Dec. 10, 2009.

December 10th is the day I leave Vegas for ever.  The city is very anti-spiritual, a master in taking one away from himself.  December 10th is the beginning of my spiritual life.  No spirits can grow here. 

Leaving the Back Door Open.

When the weather is nice, there is something beautiful about leaving the back door open all day, walking in and out at ease. 

Fever without Significance.

From:
Kierkegaard on the Couch.

"An individual in despair despairs over something. So it seems for a moment, but only for a moment; in the same moment the true despair or despair in its true form shows itself. In despairing over something, he really despaired over himself, and now he wants to be rid of himself. For example, when the ambitious man whose slogan is “Either Caesar or nothing” does not get to be Caesar, he despairs over it … precisely because he did not get to be Caesar, he cannot bear to be himself."

Classifying Human Experience, #347.

I'm beginning to see two types of experience.  Binary and non-binary.  Gambling is binary.  You are either up or down, and so you are feeling either good or bad.  Sex, you are either having it or you're not.  And so you are feeling either satisfied or unsatisfied.  Drinking, you are either sober or drunk, here or not here.

But other kinds of experiences offer more options than those of a light switch.  A movie, a book, music, talk, engage and you are taken on safari.  The experiences they offer cannot be clumped into on or off, light or dark.

Usually, it seems, binary experiences are more visceral.  They do not appeal to the intellect.  We go there for thrills, escape, adrenaline.  We go to non-binary experiences when we are better able to live with ourselves.

Fever without Significance.

From:
Kierkegaard on the Couch.

"An individual in despair despairs over something. So it seems for a moment, but only for a moment; in the same moment the true despair or despair in its true form shows itself. In despairing over something, he really despaired over himself, and now he wants to be rid of himself. For example, when the ambitious man whose slogan is “Either Caesar or nothing” does not get to be Caesar, he despairs over it … precisely because he did not get to be Caesar, he cannot bear to be himself."

The Worth of My Own Discipline.

I feel that I am on the border of two possible lives.  I could continue to strive for connections, love, peace, success, family, continue to follow the mandates of my human nature.  Or I could go Buddha.  More and more I see slim chance for the co-existence of spirituality and human nature.  To keep living as I am means that I will keep striving, which is the same as saying I will keep failing, keep feeling disappointed, lonely, isolated, a stranger.  It means I will keep dreaming of some ultimate escape, some way to forgo myself, my essence, as I keep failing.

And I feel close to going Buddha, but one thing that prevents me is the fear that I will be "missing out."  The fear that I will be misspending my youth.  I do not feel comfortable abandoning those things--women, drinking, gambling--that make life so beautiful.  And now we come back to (how appropriate) the game of risk.  I can save myself the pain of losing by opting not to sit at the table, but the cost of this is the lack of winnings, of beauty.

Part of me feels that I am afraid of indulging in my human nature not for any principle, but for fear of losing.  In other words, the spiritual life is not attractive qua spiritual life, but as a way not to lose.  Just as I sleep sometimes not because I'm tired, but to escape that painful tediousness of consciousness.

Part of the problem now, I know, is temptation.  I am utterly unleashed, and no one knows how I spend my time.  I am free to go out and drink every night if I choose.  I need to learn that empty pursuits lead to emptiness.  I don't claim to be better than anyone.  The man on the corner of Sahara and LVB is interested in the same things I am.  I just have more money.

Ultimately what I need is a way to reconcile spirituality with beautiful, cheap pursuits that allow my human nature to breathe.  To make compatible that "private reconciliation" with all the things that make life too beautiful.  And the answer needs to be self-discipline.  The losing becomes too much when I am too greedy.  I still need to learn to trust in the Code, the prescriptions, but ultimately, the worth of my own discipline. 

And then sometimes, of course, it's all shit.  I am too greedy.  I should stop writing, stop thinking, stop caring so much about my own petty destiny.  And just help people.  And this will be my life.  Or, I see homeless men at the library, old men, dirty, one today, copying equations from a math textbook.  And it astounds me.  How these men can be happy with so little.  How these poor, broken men have figured it out, and I am still struggling.  My admiration for them is immense.  But again, I know these thoughts are only a function of my lack of discipline. 

Gambling Alone.

I hadn't planned on gambling last night.  In fact, I swore that I wouldn't.  I ended up winning, though, which somehow makes it OK, and now I swear again that I won't go back, though I know that I will.

Addiction is addiction, we know, but last night I didn't care.  I didn't care if I broke my promise, or lost all my money.  My desire was to forget myself, and I did. 

