I came home early this morning from a jog around the neighborhood. My next door neighbor was just coming out with a load of laundry to drag downstairs. I wished him a good morning. He paused and with a smile asked, "How's your white male privilege treating you?" A great question to which I replied, "God, I guess it's going really well." I'm still working part-part-time, underachieving, over-partaking, spending every minute with my girl counterpart. Nothing much to report. My slow beat goes on and I find little to write these days...

Andrew out there, up there, perhaps above the void circa 2011 with an old typewriter and a rifle. Probably wondering, how the hell did I get here... again? This one and every one was always for you. Yonder, mountain!

Homecoming

Melody is coming home again after a month trip out to New York, Los Angeles, Vegas, and now finally back to the Bay Area. I'm having a pre-drink before going out to meet the parents, trying to heed the words of today's spot on horoscope gadget on iGoogle (why the hell do I read this stuff?). Though it cracks me up, I find myself a little too interested at times, perhaps a little superstitious as well.

It's challenging to settle your nerves today because your current anxiety is coming from several different sources.....if you can be flexible enough about what is happening, you'll realize that you don't have to waste energy worrying about things you cannot control.

Hard not to be a little nervous, but I like that "things I cannot control" bit. Nice without the contraction too, more powerful. So I have a cocktail in my hand beading cold droplets and pushing repeat on the new Bon Iver record, which is absolutely phenomenal indulgent music perfect for saps like me. I'm midway through a five-day weekend...does that still count as a weekend? I work four tens Monday through Thursday, but Thursday was called off for rain and we're now moving this coming Monday's rainy forecast to next Friday, which leaves me with freedom, utter freedom. So far I've failed at sleeping in and succeeded at enormous breakfasts at home, a rarity since I work so early and prefer eating later on anyway.

I've been walking around town with my headphones on these past days, miles and miles, stopping in at coffee shops and creating errands to carry me across town with a little more purpose than not. I've been falling in love with life again. It's strange to think of it that way but I'm feeling patient these days and more suited to my surroundings than perhaps I deserve. Might be a mirage; god knows I'm a fucking fragile thing poorly paired with my compulsive behavior and headstrong action. Sometimes I can't even hang with myself. Still I raise this glass to the feeling and say I'd do it anyway and I'd do it again...

Journeys

Andrew's making the big journey this week. If you drive straight and don't screw around it's a 2,260 mile venture to western Idaho where the summer skies are blue and the mercury rises like a cold can of beer from a lawnchair's built-in cupholder overlooking a river swollen with snowmelt. That's Idaho. As far as Pittsburgh goes, nothing could be more different, and Andrew being a desperate measures kind of guy, is good with that. Ah, the great escape. The big dream. The great magnet. I wish you well.

The woman I've spent the majority of my time with down here in the lulling American Mediterranean is leaving this week as well. Her journey is 2,800 miles, eventually ending up somewhere around the country's capitol. A trip that we would all deem of epic proportions indeed, a necessary trip, and hopefully a healing one too, where she can find herself and start a new network of lovers, friends, and family. I wish her the best from the very heart of me. We did business this week, that final bargaining for the acquired things still mutually owned in one another's possession. I now outright own the car and the television, but she eventually wants the lamp back, the one with three light settings but only works on one. I acquiesced.

My dearest Grandma, the only one I ever had since my father's mother passed before my time, left on her last journey this past week. She signed off on Judgement Day. She was ninety-two and a half years old and only days away from her sixty-ninth wedding anniversary with my grandfather Douglas, who sadly left the world far too young and her alone for far too many years. We said goodbye to her this week. I hope she's finally found peace from a life of devotion and the deepest love and loss. My Grandma loved me like crazy and I would never ever be the person I am now had she not been there.

