and I swore I'd never go there again.

Another year another move, boxes piled up, everything in the middle room, wondering how I ended up with so many paintings, why half of them suck and why I feel so shy about sharing my art and end up piling the canvases in the corner.

So grateful yet stressed on the eve, hoping this will be the last one for awhile, hoping those who said they'd show up actually do, getting better at this kind of thing, feeling bad about putting others out but I make it up to them in cash or booze or coffee or furniture.

I have plans for New Year's Eve should I choose to take them, but my throat is getting sore, and I'm between three houses, drinking tea with a little Anubis dog resting her head on my lap. If I wouldn't be a neglectful parent, maybe I'd consider canine ownership, there's a loyalty there that's strange and sweet.

Sleep before the storm, needed so much.

deferment

Building skyscrapers of procrastination like an Ani song, I want to do everything but write this paper, even though it's interesting subject matter, but how does one condense an entire literary culture into 8-10 pages? I've never been a super-achiever but writing's one of the things I don't suck at academically, and so it's disorienting to get B's on my work even if it's not the most effort-intensive work and the course isn't for credit as it is.

I'm sitting at the kitchen table at a friend's house, where they've left me ice cream in the freezer and there is canine companionship and tea. I found the last holdout of rodentia behind my refrigerator attempting to gnaw its way through the metal towards the culinary delights of freezerburned hot peppers from the garden last year and the cucumbers molding in the crisper drawer.

It's hard to cook when your kitchen is small already and feels gross due to its unwanted inhabitants. So I cleaned the back up with the vacuum and threw the uneaten rat poison into the hole with a pair of tongs and call my dad and vent about the little bastards. A few minutes later I hear little teeth munching away and I'm past the point of feeling bad.

I figure this is one of those Important Life Lessons which are generally unpleasant but "build character" and there's no way in hell I ever want to be a homeowner even if I wonder if I'll be living in grungy cheap apartments in aesthetically pleasing but ultimately sketchy environs hoping that nothing really bad happens. I picked up this book at a library booksale because I'm eternally amused by vintage graphic design and have a terrible sense of humor but also because it looked like it was full of practical knowledge for old houses like the double I live in.

And now, another week, a week of working two nights, feeding cats, walking dogs, writing this paper, wondering how I used to write four or five at a time, though I guess it was the only thing I was doing then...

It was too beautiful outside this weekend to sit around inside, and I wandered through the woods alone, picking my paths carefully so I don't become a statistic through either my clumsiness or someone's ill intentions, with my camera aimed at the sparkle of creeks and the shimmer of the last leaves clinging golden to bare branches and the textures of sandstone ledges. Pictures in abundance tomorrow for those who care, but I was exhilarated to be wandering through piles of fallen leaves surrounded by trees and rocks as far I could see on a sunny Sunday afternoon in November in a t-shirt. These times are too good to let them slip away.

caffeinenation

The need for caffeine and the urge to write have me sitting in the corner, attempting to conjure up verse and rust belt writing because I'm feeling existential and the paper from hell is finally done, so I'm people watching all the lonely souls of Clevelandia too young to drink too old to stay at home, who are too busy with their own drama to really pay attention.

It's one of those nights where the cold and the unspooling of continual thought makes for things maybe worth scrawling about. The conversations about life and love and trying to think in a sad city where sometimes we get so tired that it's hard to. But tonight I am too awake and too verbose to try and paint, too alert to kick back and be entertained by a screen so I take the long way down Lorain past the dollar stores and dive bars, the boarded up buildings, the halal markets and Irish pubs, to sit in the corner at Common Grounds, to write poetry alone like a teenager.

I was invited to a birthday party tonight, but I'd rather be among strangers where it's not expected to socialize, where there's caffeine instead of alcohol, and nobody thinks they're cool. When I'm at parties like that the last thing I want to do is be around people, I get this freaked out urge to disappear into the backyard or sit on the porch, wishing I had the excuse of cigarette breaks to be introverted, wanting to take a walk with the other person there who feels antisocial, amble around the block in the cool October air and talk about everything and nothing.

Thinking about wars and rumors of wars, of American exceptionals and the provincialism of small cities with big orchestras and bigger problems, so many things I wish I could say before the battery on my laptop dies, but I'm tired, and I've written, so it's a beautiful thing.

a blindness that touches perfection

When did I get so old, unable to stay awake, long gone those nights of laying on a living room floor listening to music and talking until the sun came up, having revelations and inspirations at 3am over diner food and infinite cups of coffee, frenzied painting at late hours.

And now, I'm fighting to keep my eyes open, wondering why the caffeine doesn't work like it once did, maybe it's the connection with people and if not that the creative process that keeps me feeling awake and alive and lacking either of those, I'm dead to the world or wishing I was.

Writing this late is my equivalent of being drunk, becoming either absurdly slap-happy or existential and emotional as the inner life bleeds out. I don't get drunk for that reason alone, because I do and say enough stupid that I don't need any other reason to do so. The euphoria and melancholia are already too saturated and intense and every fear and hope is amplified to deafening and debilitating decibel.

