there can be no other means to the end...

A year older and I look in the mirror and the lines across my forehead and between my eyes get deeper, the smile lines at the end of my eyes more defined, and everyone's way more excited that I came into the world almost three decades ago than I am, and I'm able to distract myself long enough that it lifts the cloud of melancholia for a few hours before it settles in again.

There are feelings so strong that I feel paralyzed, even if I know they're not completely grounded in reality, that heavy sense of failure, of mediocrity, of trappedness, of being alone and unloved. I know it's not due to a lack of anything. I have everything I need and enough to share, and I lived with six roommates and dated people and felt the same as I do coming home to an empty apartment,looking at other places to live and feeling the economic constraint of underemployment, of wondering if life will always be like this, fighting off the loneliness, despairing over the creative arts in search of catharsis, the endless dark nights of the soul. I've done everything I can, and I don't know what else to do.

the last minutes

Cramming the first draft of a paper, trolling for citations, a brief interlude in Pittsburghia with friends from the old days. We listen to Creedence and the Stones just like old times, watch hockey, laugh, drink, play broomball Clerks-style on the balcony between two houses, walk up to the overlook at Mount Washington to gaze over the glittering metropolis nestled among rivers and hills. This little tradition has lasted eight years now and what I love about this little crew of people is their openness to others, the conversations had, and the way that we keep cycling back into each others' lives every few years.



I'm thankful that others have driven and that I can sleep in the car, lulled by the sound of 90's tuneage, waking up the next morning in need of caffeine, still feeling somnambulant and warm.

And then it's back to the daily grind after the lack of sleep, as we debate kinder gentler machine gun hands in class and I say too much incoherently, but I just can't agree with seeing the world through the binary of men and women, and it means nothing to me. Was I ever idealistic about people in large groups? Even in my days of starry eyes I don't think I ever was.

And the last hour is brutal, piles of things beyond my control and pay grade and ability because I can't be magical and compliant all the time, and I find myself getting angry, feeling resentful being constantly patronized, trying to hold in the angry salt eyes until I can be out of this building because I'm tired, praying for grace to keep calm and put things in perspective, trying to be thankful for what I've got yet resentful for feeling used, though that's the way of life for the peonage. I guess we're human resources and that's what we're there for. It's the ennui of perky holidays and innate nature sneaking up, just two more days til painting and sleeping in and just being away.

next week, I'll be twenty-eight

I'm still young...



Age being relative, that is, the lines beginning to indent the skin, ten years of adulthood and how things have changed, the idealism burned away, the abstract raging against machines replaced by greater knowledge and subsequent despair, knowing that these cycles of depression and creative undulations, of faith and doubt, will always be there in one form or another, that there will be ways to continue to create and do so in ways that are ever more beautiful and well-executed and that despite living alone or in the company of others, even with an ever-comforting divine reassurance, there will still be some degree of loneliness. It's the human condition and I'm learning to accept it.

I always get depressed on the day of birth for no real good reason, probably some degree of seasonal bleakness and the onset of holiday consumerism (what's up black friday), and that nameless angst that always seems to hover. It'll be fine, I just need to get through.

it won't begin until you make it end...

As rusty as the city as I call home, as rainy as the water on my windshield, blackclad and bluemooded, thankful for the empathy and the hugs of those in my world who understand who've been there too, yet hoping that the spell of sadness passes soon. So familiar, but it's getting old.