This year rebirth is in the air, the non-religious kind, the real kind. I can feel it and I welcome it. I've traveled a long winding road these past few years and though I've managed to not run away as I've done so many times in the past, I still have the strong sense of arriving somewhere. I needed to refind the Jesse that I liked more and begin investing myself in the people and places that will bring me real happiness. It's harder than it sounds. I wanted to put myself back in the arms of whatever it is that's always called me and feel that unfeigned embrace.

I got my job back and found a new appreciation for the small things. That was a big start. And the people I work with have become a new family for me. There were also a couple people I'd mixed with in my past relationship’s small radius that I went back for and found. I was tiring of the watered-down supporting cast, drinking friends, that long line of acquaintances that we all acquire... I needed some real friends, lead roles, and I was so lucky to find true friendship when I needed it most.

Then I met Melody and my heart just about overflowed. She's an angel. She makes me want to write stupid things like, She's an angel. What the hell does that mean anyway? I think it's just a feeling, those silly words, and I feel them. She’s good to me. She’s more than good to me, she’s good for me. She was immediately an old friend and lover, reminding me of a song, it's hard to put your finger on the thing that scares you most... and it is scary to feel so deeply, but I'm in love and feel grateful for this time to be happy again and moving in a direction that feels of home.

This quickening...

An entry from the first months after moving to the Bay Area...
-----

A dear friend of mine has termed this blog San Franciscan Ruminations and i feel that i've never truly delivered the product promised by those words. I wish to finally do so...

Narrowing the limitless options of self-definition: my person must represent either some aspect that we all carry in regard, or a certain personality confined to a body, absolute. And needing to choose so deliberately for this endeavor, i select the pollyannaist whose over-optimism is both easily dissuaded and shied by hindrance, as encouraged by ease and fluidity. This personality is seemingly vulnerable to subtle fluctuation, but spared many distresses self-inflicted. And this in tow with my particular upbringing creates a metropolitan anomaly, maybe.

I'm gaining and losing here in this city; it's mostly velvet as the gamblers say: i think i'm winning. This ability to be both anonymous and gregarious at whim, near simultaneously, is the heart of my heart in San Francisco. To satisfy both of these wants, and likely needs, is a momentary gift that i hold onto. I feel in some part, that i have a secret that distends my appreciation for this city life. All that i've ever lived, until now, has in some way been diametric to this paved grid littered with life. This tight mixture of sound and smell, the sweet and the fetor together, combine into something almost richer than the pure beauty i've often been surrounded by. There's something more believable about this unification, as it encompasses the human being too~ both gentle and fierce.

But, what i'm losing is my sensitivity and mild candor for all. As the world grows bigger, i grow smaller and for whatever reason, i feel less. It's survival in an overly-stimulating environment that begs for attention. We harbor more unconsciously and find safe doses for semblance and sentimentalism alike. I don't know if i really buy what i'm writing, but part of me knows that my skin is thickening. That what remains untouched is my deliberateness and calculation, but what narrows is my aptness for affection. Not absence, because it is my core, but quicker reluctance to showing it. And not just showing it; feeling it.

I remind myself not to hurry. All these things around me i've wanted at some time, and now they're here with me. Perhaps it's just an apprehensive time and all of us feel our steps are hurried, whether they are or not. Perhaps it's some American way of living. Either way, i trust it... that which threatens me and holds me strong, reassuring.

Sad sappy sucker.

I'm having one of those days where I want something to happen, for some absolute decision to be made, one way or another, and to whatever end. To just be done with it and to know where the hell I'm going at this time. Dramatic I know. I think that's the feeling of the day, a feeling I fed with dramatic music, all day in my ears playing old indie electronica. Styrofoam and Ms. John Soda and Lali Puna mixed in with all the old Bon Iver to drive my feelings madder.

And what's funny is there is no real decision to make and no real place to go. It's just a feeling. I think it has something to do with this wind that's been pushing at me all day; all these tall blades of grass and tules that've been beating at my sides as I walk through the marshes in Benicia. I'm looking out on the San Joaquin delta and watching the white caps curl toward the shore. I look down just in time... a small nest of blue-green eggs with little scratches of brown. Four of them sitting in this empty nest and my stupid foot hovering awkwardly above, moments away from impact. Red-wing blackbird, dime a dozen, though still special. I'm a sucker for that electric red wing patch. Bird's got style.