I don't expect anyone to fill that void of loneliness, because it's the human condition, the state of the soul even at its most loved but that doesn't stop the longing held in by veneers of cynicism and sarcasm so easy to see through. The constancy of dreams deferred is a hard thing.

blue and blue...

Insomnia revisits, sleeping in a different house, reminders of things I'd rather not think about and wish I could forget, hoping that the dog's skittishness doesn't mean any more than that, tuning out the conversations in the driveway of the house next door, coming off of caffeination, alternating stressful socialness and aching solitude.

I know that these pangs of lonesome are nothing compared to those of others, thinking of a relative of mine I picked up tonight who things never did work out for, unhappily married and now widower, with a daughter institutionalized, alone in a house losing hearing and mobility, surrounded by accumulated tchotchkes reminiscing about days long past and friends long dead, with nothing to look forward to, thinking more of what he's lost in this world than what could ever exist in the next. I stand there and don't know what to say and just break inside for him.

Finishing out tonight on a front porch looking out on blue world drenched in golden light and firefly flecks was good for me, to be in a place where I don't have to try too hard, pondering things we'll never totally understand as power chords and solos snaked through the night breeze as the world begins to rest.

The blueness is lighter than the mood indigo, a melancholia of accumulation, a tangle of emotion needing to be unraveled, in so little time and so much exhaustion of the emotional, veering wildly between passionate and pragmatic too hard to explain without baring too much.

a quickening and movement...

I actually made an effort to be social and went down the street to see a band comprised of a former classmate, her husband, and a former church bandmate from my Kent days. While it's not the kind of thing I normally listen to they were really good and to see them in this element, watching the chattering at the bar cease when they started to harmonize and the sound began to build...

How does one catch up on five years with acquaintances? They're mostly married and ask if I'm seeing anyone and why that hasn't worked out. I say no it never did work out (and don't add that I doubt it will) and talk about everything else, refugees and getting arrested, making ceramics and college radio. Everything just changed so completely since those days.

My sister is with me and knows none of these people. She asks if I can take her home and I understand, because she's got her own kind of pain she's struggling through, not wanting anything to do with God and having no good friends to fall back on, standing there as the rest of us talk about geeky musicianship, mosh pits, youth crews, and punk bands whose heyday was before her time. It's been at least five years since my last mosh pit, where I flew backwards into a puddle of PBR and rode home on the Rapid smelling like a distillery.

I'd never heard of David Dondero, the headliner, but everyone else seemed to. (I never did get around to delving into folk-punk, ironic given my musical DNA containing both), but his songs hit me in a strange way, this acoustic guitar and sparse evoking lyrics painting pictures of places I've never been, minor chords, the voice speaking of years I haven't experienced, as I laugh at kiss-off songs about employers and the ache taps into what I've been feeling, makes me want to write what I feel, so now I'm sitting at the 24 hour coffeeshop, deserted due to curfew and everyone my age drinking alcohol instead of tea, starting another novel beginning wondering if I'll ever get to an ending. I always end at three pages, sputtering out into fragments and nothingness.

I just need my brain to slow down sometimes because it never seems to stop. I can't bring myself to drink it away, my prayers are a jumble that I'm glad that God can decipher, and everything will happen the way it does, longing in the meantime for wisdom to go with the knowledge, and love that isn't just being nice to the people who are nice to me or the ones I enjoy, but love for the ones I can't stand.

I try not to be anxious, I try to de-tense, because it's nights like these that become dark nights of the soul by default, walking alone back to my car in the darkness glancing behind me, nearly running red lights because it's red light district hour and I get jumpy when I see so many people in the street on that corner, wishing that I could make everything ok when I see so much hurt around me deeper than my own, trying not to think about back-stabbing wannabe overlords, continual dreams deferred, or my lack of inspiration, knowing that sleep is needed and elusive. I always get like this when I don't sleep.

flight

I had to print something off at the library and ended up in Lakewood surrounded by crazy regulars and sundry others that I really didn't want to deal with for reasons I prefer not to divulge here and snuck out without much recognition, feeling like a creep myself at a public Internet terminal, and not wanting to deal with general awkwardness of at least three different kinds. I can't remember the last time I was in the same room with at least four characters that I really have a strong aversion to. If anyone's dealt with me in the past twelve hours, I haven't totally been myself among those I know best.

One of my neighbors was as Marc's where I'd gone to find TSA-acceptable-sized mini bottles of shampoo because otherwise I might be trying to blow up a plane with nitroglycerine cleverly disguised in a bottle of seemingly innocuous Herbal Essences.
The terrorists have won, it seems because the regulations are crazy. I don't worry about planes blowing up but I'm not a fan of flying and usually sleep so I don't have to think about it.

We're both trying to do the garden thing and so we swapped extra seeds and now I'm up late feeling nervous from both caffeination and breaking from routine as the wind rattles the doors and the kitchen chairs. I'm so used to planning out my days with work and the show in mind, not digging out an old backpack and filling it with the necessities needed for four days in another city that I've never been to. There's the part of me that knows that it'll be fine and the other part that's always assuming the worst, which is never a good thing when what I really need is sweet sweet sleep.