One theory of spirituality states that the spiritual consciousness is one that only experiences the present moment without judging, analyzing, contemplating, discerning.  If there are two parts of consciousness--the experiencer and the thinker--the spiritual man knows only the former.

And gambling does that.  There is a pure, vibrant connection between the gambler and the next card, the next roll, the ball about to come down.  And so in one sense we could say gambling is a spiritual activity.  We could say it quenches that parched desire for spirits.  But it is also immensely destructive.  It consumes and consumes, and when I come home all I am left with is more or less.

Every Passing Moment.

Today I taped the quote "Every passing moment is another chance to turn it all around" to my laptop.  Which makes me realize just one of the many, I'm sure, implicit assumptions I've been living with: that my life up until this point has been wasted, lived awry, in-authentically, inefficiently.  And that at some point in the future there is the possibility of "turning it all around," which would mean living authentically, happily, creatively, free of inhibition, waste.  And every moment after this point will be perfect, polished, shiny. 

Wilson & Tolle.

Of course there is a division between the creative life and the practical life.  The practical life demands eating, resting, and worst of all it has feelings.  And it seems these feelings are made worse by their own existence.  If the creator could unmoor himself from everything practical, the creative life could flourish, and there'd be no feelings to tend to.

For so long it seems I've been trying to fix something that I cannot hold.  I come here to try to see what it is that needs fixing, but I can never quite contain it long enough to find a solution.  Symptoms, I can see.  I see that it is hard to create when my feelings are not right, when I am not healthy.  I see that I want to cry sometimes, not for any grievance but for relief of some tension inside, something mounting.

Perhaps the isolation is not the problem itself but is the thing that allows all the existential thought patterns.  The problem, I'm sure, is one of existentialism.

There always need to be fresh starts.  I screwed up the past, the past is sloppy, and now starting at this precise second the future will be pristine, and that way I can look back and say my life has been clean since that second.

But I'm concluding now that I cannot fix any of it.  I have been using my own means for 10 years, and I haven't gotten anywhere.  I am now reading Bill Wilson, then Eckhart Tolle.

Every day I gape, amazed at the control that rewards have over my life, the extent to which I am driven by mere appetite.  It is both tragic and beautiful to be so utterly unfastened, floating, bobbed about the city by the white caps of appetite.

An Old, Sweet Song.

They say half the smoker's fix comes from the mere sensation of the cigarette in his mouth.  There is a tension that mounts, recently, and I go to the Palace, the icy Jack & Coke, my cigarette.  The double straws, the dew on the glass, the smell of whiskey, and finally I can go home.  Don't say I've made a mistake coming out here because I know already that my existence here is defined by thinking of certain people, places, times of the past, finding my way out of blinking mazes late at night, doing math in my head to justify habits, lying in bed, wondering if cocktail waitresses are more than legs.

Jung's Red Book.

Click.

"Disorientation begets creative thinking."

Click.

Biking in 2nd Person.

A beach bike will be ridden on the beach, slowly, or through shore towns, by old people on summer evenings. A mountain bike's tires are studded and will be taken through the hills to emerge muddy and sore. Road bikes are built for speed and can be lifted with my pinky. A BMX does tricks.

In any case, the style of bike, it seems, says what the rider can or cannot do in any circumstance. The engineer builds the bike for certain kinds of maneuvers, and the rider chooses the bike based on the maneuvers it can perform.

In 2nd person: You need to pick out the bike from the store and ride it home with confidence in its design, with pride in its design, while you're prizing its design, loving its design, with an impervious certainty that its design will hold up and get you through whatever you need to get through.

Accounting.

Mornings are becoming a time to recover, to regroup. And this is becoming a cycle for me. I am one person in the morning and another at night. Each morning I recover from who I was the previous night, right myself.

There has to be a way it can work, a way for my project of life to produce a satisfying product. A. has said many times to embrace the randomness of life. Of course life is random, but my instinct is always to systematize, probably because of some underlying fear--the fear of anomie, of meaninglessness. The fear that the ball will land on red instead of black as I am standing with my hands clasped behind my back, embracing randomness.

The thing I am scared of, the fear I cannot forget, is wasting my time--not the wasting of it in and of itself, but all the terrible, existential crap shoots the wasting implies. And sometimes random occurrences, feelings, whims, notions end up wasting my time. Ultimately I want some assurance that my life is not susceptible to being wasted.

The supposition is that the wasting wouldn't be allowed to happen if only I had faith in my design, my identity, my Code. Though for some reason this is difficult to do on my own, with no one here to confirm the faith, to hold the balloon, prevent me from floating into the nether regions of space.