I was thinking about something, but I can't remember. The music is making its way through the inner recesses of my overly indulgent, sappy, introspective self. I could hide from it; I could turn the music off. Instead I go in and drown out the bird sound and wind and maybe even my co-workers, who knows, or any other that might want my ear. I'm thinking about you and you and you and me and me and me, all the additions and subtractions and possible conclusions of our meeting and matches. I can't stop smiling. This good fortune is killing me, but where's the off switch?

I think I'm gonna water it down. Lower this bar. Be philistine for my buddy Andrew over there in the Steel City. I'll board that plane next week and we'll see. For now, I'm thinking burgers and beer over in Oakland and maybe I'll talk a friend into watching a few innings of the Giants game. That's more like it...

In the parking lot

The security guard tells us to make our drinks disappear, hide them in our hoodie pockets, and drink them elsewhere. He points around the corner and as we walk away he says to our backs, "And I don't wanna see you two again with those." He's a nice guy and doesn't mean it. Sometimes we all do our jobs, as ridiculous as they are. We're at the Oakland Art Murmur, a first Friday of the month art walk with street performers, open galleries, and sidewalk food. I'm brown-bagging a tall boy High Life and my friend Leyla has a bottle of something better. She doesn't see the point of drinking cheap beer and honestly, I don't know why I do myself. Cheap beer is kind of noncommittal in its watery nature; maybe that's it.

We walk to the corner of a parking lot and sit down, her back against my shoulder, and look up to a windowless brick wall across Grand Avenue where they're projecting film shorts. This is a perfect moment. The last of the blue is fading quickly in the west and a sliver of moon hangs to the side of an apartment building, its shadowed side still lighter than the night sky. The day's warmth is radiating from the concrete. I don't really know this person I'm with though it feels like I do. She's a new friend. For whatever reason, we're talking about the white lies we've told one another so far. There's another conversation on our faces and in our eyes.

As we talk it strikes me that I often don't use my own words anymore, or at least when it matters. I think in songs and books and I think with the old repetitive voice in my head and its distant echoes of my youth and the people I parroted and the revisions I made upon their ideas. I tell her about it and wonder if she understands what I mean, and then I wonder if I even understand what it is I'm trying to say. I feel happy and can't stop smiling. This is a perfect moment and I don't know why.

I fell in love again.

All things go.

You might feel as if other people are still being pushier than necessary, but it may not disturb you today because you have found the courage to stand up for yourself. Your unshakable conviction is your secret weapon now; if you're in tune with your own purpose, then no one can come between you and your soul's destiny.

-Today's Horoscope

A big if there at the end, but I'll take it.

Weekend streets

The quiet weekend streets of this town ask me to walk down the painted lines or pedal my bicycle in lazy arcs. The leaves are fallen and blown and grown anew, the old faded skeletons picked up either by hand or that loud monthly truck that the signs warn of. New electric green leaves are bending lightly overhead. I'm on my way nowhere really. I have a couple lists in my pocket for grocery and hardware stores, the library and bank, for the corner liquor. It's my weekend and I have nothing to do but follow water with coffee and coffee with tea and juice and eggs. There's four cups back home holding different purposes.

The weekend warriors are parked elsewhere. How strange the way America's wealth manifested itself in the second and third homes of McCall, Jackson, Bend, and our beloved Tahoe. They're there now surrounded by their stuff. I can only imagine how many garage door buttons some people have on the passenger visor...

I'm still dreaming of my great escape, though every year that notion becomes a little more distant. As I near thirty I begin to truly feel assimilated, planted, and strangely content in this thin, imperfect skin. This body will do. Now what to do with it.

