sixteen miles

so. sometimes i just don't know. i guess other people have light switches, or some emotional equivalent, that go up and down, at will, that turn things on and off. i have no light switch--in continuing this electrical metaphor, while someone who can remain unnamed has a very sophisticated set of circuit breakers and back-up power supplies, i have a fuse box, many of which have been replaced by pennies, and yes, i may burn down at any point, but things are stil working. i mean, the lights are still on, aren't they? i wear my copper-penny fuse box on my sleeve.
work tonight was wonderful. it's so refreshing when everyone there is in a good mood; that might have something to do with management not being there. i think that i was charming at times, to certain people, but really, i don't care what she thinks anymore. there is a stupid part of my fragile heart that wants to fall in love, and an even stupider part (a ventricle, most likely) that already has, and when i don't think about it, i am so very happy. i feel like i was walking through a very fashionable district of tokyo on a beautiful april morning.
so i don't know. rusty says that i am more balanced now. it's been exactly three weeks, to the second, perhaps, since my last drink. he says i am more in the moddle, not as high, not as low. i don't know, really. i think that i am able to be just as happy--if not more so--than i was a few weeks ago. right now, it just isn't happening as often. one day at a time.

a major bifurcation on life's highway.

maybe i'm wrong. she can never gracefully exit a conversation with me; it's always an abrupt ending, a turn-around, frantic and hollow. if i value discourse above everything, what is this saying about me?
i need to sleep and think.

what happened? we used to be pals...

ocassionally, i wake up on the wrong side of the bed. by that, i mean that i slept in my own room for the first time since the first of the year. i should clarify--i didn't pass out on the couch last night, as is my custom of late. there are reasons for this, which i will present in a numbered list.

1. there is emotional baggage in my room, written on a white envelope in blue ballpoint, that i like to believe is true, and as such, i didn't really want to sleep in there until it is true.
2. there is physical baggage in my room--mostly, the fact that everything i own is on the floor of my room.
3. the couch that taylor bought is so goddamn comfortable, and it's better than anything in the world.

anyway, the couch was claimed last night, so i slept in my room, and i did not like it. i woke up late, i went to work, work was shit, and i left work feeling completely emotionally depleted. i can only spend so much time apologizing to people because you don't have grande lids. there is something unnatural about drinking something larger than 12 ounces of 170 degree milk, anyway.

so i came home, and i just sort of sat here. i gave someone a copy of Trilogy today, so i re-read it; she asked me if i had written anything inside, and i hadn't. i thought about it, but i don't feel like i have the power to add to H.D.'s words. the revision of language that she undergoes is so crucial to everything that i believe in. i think i am going to explain this to her on cheap target stationary.

so, empty icy house again. watching American Beauty. thinking about poems. better now. when i wake up tomorrow, wherever i sleep, i'll wake up to a transfigured world, i hope, snow-covered and replenished.

mixed metaphors.

so my meeting this morning was a good one--i talked for the first time at a meeting, ever. the topic was faith, and how faith in God, as i understand him, will be essential to my recovery and sobriety. there were people talking about never having faith once in their lives, and then realizing that they did, after they started working the steps. i really want to have something that i can just latch onto and believe in, but this is hard for me; i've never done it before. i am slowly starting to realize, though, that wanting to have faith is kind of like having faith. sure, my doubts fill 99.9% of my capacity for believing that this is the first step towards changing myself, but at least i am thinking about them, and i want to change, and i am stepping outside of places i feel comfortable to find a way to incorporate the assistance of a higher power into my life.
that seemed really intense; i am going to get out of here and go to work, and hopefully have a more functional computer when i return this evening.

portfolio--sort of.

so. if you want to see any of the new poems i've written, or look at revisions of some things i rescued from my old portfolio, i have another website with just poems. i haven't really shown these to many people yet, so there may be issues. i am really considering trying to set up some informal workshop... we'll have to see.

anyway--
poetry

something that rhymes with linguist...

so. i've been writing poetry again, and i really don't know how i feel about this. writing poetry means several things.

1. i am capable of emotions.
2. i have emotions.
3. i have free time in which i am not slurring my speech.
4. i need to find words that sound good and stuff.

so i am writing this poem about love and linguistics, because really, aren't they the same? anyway, lauren and i were talking last week about how to tell someone that you are in love with them, and i had the most brilliant idea--you should tell someone you love them in their own words. i don't actually mean have them say it first and repeat it; rather, you should make sure that they'd understand perfectly by mimicking their word choice, favorite sentence structures, paralinguistic tics, insistence on using far too many ellipses, etc. i mean, if someone was telling me that they loved me, i would hope that they'd do it by quoting their current favorite line from some other written thing, by making a numbered list, using a very convoluted compound-complex sentence structure--with implied emdashes--and while making points in the air with two fingers, squeezing a cigarette in the cold.

but this is just me.

so anyway, i have two lines, and i am stuck, but i am so hopeful. i am going to write these two lines down, and hopefully have more to add tomorrow, since i plan on doing smart-type work before and after my AA meeting tomorrow.

With a steady pace of erratic typing
And arrhythmic heartbeats [the rest of the poem will go here].

don't let it go to your head.

so, i'm starting over this year, apparently. at this point, it's been 18 days since i've had a drink, the longest i think i've gone since... i don't remember when. probably since i was in college. i've almost completely decided to leave my job for greener pastures, whether they be the too-good-to-be-true concept, or finding some other menial job to hold me over. and still, yes, i think i am in love--or at least want to be, with a girl that drove all the way to my house to have an argument with me in my front yard, who cursed in front of saint francis, who made me so mad that i almost kissed her. with all of these changes, a new forum, something more private, something more unknown, something vague. i can't really predict what might happen here--every day i wake up and my life seems to be a little different than it was the day before. i've been going to meetings, i've been praying, i've written some poems that i think might be good. i've made some interesting new friends, to say the least. i can say with some certainty that at any given point, i may be told that i am leaving for tokyo or italy at a moment's notice; i have come to accept this as the way that things will work from now on.
so, yes. this is where i will write now, until such a time that i begin to fear all digital representations of my soul again.