Which means I still have not yet learned to be accountable to myself. And this explains the lists and grids. I think that being accountable to the grid is the same as being accountable to myself, but it is not. Still, I am not there yet. I can see it, catch glimpses of its texture, imagine what it feels like, but I am not yet practiced at it.

Roses.

Was it something I said
Or something I did

Did my words not come out right?

The Whole Nola Trip.

The whole Nola trip needs to be seen as an isolated event, like a fishing trip, a roller coaster ride. It happened and now it's over, sealed in the past. It was enjoyed, like fishing or roller coasting is, and its value doesn't change now just because it's done. There were no expectations. I knew the odds when I began playing. Now I am responsible for those odds.

Erikson, again.

Young Adulthood: Intimacy vs. Isolation (20 to 34 years)

• Main Question: "Am I loved and wanted?" or "Shall I share my life with someone or live alone?"
• Ego quality: Love
• Related Elements in Society: patterns of cooperation (often marriage)

Description:
In this stage, the most important events are love relationships. Intimacy refers to one's ability to relate to another human being on a deep, personal level. An individual who has not developed a sense of identity usually will fear a committed relationship and may retreat into isolation. It is important to mention that having a sexual relationship does not indicate intimacy. People can be sexually intimate without being committed and open with another. True intimacy requires personal commitment. However, mutual satisfaction will increase the closeness of people in a true intimate relationship.

Erikson believes we are sometimes isolated due to intimacy. We are afraid of rejections such as being turned down or our partners breaking up with us. We are familiar with pain, and to some of us, rejection is painful; our egos cannot bear the pain. Erikson also argues that "Intimacy has a counterpart: Distantiation: the readiness to isolate and if necessary, to destroy those forces and people whose essence seems dangerous to our own, and whose territory seems to encroach on the extent of one's intimate relations" (1950).

Box.

I tend to put myself in boxes. I think, I am sad today, and for the rest of the day I will therefore be sad. I need to think, I am sad at this moment, but the next moment may be different.

Atwood.

This is why men are so sad, why they feel so cut off, why they think of themselves as orphans cast adrift, footloose and stringless in the deep void. What void? she says. What are you talking about? The void of the Universe, he says and she says Oh and looks out the window and tries to
get a handle on it, but it's no use, there's too much going on, too many rustlings in the leaves, too many voices, so she says, Would you like a cheese sandwich, a piece of cake, a cup of tea? And he grinds his teeth because she doesn't understand, and wanders off, not just alone but Alone, lost in the dark, lost in the skull, searching for the other half, the twin who could complete him.

Then it comes to him: he's lost the Female Body! Look, it shines in the gloom, far ahead, a vision of wholeness, ripeness, like a giant melon, like an apple, like a metaphor for breast in a bad sex novel; it shines like a balloon, like a foggy noon, a watery moon, shimmering in its egg of light.

Catch it. Put it in a pumpkin, in a high tower, in a compound, in a chamber, in a house, in a room. Quick, stick a leash on it, a lock, a chain, some pain, settle it down, so it can never get away from you again.

Horror Scenes.

Ultimately I am trying to find a system for living so that I'm not constantly experimenting, learning, so I can just wake up and do it without thinking about how I should be doing it. Though, of course, this is paradoxical, because life is not a system. Life is random, but I am trying to make it not random. I am trying to make it decided, settled, nothing to think about.

My goal is to be happy. My goal is to get out of bed with ease. Most of the time I can do this on my own. I can go to casinos and walk around or sit by the pool and read and I am happy. But every so often I am blinded by flashes of horror, of reality, that I am entirely alone, precarious, that no one is looking--that I am not "special."

And how do I deal with this. I try to make life a system so that I will not have to face the dread, the angst, of existential decisions. When that doesn't work, I distract myself, but of course that doesn't fix anything. More and more I see that identity needs to be both the solution and the problem. I feel alone because no one is inside of me, and so of course it will be horrifying whenever I catch glimpse of the interior, my internal reality.

Form, Content, & the Search for Assurance.

As a little kid I remember doing things on my own. I went fishing, I made a canoe. These activities absorbed me, and when I woke in the morning, I'd actually be excited to do these things. This was my spirituality.

When I was a runner, I'd record my runs in my log book. Now I write with a timer. When I am done writing, I record how long I've written. I do it for the sake of accountability. I write not so much because I enjoy the act of composing, but rather for the finished product. When I made a canoe, I did it not only for the finished product but also for the joy of the making. I did not use a timer.

Writing is not spirituality. I don't have any single activity anymore that constitutes spirituality. For the past two years I've been writing about spirituality, the Code, etc. At one point I said that spirituality is the Code. Well, OK, but now I am seeing that the Code is only the format, not the content.

Again, I am re-posting Didion:

To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out – since our self-image is untenable – their false notion of us.