I'm the youngest of a philistine triad from the pacific northwest. We ran around like wild things and it's really a miracle we ever became socialized, civilized, functional. When I was young I acquired a secret strength drawn from items and acts. I would will it and use it for my own good and those that I cared about. I was reckless, fearless, and not afraid to fail because I assumed I would, that it was only a matter of time.

Some days, depending on his mood, my brother would let me dig through his dresser drawers and find some piece of clothing to borrow for the day. I felt older and more confident in his loose-fitting shirts and baggy shorts. I imagine now that I looked ridiculous or depending on the angle, like just another kid in his older brother's clothes, but to me in those moments I felt like a new person. I felt invincible. It changed my day, it determined my day. I still search for that feeling and sometimes I can find it in something like a new haircut or the final words of a novel, when I step out alone to see the night sky, or best when I'm driving and someone special has their hand on the back of my neck and just in that moment I feel I can finally stop being me and be us.

Take this longing

When I meet people I look in their eyes and wonder what they see and how they see me. I wonder how much they're here with me and how much they're off with a memory. And then I wonder if I could love them.

Sometimes when I'm thin and tired and still treading recklessly and gratefully in gladness away from the storm of melancholy, I think about that imperceptible line between under and overwhelming. Does that feeling just belong to me and people like me? Am I so fragile that like a baby I could laugh and cry in the same minute? Perhaps the only difference is now that I'm older, I'd be ashamed to show such opposing feelings in uninterrupted succession... but feel them all the same.

I've been dreaming in strange vivid movie sequences lately and it makes me wonder how my emotions are hardwired to chosen programming. Also makes it harder to take myself seriously. I think of Joel sitting on the morning train in Eternal Sunshine on the Spotless Mind, fidgeting in his seat, eyes moving between the passing scenery and faces on the car... catching the eye of a woman and thinking, Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention? Those ridiculous feelings... I have those, and I also have those internal rebuttals, constantly.

I'm asking, why you? Why do you make me feel this way. I don't even know you. I couldn't possibly love you. And yet, I do.

For me, forever ago

I couldn't find myself for weeks, maybe more. Never found that moment when I could check in with myself and see how things were going. I used to have that with tobacco, be able to step outside under the night sky and take a moment to reflect on the day and my play in it. Or at least that's the power I gave cigarettes and then took away. It's been three months since today...

This speed is dangerous, this speed is necessary. As I get older time moves faster and it seems I'm just as reckless as ever, perhaps only with a thicker skin now. Less apt to give a fuck if someone doesn't like who I am. I've always looked forward to that feeling. That and the patience and thoughtfulness of old-age.

This morning the sky was overwhelming. There was this thin line of cirrus clouds in wisps and billows spanning up from the desert southwest and us walking in ones and twos out by the San Joaquin delta. The richest shades of green bending in the breeze and an enormous herd of goats wandering up a hillside to the east. In front of us the river slow and steady on its way to the bay. Rails and pheasants hiding in the thickest thatches of grandelia and pickleweed, calling out sharp and clear in the morning air. I was zero and became less as the day passed.

I was thinking about the book I'm reading and how I might not make it through. Don't you hate it when in the end authors lose the feeling and tone of their entire book? It's as if they took six months off and came back without a clue. You can feel their unease and haste as they rush the final sentences, draw their characters into unlikely endings, trying to wrap it up and get that rag to the printer. It wasn't that good of a book anyway, but to lose himself like that... bummer. And it reminded me of me and how hard it is to hold that feeling there, the one you love, close to you. To see it through and make good of what you started. That's the hardest part.

The small windows into other's lives

I live across the street from a nursing home and in the evenings I hear the din of the kitchen and see the residents sitting illuminated around dining room tables. There's a couple there that I see regularly strolling the neighborhood blocks. In the early evenings they walk together, always in a clockwise direction around the home. She pushes a walker with tennis balls cupped to the feet and he typically walks half a step behind her with hands clasped behind his back and head slightly bent to the sidewalk. I can never tell if they're talking or only walking together in silence. At times he'll wave at me or we'll stop and discuss the weather or the gas-mileage of my car or the price of their first house down the street back before my parents were born.

