, there is less of a chance there will be employment waiting. I know what I have to do, I see it. It's the rise or the fall but maybe that's too literal. Maybe the whole thing is too literal. Bah. Barometer. My weight is your weight, your weight is my weight. We both weigh just about the same, loser. We both weigh just about the same, lover.

Bas Jan Ader