To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

This is her definition of spirituality. On 11/26/07 I wrote this on ComePassion:

Getting in touch with your spiritual side means coming to terms with your Self and why you are here, relying on nothing but that which you can jury-rig from the raw materials in your mind, whether it be religion, southern Creole, Dobro guitar, writing pulp fiction, or mining for pineapples under the sea. It means learning how to be independently happy, how to keep yourself company, how to look on the inside instead of the out, how to find an inner entity to which you can be accountable. The spiritual man acts for and depends on not the Other but only his Self, holding himself to self-forged standards, being his own God's eye. In doing this, he is granted a species of peace wholly immune from the chaos that flares through the universe.

This is the closest I've come to a comprehensive definition. What it comes down to, the key element, is having a Self that you hold at the highest value, a Self in which you have the utmost confidence, a Self with standards for others to live up to, not the other way around. This is the content. The Code is simply the format.

Now. There has also been a lot of confusion recently about the relationship between the search for assurance and the search for spirits--readers have been flooding my inbox, asking me to clarify this point.

The "search for assurance" refers to the search for girls. A girl like C is fun to be with, pretty to look at. But she does not assure me. I don't feel that I can trust her, tell her things, be myself around her. I don't trust that she will like me unconditionally, that she will always be there, that she will continue to want me. And so I have no assurance.

And so, it is good to have assurance, and perhaps we are justified in looking for it, but what I'm concerned with is the need for it. If we need that assurance--if we cannot be indifferent to the lack of it--if we need someone to want us, like us, then it means our Self is not complete on its own, and how can we value/have confidence in something that is not complete? The need for assurance represents insecurity, the opposite of spirituality. Naturally we want to be wanted--it is a good feeling--but to need that feeling is unhealthy.

Likewise, the need to be with lots of different girls represents the need to be wanted by lots of different girls, which again represents insecurity. It means that we need a confirmation from other people that the Self is valuable, and spirituality does not entail confirmation, approval from others.

Blowing Loose.

It is the dangling that scares me. I can go anywhere in the city tonight, any crevice, any hole, or I can leave the city entirely, and it will be of no consequence to anyone. No one will recognize me or remember my face, no one will expect me. When I come home no one will be waiting up. Or I could stay at the bar all night, and no one there would know.

I have come to decide that it is not insecurity or lack of spirituality that invites the snakes--but sheer loneliness.

And when my balloon isn't tethered to anything, it takes me up and away, around, wandering. And from that altitude I can witness flashes of horror around me, the snakes, the vastness.

A child at Disneyland accidentally loses grasp of his balloon and up it floats, instantly out of his control, too late now, and he watches it drift away. It becomes smaller, tiny, the nylon tie blowing loose. He can only watch at this point, knows not where it's going, but knows it is leaving this world. Soon it will be a speck, and soon unwanted, unneeded, free to roam the outer stratosphere, its tie dangling through the nothing. The horror is that at some point the child will forget the balloon ever existed.

The Horror.

I am sitting down to write again, the first attempt in five days, but my mind is whirling.

I arrived back home yesterday from New Orleans and the gyre is now out of control. Things are spinning, scurrying, randomly. Again the need is a need to define. I need to know. I need to know what I think of her, how she feels about me, how the future will be. This affects my identity, and identity affects spirituality.

A snake is preventing me from feeling OK until I've decided. A snake writhing around the consequence of a wrong decision, the horror that I am alone here every day and have nothing to do but chores. That I am nothing to this city, that no one knows who I am, and that no one here expects me to be anywhere at any certain time. I've been here for almost 2 months, and there are a full 2.5 months ahead of me before I can go back home. I go to the Golden Nugget at night, sit by their pool and read.

Certain choices in life, I am learning, I make based on the possibility of regret. C is one of them. I don't know if I feel any special attraction to her, though I might regret letting her go. But again, it's impossible to move in this world without making waves that will lap against my identity. I think of a fictional version of my friend J, or maybe someone I saw in a movie, the Hero who has the girl only as a mantelpiece. And this is all a girl can ever be for him, because his sense of self is strong, his identity, like cooled magma. He doesn't need her to be any certain person because he doesn't rely on her. She exists only as accessory.

It was a Saturday in New Orleans, and we checked into the M- Hotel, often billed as the nicest hotel in the city. Valet parking only, a jacuzzi and granite in the bathroom, crown molding on the ceiling. I took a candid of her as she put make-up on in the bathroom, and at night her hair smelled like fruit.

Again the idea comes to me that an entire lifetime can pivot on a single night. That there needs to be a mountaintop in every lifetime, and from that point on it might only get worse.