There's something so bittersweet in watching them walk together each day. In this day and age when people so frequently pose knowledge as experience and everywhere today's youth caught in the grips of a self absorbed trying-too-hard culture... it gives me hope to see the lasting tenderness and patience in their daily ritual, the natural betrayal of their aging bodies, and the evolution of an enduring love.

I heard of a man
who says words so beautifully
that if he only speaks their name
women give themselves to him.

If I am dumb beside your body
while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips
it is because I hear a man climb stairs
and clear his throat outside our door.

— Leonard Cohen

Contrails. You left one too...

This is a repost on the thought of staying in the Bay Area... circa 2007
---

Above the patchwork of hued farmland and stricken cuts along the hillsides, veins scratched from logs dollied upwards. Metal jaws clamping and cinches loosed, the waiting trucks along the yellow-clay roadways. And my lorax northwest analogies... looking downward.

So far below and San Francisco a mile per second further behind. I'm leaving home and going home all the same, the same time. And poor Frank who i left nights back at that social/networking/drinking scene downtown amongst the lofts and industrial hangouts. I think of him and our philosophical discussion, bordering metaphysics and that whole pitfall of sugarcoatedness (which we miraculously sidestepped); his selfless confidence ringing. I always heard the confident tone; it sounds louder on my ears, i always could listen harder. You seem like somebody concerned with the idea of home, he said. I'd known him for only a few minutes. I was on a second glass of overpriced sauvignon blanc, my thirty-sixth hour of wakefulness, thirtieth hour of over-stimulation, fifteenth hour of pollyannaist ga-ga for the world and its inhabitants. The comfort of strangers... a few to mention.

Nearing Seattle, the lowering hum of engines aside me and the left wing stretching out toward the Pacific. I can see the mighty Columbia reaching the coast, its flat slow waters tamed with a shot of soma and hydroelectricity. Let's not save the world, I'm thinking. I'm done with anything even feigning that resolution. Maybe saving yourself... unlikely by abstraction alone, but feasible i guess... and at least acceptable.

Let's not worry that timing is everything. I still wanna hope that it was the right time, you know i do. And despite any leaning theory of governance and guidance, i don't wanna resign myself but rather push it in the direction of my hoped outcome. I'm not worried anymore if I'm lost or found. I'd like to be found, but it's out of my hands. And oh those Olympic Mountains... still white and starked with dark rocks and shadow. Enough to make me forget wholly any point i may have had. The only thing resounding is a sweet contentment...

Daydream #9

Each morning the northbound train carries an icy wind that cuts through my jacket and creeps up my pant legs and, as it leaves the tunnel my train arrives heading south along the tracks toward the City. We all know each other in way, standing in our rows each morning awaiting the same car and seat that takes us to an office somewhere. This is our routine- safety in the familiar; days bleed together. We don't talk, sometimes there's a nod. Many have their hands on devices, heads bent to a small screen, scrolling documents, social networking, who knows. Others thumb through the morning paper, middle-aged women proudly hold novels with rippling bare-chested men on the covers, lavender-colored with flowers and horses and rapturous looks. Others nod off with sorrow straining the lines aside their mouths, over-worked and underpaid, and as they fall asleep their faces relax and for a while they look peaceful.

I hide my eyes with sunglasses, turning away from the florescent overheads, and bury myself in other people's stories. And sometimes when I'm especially drawn I warp forward ten stops and nearly miss my station, wondering where the time went, where my sense of presence went. I was told that it's a form of self-induced hypnosis, when we lose ourselves in essentially non-thought. I like it, it feels restful and calm and I always wish to have stayed longer there.

