Monday, May 31, 2010

In terms of psychic warfare

There is about 1/4th of Seattle that should consider themselves lucky tonight. This, the wettest & coldest Memorial Day weekend I can ever remember, at least they are not alone.
I've watched them in the bars all weekend long. Making out right there in the booth or filing two by two into the bathroom for a passion more private than the bar room allows. On cold rainy nights, it pays to not be by ones self. Even if it's just settling in for a few movies, cozy on sofas & kindred in mood.
Even my upstairs neighbor seems to be content this blustery weekend. I've heard the sounds of a porno tape running on an endless loop for the last three days. The moans resonating along the pipework between our apartments, His heavy footfalls beating their way to the bathroom every 20 minutes.
I am a lonely man, it's true. Even in a room of my closest friends I often times find myself cloistered in private thoughts, alienated from the discourse happening all around me.
 Perhaps this is the effluvia of being a writer. Of placing ones self into this situation to begin with.
Solitude is my currency. The eternal outsider, peeking in at other seemingly content lives.
It's wet & it's cold & it's supposed to be summer.
I want to meet a girl & I can't even remember how to.
These empty hours of the early a.m. eat away at my very being.
I put up blockades, I push people away, I am afraid of trust so I don't do it.
When I meet a girl these days we rarely get 3 drinks in before I'm thinking about
what is going to go wrong if we end up in a relationship. Questions like these go through my head:
"Is she going to smother me?" "require too much of my time?"
"does she have a drinking problem?" "Does she already hate me?"
The last girl I was seeing left a few months ago, we were together for over a year
but it wasn't until we weren't seeing each other anymore that I realized it wasn't much of a relationship to begin with.
There was no passion, no long kisses on bar stools or any public affection for that matter,
definitely no dirty bathroom sex. Or dirty sex at all
It was a very well behaved affair & quite frankly... It was boring.
There were boundaries & rules & manners. All things that I don't equate with passion
but I was trying something different, I wanted a healthy relationship for once in my life
& I suppose I had one, but I felt more alienated with her the longer we were together & that's not
how I thought it was supposed to work.

Now I'm trying to piece some semblance of satisfaction out of saloon conversation,
I'm going to bars almost every night again. I don't know where else to meet girls
& even when I'm tired or cant afford it. I can't skip a night & run the risk of that one night
being the one that got away.
I know... Real healthy right?
But meant kisses are like a drug sweeter than any powder or elixir
& it's been so damned long since I've tasted that hunger. I fiend for it like a fix.

Everything in my gut tells me that if I want to be a good writer, I must suffer for my craft
Sacrifice my heart to it like an Aztec ritual. That I will be a perpetual outsider
an outrider to the warm orange glow of human happiness.
The best stanzas are writ with just as much blood as ink
solitude is my office space. Soliloquy my only conversation.
I'm not exactly sure where the notion that a writer has to suffer comes from

Probably in the beginning. Plath being the first writer that ever made me want to try it myself
I knew her biography. There is an authenticity to a work like the Bell Jar that needs no
acid test to prove it. From Plath into Sexton & her tragic career.
It seems like she took on the responsibility of suffering for the sake of selling books
For the sake of staying credible. Anne's audience didn't want her happy & content. Churning out safe sonnets in her later years & growing old with her children. They wanted the mania. Voyeurs to the volatile vehemence that her mental anguish fostered. They lived vicariously through it, & they still do.
In a more banal way. I guess that tv show My So Called Life had a little to do with it.
My favorite episode was always the "Mr. Racine"(I wouldn't get the pun in his name until years later)episode.
Where Angela & her friends get a new creative writing teacher & he sparks the wild desire of self expression in all of them before ultimately being fired for going too far.
Angela tracks him down outside of school & his life is a shambles. Going from job to job in his beat up little MG, his newest wife filing for a divorce. That, to me seemed authentic.

It is time for band practice, I will finish this later. We have 3 more shows booked for the summer
& it looks to be a busy one.

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I'm open to feedback, but remember this is a diary. Most of these posts are first drafts and as such are unedited. Editing & revising my posts would negate the purpose of this blog for me. Thanks.