Cosmo.

Part of what the Code means is that you live not just one day at a time, but one moment at a time. Which means, I'm not going to live differently tonight because of what will happen tomorrow. If I am sleeping in my car, this is no excuse. If I am taking a plane tomorrow, this is no excuse. The values hold strong, the prescriptions don't change. The Hero is cosmopolitan. He feels at home wherever he happens to be, with whoever he happens to be with. He is the same person regardless of external circumstance.

Nothing is whimsical for the Hero. His life is consistent. Everything is settled. Things do not depend on what might happen. They depend on his own self-discipline, the only reliable value. He makes them happen. This means that he is never anxious, never uncertain, uneasy about the future, because the future depends on him, not anyone else. He knows that he will always act the same regardless of the scenery. And so, because of this confidence in his Code of action, he is able to live one moment at a time, focus on now, rather than tomorrow.

He is never tested. He is never going into a test. This is the security of his Self, his Code. He relies on the Code in all situations. The Code does not adapt to the situation. The Code settles everything, precludes the need for any decisions. And if there are no decisions to be made, there can be no test.

He trusts in the code--whether it "works" or not is irrelevant.

Writing is Hard.

The reason it has become hard for me to write is that it is no longer rewarding. I've taken the rewards out of the pie. I sit down and write as if the words are for someone else. As if I am ghostwriting. And so it becomes a chore. I feel as though I am writing according to some manual, writing about something I feel I should write about rather than what I want to write about. But the fear is that the writing becomes self-centered, self-indulgent because naturally I will "want" to write about things that relate to me.

The Use of Time-Management Strategies.

(Claim 1) There is a gap between the Ideal Self and the Actual Self.

(Claim 2) Time management strategies will bridge the gap.

(Claim 3) The bridging of the gap will curb feelings of insecurity.

(Claim 4) The elimination of insecurity will solidify my identity.

(Claim 5) A firmer identity will lead to increased happiness.

(Claim 6) Happiness is a desired condition.

(Conclusion) The use of time management strategies is justified.

I can almost see this fostering some blinding, task-oriented Orwellian ethos in which the only important thing in society is getting things done.

The Code is Definitive.

It is hard to make myself do things. There is a basic divide I am starting to see, one between that which I would make myself do if I had a remote behind a mirror, and that which I myself actually do.

There are so many ways to see this. I could frame it with time. We are here for a finite amount of time, and I am worried that I will not get everything done before I have to go. The days seem countless. Whether I want them to or not, they come one after the other, always in perfect succession, but it's an illusion, that they're countless, and that they'll always come.

More and more, though, it always comes down to fabric. I am always wanting to frame issues like these in terms of fabric. My mind uses threads to weave:

1. Time. I am wasting my time on earth, I am deluding myself about being a writer, and how can I better spend my time?
2. Self-actualization. Where do I stand in relation to some threshold where I would be actualized, living my values, goals, potential--how far below it am I, and why am I scared of reaching it?
3. Girls and sex. Always. How my appreciation of these things defines my identity. How my identity hinges on the way I can or can't relate to the opposite sex, the way I can or can't rein my desire.
4. Self-discipline. How I can and can't make myself do certain things, and the implications of each. And of course, all the distractions. Those, too.
5. Self-respect and spirituality. If I let myself do X, what effects will it bear on my self-respect, and how will those effects effect my identity and therefore happiness?

And what is it that I am looking for here? All of these threads in my fabric are some type of worry. I am looking for some type of assurance. Some definitiveness. Which is why the Code is so attractive. Live by Code and you are made, you are taken care of. Everything is settled.

Distractions are a bigger deal than they purport to be. I do not mean the phone ringing. I mean moving to a new state, or someone coming from New Jersey to visit, or looking for a job and apartment at the same time. These are black holes, though lesser distractions can be just as consuming. Tiredness, email, and casinos are terrible. Girls are like the plague.

Usually its newness justifies being distracted by it. When I booked the flight to New Orleans, I didn't have to write that night because going to NOLA was a once-in-a-lifetime. My mind was aflutter with the new identity caused by deciding to visit her, and so it wouldn't have been any good to try to write. This is different than allowing myself to watch TV, a distraction which stands as a chronic, cyclical temptation.

I can work with Jenya because she is there next to me and so I am accountable. But sitting at my desk here alone, no one is watching. I've never brought the cat in my room before, and so that could be a justified distraction. I could go get her from the house and bring her into my garage-room, and this would be OK because it is not part of a cycle--it's justified in that...it probably won't happen again. It will be isolated, and so it is OK.

Literary Modernisms.