These days I want to be a cowboy in Wyoming with rough-calloused hands and simple desires. I imagine a stretch of land, a small garden, and a few modest buildings that all need occasional tending. A fence needing mending or perhaps an old line of fence that needs removing to clear the corridor for the winter elk coming down from the surrounding peaks. Maybe there'll be a train there too, not so far away calling in the distance, not carrying these businessmen and women or semi-professional like me, but instead wood or coal, machinery, food. Everyone loves the sound of a train... I think you could say that, except perhaps the wildlife probably scared shitless somewhere in a hole. And then maybe a rocky stream with deep pools for fish and swimming. Yeah, that'd be good. I wonder if I could be happy with just greens and golds and square-dance swinging cowgirls on Friday nights at the grange. Everything, domestic. I'd like to think so, but I have to get to work now.

Dear M.

Dear M,

Four sets of seasons have passed and I’m still where I left you. I wanted to do the leaving and so I packed my things while you were out and left. I decided to stay here because there was really nowhere else for me to go. It also seemed to be the least predictable place to find me and I wanted to keep everyone guessing. It always came natural for me to run and I quickly set my sights on some mountains in the southwest where I’d never been before. It took all my strength to not go there.

I’ve been thinking about quantum physics and multiple universes lately, but the truth is I never took a physics class or read any credible writing on the subject and so I have a very limited understanding. I get that uni means one and multi means many. That was a big step. I understand that matter has some strict rules to follow and that its behavior is governed by outside forces. And, I also understand that math can have a mind of its own and imply answers to questions the mathematician never asked. That’s the part that most interests me.

The famous physicist Brian Greene was on the radio last month and then just yesterday I saw him on a talk-show. He recently wrote another quantum physics book that I’d never be able to get through but still sounds interesting. He thinks there are other us out there and pretty eloquently sold it.

I’ve been imagining that other mes just kept on going in those places where the me writing turned away and redirected. I was wondering if there’s a place way out by M83, millions of light years overhead on some planet that looks just like our's, where we went on together and still are. It doesn’t make any sense, yet then again what does? So many of our daily comings and goings are based on ridiculous assumptions of things impossible in nature. Like, why is your hair red? And what the hell is red anyway?

This isn’t to say I regret anything between us, because I do but that’s beside the point. I would prefer to strike the tenderness from my hand and dispassionately compare our situation to a simple cost benefit analysis or return on investment, which involves formulae and equations that probably added up to less than one. But I don’t understand economics or finances and so I wouldn’t know. I’m more into the natural sciences that touch on things like magnetism and repulsion and chemical weathering and survival.

So let’s just assume that there is in fact another M and she’s way out there by M83, having some discussion with an other me. Maybe she’s making two drinks at the kitchen counter and now she’s turning to bring them and the ice is clicking in the glasses as she moves. What’s different with her? She walks the short distance to a couch and coffee table with a few friends gathered around and hands the other me a drink, cold beads forming on the glass. And as she rejoins the conversation, I wonder, what is she going to say?

And precipitation is expected

My brother surprised me one time by raising a toast in my honor. I can't remember how he said it or what in fact he did say. I can't even recall the place or the occasion or the people around us. I do remember there was family and some kind of special occasion, perhaps a holiday altogether forgettable like the Chinese New Year or Easter.

He looked me in the eye, head half turned and bent with a mischievous spark and announced something like, I hope this year you don't hold any grudges. God, maybe it was the new year, Chinese or otherwise. Regardless, I thought, Wow! what the fuck did you just say? He was already laughing to himself, oh... that was a good one Benjamin. Because the truth was there, it was said, and it was dead on.

I hadn't really thought of it that way before. Goddamn, he was right! I'd always thought of my anger and rage as something dignified and gallant in its air of chivalry. Inconsiderate? then Fuck You! from here on out! Unfair, unsaid, unwanted? Well, there's the door. I have so much to learn.

