What I Wish I'd Written.

This morning the many lovely words I'd read rode through the hours. They held me together; they stood solid and deep in my head and took up space which might have otherwise been occupied by less interesting ideas. I giggled giddily over and over again. I floated through the morning serving lots of alcohol to very few people.

A group of 50 something women came in and drank a bunch of Grey Goose cosmopolitians and then wine and then sambucca and baileys and frangelico. They were a merry bunch, exchanging gifts and breaking glasses left and right. I liked them enough; they spent money and were pleasant, apologetic and thankful. Their gifts were rather frightening though. They made me cringe and look away. They traded different unnecessary house items. Raindeer shaped candle holders. Raindeer patterened hand towels- meant for show not for use. Different, ugly Christmas ceramic statuettes- not even ornaments- just things which sit on tables. The degree of unnecessary items was rather appalling.

Luckily, I also waited on a fellow whom I like a great deal. His name is George Lewis and I only recently realized that "George Lewis told the Englishman, the Italian and the Jew". He is a lover of Burgundy, like myself, and we had long and lovely talks about the hit or miss quality of Burgundy in general. We spoke of wine laws in MD and elsewhere and the fact that Burgundy is so full of independent vingerons as opposed to big company owners in Bordeaux. I love Burgundy. He gave me a beautiful glass of Gevery-Chamberin Serafin. It was a bit tart for noon but it was terribly fruity. I'm drinking a rather pleasant Burgundy now.

On the ride home from work I watched the trash on the street swirl around in circles, the leaves blew by and some of them got caught up in the whirlwind. I thought of the way things move in circles; I thought of all the many things swishing around chasing each others' tails. I got a letter this evening from someone I used to call "friend", someone I used to call "love". He sends me bitter, spiteful lashes through lazy, quick words. And they tear through me, with what little truth they hold.

He tells me I am scared to be alone. And I know I haven't been alone in some time. But, I also know it is not because I am scared but it is because I care for people so intensely and so deeply. He does not realize that it takes much more courage to open yourself up to people, to love people with everything you are than it does to simply be alone, to just suffocate in your own stillness. I would like to be alone. I think it everytime I spend more than three hours in my own company. I think I would be a very different person if I spent any significant time alone. But, I also am so bound to other people, so bound to other peoples' words. I am bound to so many dead people; I am bound to them by the words that they left, by the words that I love. They live inside me- as real as the people I make. They live alongside me- as real as the people who grow as I grow.

If only I didn't lose Fernando inside so many attempts at discovering myself. He seems to be hiding; I am trying to find him. But I am always writing about my own days and so his days stay in the shadows of what I wish I'd written.

Silent Piddling.

I have spent this day piddling about in silence. I cleaned up a bit and threw away piles and piles of things which I would be better off just donating but I'm too lazy to do it. I read Kafka's diaries in the bathtub and then sat down in the middle of my clean living room and stared at the floor. I am now listening to Art Blakey and chewing my nails. I have been letting things live through me instead of living them lately. It is a silly thing to do, simply watch yourself live out the days of your life. I feel that I am barely a backseat driver.

Perhaps it is partially due to a high consumption of alcohol but I still feel that my brain is smushed up inside my head and soaked with slime. I am looking for things to say but there is nothing to say. I let the days slip through my fingers. I drink myself into oblivion. I need to pull myself up by my bootstraps , give myself a swift kick in the ass. All of these diary like writings add up to very little. They are just small waves in a sea of emotion. I seem to have lost subjectivity. I am drowning in a sea of "I"'s. And I can see you on a small island, waving at me to swim back to you. But, I can't keep my head above water. Every time I have any significant amount of time to myself I become very depressed at how infrequently it happens. In order to know yourself you must spend time alone and I spend so little time alone that I cannot see myself reflected in my own actions, in my own words. I scramble around in a shell of myself, smiling and I forget about the part of me that used to read all the time and write all the time.

I used to be more people than I am now. I used to make them; I used to live inside them. I am still perpetually stuck inside Catherine and Gabriel and their last interaction. I would love to finish Gabriel, look it over, make it new. But, it is so dense with error and ridden with repetition. I am afraid to look at it. There are only a few sentences here and there, a few paragraphs left and write which give it any weight at all. But, perhaps I am being too hard on it. It was to be a novel. It had a beginning and an end. It was supposed to be A Happy Death but it went on for too long and became A Drawn Out Life. We pieced Fernando's fragments and tried to attach them to a human face, to a real person. But, I think we failed in many places. I do not write enough to fail. I must write and write and write and when I look back from some old age onto my youth I will be able to look back at pages and pages, at books, perhaps. I piled all my old notebooks in one place beneath the window of the living room. I flip through them and I can see myself become someone I meant to be. I can see all the deliberate changes which I talked myself into making. And they are the same as now. I am still telling myself to let my emotions take a back seat. I am still telling myself to write and write and write.

I am always losing written moments. I am always stranded between writing and living. I am convinced that the only thing to do is change, to move, to leave this land behind and find some inspiration in a different lifestyle. I am constantly stymied by all the ugly things I see, by having to see the same ugly things over and over. I walk down the street and there is a barrage of unpleasantness, of broken people and dirty places. I want to see something new. Even if it is different dirty, broken people and places.