I sat in on a class at UNLV last Monday called Literary Modernisms. It was the second class of the semester, and very reassuring. The professor called roll, and we gauged him by the way he accounted for mispronounced names (Does he apologize? Does he care enough to ask the student for the correct pronunciation of her name? Or, is he a decent human being?).

I volunteered to read The Lake Isle of Innisfree, and then he played Yeats' reading, which made me a foil of sorts. It seems that my reading was "wrong," as I failed to capture that organic rhythm, that lifted note at the end of each line so central to Yeats' philosophical position.

At the end of class, the professor referenced plans for "next week," but of course next week is Labor Day--we have off--and three or four students simultaneously pointed out his error.

These Black-Eyed Snakes.

On one of our hikes last month I told Christine there are only two things that excite me anymore--two loves--and she was able to guess both in 20 seconds.

I try every day to mechanize life, to systematize. I write things in booklets and on calendars. There are logbooks, folders in my email, scraps of paper with important words. There are lists. I'm going on ten years now, ten years fending off black-eyed snakes that slither up and take over at night. Ten years, and I still think the lists can do something. Yet I can't count the number of times I've made a list of what I should do every day, a list below it of distractions that might prevent me from doing those things, and a list below that of how I will prevent those distractions.

And then--will I let the snakes win, or will I take pride in my ability to overcome them, use that pride to fortify my identity, self-respect. The question comes to me while driving. It is much easier to let them slither up as I lie there and feel sorry for myself, but the next day I don't ever want to feel like that again. It's a question of attitude, of modus operandi, a question with monumental implications, as the answer defines my identity.

The lists lend the illusion that I have some control over my life, my direction. In return I feel as if I'm putting my life to some use, which gives me some strength, allows me to go. Inevitably the snakes always win, though. Sooner or later they find a way up through my trousers, around my neck, and I fall off for a while, the bottom of the cycle, and then I make new lists.

I'm having a lot of trouble with the transitoriness of things, as I've said before, which is why I tend to fall off. I have trouble with the fact that things end, and I feel as if I'm the only one who has trouble with it, a desperate fish in a sea of everyone else's impartiality. Which makes me angry at romanticism, at all notions of perfection, stories with happy endings. I have trouble replacing.

The snakes come when I dwell, I've noticed, and I'd like to be one of those other fish, the kind that don't care, the ones who can keep moving, the John Wayne fish, fanning their tails, never looking back. Though the dogs of loyalty start to snap at me when I get this idea, growling about betrayal, about me turning away from something pure.

You can make yourself make lists, but you can't make yourself follow them because of the very premise on which they are designed to operate: They attempt to short-circuit the natural by-ways of human motivation and reward. In other words they are designed to fail.

Only two things, I told her, and tonight as I walked down Fremont Street I understood for the first time that Col. Slade loves women and Ferraris not because he needs them--not because he lacks spirituality, needs to rely on the external--but because his appreciation of them runs deep enough to carve the gorge--a natural process that involves no short-circuit.

Which means I also realized for the first time that my lists are attempts to replace an external dependence with internal disciplines. Attempts to make me feel like my life is on track, and if my life is on track, then I won't need anything from anyone. The revelation, ultimately, here, Can someone's spirituality still be intact if he needs something external? The answer for Col. Slade is yes.

The difference, though, is that he's one of the ones who can keep moving, a John Wayne fish, an ability that stems from his spirituality, allows him to need his women while keeping his spirits.

Didion on Growing Up.

"That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in face irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it."

On Book Reviews.

How it usually works is I go through a distracted phase, and all the book reviews pile up in my inbox. Eventually there are 5-6 weeks' worth, and I'll pick an empty Sunday and bang through them all. Of course I could just delete them and pick up with next week's, but I never do.

Happiness is inextricably linked to identity, it seems. And if I am what I do, then happiness is also linked to my actions--to things like reading book reviews.

Ultimately the principle is just a spoke in the wheel that is self-actualization. This is the ultimate goal, consciously or unconsciously. I want to read book reviews because I want to fulfill potential. If my abilities--not my actual doings, but the things I am able to do--are a plastic shopping bag, I am constantly wanting to fill the bag with water.

When the bag is empty, I can feel it flapping in the breeze, twisting. And this bothers me somehow, lowers me into a hole.

On Discipline.

There are two types of discipline. There is cold-turkey discipline, which means you get out a pen and write down precisely what you need to do each day. If you run short one day, too tired, too lazy, whatever, it's over. Throw away the list.

Second, there is massaged discipline, which is when you have a idea in your head of what you should be doing, and some days you can convince yourself into doing it, but when you don't, when you put it off until tomorrow, the song continues, whiny, slowed down like a record at half speed, but still turning.