I've been listening to some talks by this woman named Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun and teacher. She talks about the Shenpa, which is human attachment or the hook in all its strength. Shenpa is the tightness we feel stemming from negative reaction to the world around us. Pema observes that the majority of a person's actions directly relate to the fear of facing the void and the devising of a complex system of distractions and lockdowns to ensure it from happening. Shenpa represents that binding fear and she instructs us to face it, feel it, and revisit it, until it loses its power or dissolves. God I sound like such a cult member already! Still, I really relate to Pema, her voice and her way of understanding and explaining. I'm not typically interested in anything resembling religion or self-help or over the top new-agey. But, there's something about this Shenpa thing that gets me...

It's still early on a Thursday night, my Friday by product of four tens, and I find myself sipping a nightcap on the couch and feeling utterly enervated from the week. I've been mulling this idea of revisiting old wounds and wondering about the thin line between healthy recapitulation and straight indulgence. I have the Fear as Hunter Thompson would call it, with every part of my body repelling the inward pull. And so I sip this drink and distract myself. I write old friends and lovers unsolicited letters of greeting and recompense.

Medicated, baby

I've been nursing a bottle of off-brand dayquil since 5am this morning. The stuff tastes absolutely terrible. Think liquid orange Jolly Ranchers with a menthol twist. It's horrific, the stuff of gag reflex and daymares. But, it leaves me with a sense of peace... not to mention a false sense of reality. I somehow made it through an entire work week thanks to self-medication. I heard on the radio last week that Americans spend over three billion each year on cold medicine alone, both over the counter and by prescription. I don't know for a fact, but that's gotta be in the ballpark of some nations' GDP.

A sum of years back I remember having the most horrible date. It really was. I actually had to kick her out of my house. She was drunk and it brought all of her crazy out, all 110 pounds of it and she was hollering about something and I just had to wrap a coat around her shoulders and usher her down the stairs past the midnight eyes of my neighbors. My embarrassment was raging and I felt perfectly murderous. I took her keys and drove her home across town on one of those brutal cold winter nights in the northeast. You could hear tree limbs cracking beneath the weight of ice and snow, that kind of cold. Anyway, I tossed her the keys at the doorstep and started the trek home. I managed to pick up some pneumonia on the way home, walking those two long miles across town, but I did catch some flickering of the aurora which may have made it worth it. Say, how do you catch pneumonia? I should look that up.

Anyway, the point of the story is I felt pretty awful the following morning but managed to work my three jobs for two weeks until I finally just couldn't take it anymore. At which point I took myself to the hospital for a brisk $500 billing and a few pills to cure me. Thinking back, somehow I'd managed to function on a steady combination of phenyl and pseudoephedrine, with copious amounts of acetaminophen and dextromethorphan to balance out the highs. We're a medicated people. The type of people that don't think about rest but think about lost wages. I'm guilty too. And, I'm sleeping in tomorrow.

A new year.

I have a friend who deletes his Facebook account every few months. A week or two will pass and you can find him again re-upped to the network. It's interesting being a primate and seeing how a social animal reacts to the strange anonymity carried by technology and our expanding metropolis. It's cold out there. And, sometimes the greatest sense of loneliness comes in the company of others.

He’s been out in the world for some time now, going crazy in different rooms in different cities and states. It makes me think there's some needless shame in our modes of being, in knowing what brings us joy and a sense of ever-important connection, and the avenues of communication and distraction we choose. I think we all deserve the easier breath of a lowered bar and a little absolution for the high price of sanity.

It’s a new year and I have a good feeling about this whole 2011 thing. There's a song...

And all the bridges are burnin' that we might've crossed
But I feel so close to everything that we lost
We'll never, we'll never have to lose it again

I like that. I like that way of thinking. And that was 2010. Everything burned and my deepest loves and strongest supports to the structure crumbled around me.

I've been thinking about the concept of falling apart to come back together and coming back together better than before. I'm hoping it's a somewhat elegant process of restructuring and, perhaps rearranging of pieces to better suited spaces.

Here we go...