Losing My Way

With the end of January upon me, I resolve to quit missing days making some kind of noise. Even if it is similiar to a man on a desert island orating to the bugs and trees, it still must be done, if only for practice at putting thoughts together and to let off steam, of which I have plenty. The blog has been useful for the little snippets of creative work I've thrown in there, from little scraps to full songs, and the one I wrote the day I got in touch with the internet suicide hotline I value very highly. Still, the ruins I call life have to be put in some kind of order, and I need to find some kind of direction so I don't just keep wandering around aimlessly. I have considered getting in touch with people from my past, but I doubt it would do me good; is that just shame on my part, or some kind of realization no one ever cared about me? Perhaps it's a mixture of the two, but I don't reach out to anyone new who might think I could be something big. I still have ambit...

From the ashes grow the sweetest fruit/ so it's good I went down in flames./ That wonderful taste in my mouth/ I owe to the disaster of my life//

The feast day left blood in the street, and a horrible stench filled the air. Only two people walked through the town, where thousands should have been.

Horror galore/ trouble by the score/ only pain for me/ endless ecstasy//

I hate to write about politics, but it finally occurs to me why I hate the two major parties: both are full of crybabies. There is no other way to describe them, and I find their conduct to be deplorable. The vigor of our early Republic, as reprehensible as the excesses of the time were, has been lost, replaced by a shallow pseudo-intellectual belief that everything is so rotten only a total wrecking of the edifice of liberty can suffice. I hate them both, with a passion that sets me aflame. The media, long suspect, has degraded to blatant propaganda that even the Soviet Union would be ashamed of, and the calibre of our leadership is laughable, as can be seen by how tinhorn dictators around the world have lost any respect for America, doing whatever they wish without any fear whatsoever. Any greatness America possesses now is despite the pygmies in charge, not because of their feeble efforts, and it's a good thing gridlock exists in Congress, because that is the one thing that pr...

I can't believe I didn't publish my last entry for two days after I finished it. The world is wearing me out, it seems, but it's no big deal, except that I went so long before even noticing my error. If I was diligent in my creative work, then I'd have caught it the next day, not 3 days later. So I'll just have to do my blog more often, as simple and frustrating as that sounds. Right now, I am writing as Yuja Wang is playing Schumann's Piano Concerto. It is letting me watch her in a tiny screen on the corner of my phone while I work, which I quite enjoy. Lately, not having a book or magazine to read, I have been watching a lot of short documentaries, especially The History Guy. Tonight I learned about Ernest Bullard, the first black fighter pilot in World War One, in an episode called The Black Swallow of Death. He had moved from the USA to France and when the war broke out he joined a unit in the French army called the swallows of death, and earned two o...

The light within shines brightly now/ the light no one sees but me/ for if others could they would be amazed/ at the wonders I contain// Once the truth is revealed/ the world would be ashamed/ but I would be merciful/ Sweet words would be mixed/ with the endless screams/ from the pain that won't let go// I have come to save you all/ to cleanse and to purge/ to blind you with the light/ and deafening with sweet words//

My pain is back, worse than ever, starting at the end of the day instead of going away like it had been. What do I do? It's a good thing the open stage was cancelled, because I couldn't have sang a note. I could have banged on the piano, but probably slow and soft at best. I had felt so good all day, and now it hits me, worse than ever. And no one to care. I want to scream it hurts so bad, but there's no one to care.

I think it's a fine thing to riff on Shakespeare. Given my daily headache and my deplorable conditions, I find it quite fitting to ponder life's myriad indignities. What a mess I've made out of what should've been a fine life, with no way out that I can see, other than Hamlet's classic conundrum. He never did answer his own question, because the right answer is so depressing. Meanwhile I have no one to turn to, no one to help me salvage the ruins of my life and discover the treasure that lies within.

"Erasmus get us a couple bananas," I said, and the monkey climbed to the top of the tree, coming back down with two ripe bananas, one for each of us. "Good boy." Erasmus was a good monkey, the only friend I had in the world. Although I was rich now, I had no contact with my fellow humans, aside from deliveries from Sao Paolo. I preferred it that way.

I have had a horrible headache for about a week or two. It's like someone had smacked the right side of my forehead, and this morning the pain was unbearable until I went to Cub and got some scalloped potatoes and a chicken tender. The small meal turned the pain from excruciating to a dull throb, and now it barely hurts at all. I am glad but mystified, as unsure of the origins as I am of its cessation. It was so bad this morning I could barely sing, then food made it go away. As I said, it was a mystery, and it was starting to scare the hell out of me.