Just now I am understanding the relationship of these disciplines to spirituality. For the venture to be successful, you need to have a coherent, vivid vision not of yourself but of your Self. Forgo the discipline, the Self dissolves, the vision is impossible.

Half of the problem is the forces. Tiredness, loneliness, laziness, boredom. I wouldn't have guessed it'd be hard to make myself read a book. But these forces are older and wiser than I, a fruit basket from evolution.

The other half is God's eye. With no spirituality, I have no accountability. There are no consequences. No one is watching.

Gratitude.

"He found that the hands of most lepers were anesthetized, and at church watched a blind leper compensate for his disabilities...by reading the Bible in Braille with his tongue."

Slade & Goodall.

For Col. Slade, she doesn't have to be any certain race, creed, or color. It doesn't matter what body type or strain of hair, he appreciates her as a woman, which means he appreciates her on her own terms, in her own land, in the same way that, say, Jane Goodall developed a love for every one of the chimps, regardless of their personality or status.

Inventory.

The invisible correlation is that between writing and being OK with my situation, which is not happiness, but a prerequisite. There is no hard evidence that writing every day without fail is necessary for happiness, or even for being OK with my existence. It is something I learn only after months of neglect, months of busying myself with other pursuits. The discomfort comes from identifying with an activity but not doing it as much as I think I should.

When an addict is in recovery, part of the 12 steps is taking inventory of the people he's harmed and making amends. The process allows the addict to take responsibility for his actions, which restores self-respect, which allows the addict to start building again.

Of the past 232 days, I've worked on my book 117, which is 50.4%, which is pitiful. Most of the off days were in the past three months. These numbers may be skewed, as I'm not counting journal entries, which sometimes yield material for the book. If I were allowed to make excuses for these past few months, though, I could say that I moved twice, had to find two new jobs, an apartment, and was severely distracted by a girl. But this is how the rest of my life will be.

Even if my life is in constant flux, I should be able to work on my book for an hour a day, if not four. For Hemingway the only reliable quality a man could count on was his self-discipline, his ability to make himself do things. Do it now, because when you're dead you're dead.

The Snows of Bellagio.

I sat in the lobby at the Bellagio today and read The Snows of Kilimanjaro. It was a mistake, as I'd suspected, not the choice of story, but the choice of location. The world is ruled by image, but nowhere as intensely as in Las Vegas, and nowhere in Vegas as intensely as in the Bellagio. Amazing how money brings good looks, too, or is it the other way around. Never have I seen such good looking people, and they made me sad.


Ed is a 68-year-old man who lives in my house, which he shares with me, a married couple, and Mac, a 40-year-old half-bred overweight overnight security guard. Ed is a cashier at a gas station, and on his way home each night he stops at the Palace Station Casino to place his wagers on the ponies. I come through the house and he is yelling at the TV, no names, just numbers, 3-9, you bastard, 9, get up there, here it is, there you go, 3-9, 3-9, come home. He explained to me that you have to watch their ears as they're warming up, their ears and their gait. This one, look at his stride, he said, he looks a little sore. I'd stay away from him. A fencepost of Miller in his hand, and tomorrow morning the can will be crushed in the trashcan, and he will be gone.

Hobo Harry, I'll call him, lives on the corner of LVB and Saraha, in the sun. He is a white man but his skin is the color of an Apache, almost brown, even, from living on the corner. He is the archetypal homeless man, a beard, scraggly hair, dirt smeared on his face as if he were playing the part in a Broadway musical. I see him each morning walking up to car windows, signaling for money. One lady this morning gave him a dollar, rolled her window up, and then he made a signal like he was drinking from an imaginary cup. The window came down again and she handed him a can of Monster energy drink. The window goes up as soon as he takes it, he walks back to the curb with his drinking money, the light changes, and Hobo Harry is gone, too.


I learned the word travertine this morning, and then saw a sample of it a few hours later in the Bellagio as I looked up from The Snows. The trashcans in the lobby are made of travertine. It's not a flagrant stone, does not yell, but is a highly regarded building material in the world of architecture for its subtle beauty. Many guests, however, walked by without notice. They were more interested in the Dale Chihuly glass-flower ceiling, the botanical gardens, the Ferris wheel, the parakeets, the mosaic floor.


There is a feeling that comes when I am alone in a crowded place, a place where people come with friends and family, especially when it's a pretty place, peopled with pretty faces. The fancy things don't mean anything, and I am a third party. It's them, the glass flowers, and me. They are looking at the flowers, and I look at them looking at the flowers with their travel companions. I wonder where they're from, what they do, how they're related, the one guy in sunglasses who looks like a mobster, if he's someone famous, or maybe a real mobster. They don't see me because they're busy looking at flowers while also pointing and exclaiming, making sure their companions see flowers.