I seem to be falling out of the habit of a daily blog entry. Perhaps I am getting lazy, or it is maddening to face the pointlessness of it all, but I feel I must persevere. Nothing has changed for me lately, other than a desire to see every Mr. Moto movie ever made, starring the incomparable Peter Lorre. That's no reason not to compose an entry, since I could've done it in bed on my smartphone. Was my mind wandering? Yes, I'm afraid it does. Down to the dark place, where the shadows can take physical form, can beat me down once and for all.

It's been a while since my last entry. I only wrote one sentence two days ago, and while I sometimes start an entry on one day and finish it the next, I have decided to let that one sentence stand on its own. As Truman Capote said after working all day and coming up with one sentence, "It was the right sentence." And as I have said before, the more you say, the less it means. I am writing now because internet sweepstakes are offering me instant win opportunities, but when I get to the end I am told to check my email to confirm my entry. There is never an email for me to complete my entry, and at least 3 companies are pulling this shit, maybe 4. It is disgusting, made more so by my precarious financial and mental state. Just then, I had my suicidal thought of the day: if I ever do a podcast, I should call it that. It could be good for some laughs, like watching someone slip on ice. My fall is much slower, but it seems to be no less inevitable. Down I go, ever downward,...

I am not a happy man.

So how do I begin to describe what my ambition has contorted into? That no one would ever buy into my mad dreams didn't affect me at all: it was only a sign that success was inevitable. I knew that soon a world that has ignored me would take notice, and the more outlandish I became, the more intrigued that world would be. I will be the antibody to the Human Disease which is a chronic condition for poor Mother Earth; while not terminal, it is progressive, and seems to become more intense with each new breakthrough in science, for indeed, each solution leads to more problems. Mother Earth was betrayed by us when we began agriculture, because that is the root of all the suffering for us and our fellow species in this world. Not that humanity never suffered hunting and gathering, but that lifestyle was in tune with nature's ways, though people were sloppy. The domestication of dogs proves that, but Man and Dog together could live a wild lifestyle easily and were part of Nature. T...

In the cyberworld, I live on a desert island. Alone, marooned, my hopes of rescue dimming by the hour, I still persist in putting messages in a bottle to throw out into the sea. Sometimes the futility of it all gets me down, and I start to think maybe death would a fine thing, but I angrily dismiss the thought, because I am sure the day after I snuff myself that's when the rescue would come, and I'd hate to have someone find me sprawled lifeless across the sand when I could be singing some sad song instead. So I hang on to whatever shreds of reason remain, and if that fails me, I clutch my madness even tighter; scream to the heavens and make the angels cry, curse Hell and make the devils laugh. Rapid mood swings are my favorite exercise.

My delusions make me happy so I hold them close, and never in front of the cold light of reason, where they would be blown apart. Perhaps that's the path I need to take to find joy in this world: I am hopeless in the eyes of truth, so I tell myself beautiful lies that make sorrow digestible and agony the seed of immeasurable joy. I really have no other choice. So how do I keep the dream alive? What madness makes me have to try? In the darkness I wander alone and wherever I stop I call it home. Never again to see the sun shine down on my bones

Happiness comes and goes, but never stays for long/ Just has time for a laugh or maybe a song// When joy comes knocking it has to go away/ There's no place in my heart for joy to stay// I look for love but it's something I never find/ it's scared away by the darkness in my mind// I'll never get joy to stay Lord knows how hard I've tried/ Soon my sorrow will be too big to hide// How I wish I could end all my misery/ but I'm afraid that's all that's left of me// That song came out of a severe depressive episode. I didn't intend to write a song, but the first two sentences I wrote happened to rhyme so I thought to myself that I should make a song out of it. I wrote it while I waited for someone to come on the internet's suicide hotline to chat with me, because my depression was so deep that I felt I had to reach out, so I listened to the blues (Muddy Waters, then Freddy King) and chatted and it seemed to help. It all start...

My little experiment of 2 days ago failed. No one checked out my blog yesterday just because it had queer in the title. Such a pity, for I feel it was a fairly good piece, if it was somewhat demented. If only someone had commented, then I would have had a clue.