And so I am left alone to think of the flowers, of Mr. Chihuly and his artistic process and everything that went into installing this magnificent glass structure, which leads to the thought of everything that went into the Bellagio itself, and of Hemingway and his process, but also, somehow, of the stray donkey I saw a few weeks ago on the outskirts of town, and of the Ferrari at the valet booth I saw just a minute ago, and of Harry and Ed's situation, and of my father's, and of myself and my detailed history, of these pretty faces walking by and their detailed histories of which I know nothing, and of Hemingway's main character, his regret on his deathbed, and then of my father's regret, and of Hemingway himself blowing his brains out fifty years ago in Idaho. Finally I look over to see a sign that says, Status is everything. The fact that it is all wound up in one, all somehow configured to exist in the same time-space continuum, disparate events all on the same fabric, and that each moment I am alone enough to be aware of my consciousness is considered to be the present moment, and that in the present moment, anything can happen.

Failure as Living, quoted from NYT.

In her most provocative and interesting chapters, Nehring argues for the value of suffering, for the importance of failure. Our idea of a contented married ending is too cozy and tame for her. We yearn for what she calls “strenuously exhibitionistic happiness” — think of family photos on Facebook — but instead we should focus on the fullness and intensity of emotion. She writes of Margaret Fuller: “Fuller’s failures are several times more sumptuous than other folks’ successes. And perhaps that is something we need to admit about failure: It can well be more sumptuous than success. . . . Somewhere in our collective unconscious we know — even now — that to have failed is to have lived.”

Nehring sees in the grandeur of feeling a kind of heroism, even if the relationship doesn’t take conventional form or endure in the conventional way. For Nehring, one senses, true failure is to drift comfortably along in a dull relationship, to spend precious years of life in a marriage that is not exciting or satisfying, to live cautiously, responsibly. Is the strength of feeling redeemed in the blaze of passion even if it does not end happily? she asks. Is contentment too soft and modest a goal?

“Could it be that the choice of a challenging love object signals strength and resourcefulness rather than insecurity and psychological damage, as we so often hear?”

Ten Days.

Today marks 10 days I've been here. Ten days, and I've managed to find a room. Not much else, it seems, besides applying to a bunch of jobs for nothing. I've done very little writing, and even less reading, as I've been blowing all my time looking for apartments and jobs, making phone calls, writing emails, sitting in traffic, sleeping odd hours. More and more I am thinking of the homeless men at the library, men who are free, men with nothing but time to read and write.

At night I am too tired to do anything, and lately too discouraged, frustrated, too alone, mired not in loneliness, but in the feeling that I am alone in this thing. I want to turn on the TV, not for any program, but for the noise, the images, the laugh tracks, the illusion that I am not really here doing what I am doing, the break from responsibility for my life.

I've become flabby. Now at 26 I do not have the discipline I had at 19, or 22. My day to day activities are determined more by habit, by tendency, and societal expectations, really, rather than discipline or goals. Which is amplified by my current situation. I predicted I would soon sink, and I am afraid that I am too alone, too discouraged now to breathe as I normally would, too far behind to re-motivate myself, to produce.

The job market is tight right now, tighter than I've ever seen. Unemployment here is 12%, which is higher than the national average. Twelve percent, as in, if I picked 8 people off the street, one would be jobless. It occurs to me that I could work full time on my writing, perhaps take odd jobs here and there, work Labor Ready once in a while. I'd spend more on rent and food than I'd make, and my isolation would flare out of control, but at least I'd be writing.

And every moment of every day, now, now, now, now, I am amazed at my situation, how I am somehow in Las Vegas, on my own, in a garage, sharing a kitchen with strangers, how a pinball can hit one pin and carom to another, and another and another, until finally years later it lands in the middle of a desert.

Redemption and the Afterlife.

I ate fruit pie tonight for dinner because I didn't feel like going into the house and being social. I had three fruit pies on my dresser, cherry, blueberry, and apple, and I chose the apple.

Today I heard back from Nevada State College in an email and they are sorry but they don't have a class to offer me but thanks very much for coming in for the interview and maybe in the spring there will be more classes to offer me. If this doesn't work out, he told me at the interview, there will be more classes in the spring. Or, we already found someone, but the board requires me to interview a certain number of people for each job, and so that's why you're here.

The funny part is that, in order to convince him I'd have an income, I told my landlord I had the job, and so he told my roommates that I was a teacher, and so now I have to pretend that I'm going to class on Tuesdays and Thursdays to teach. That's the funny part. I start August 24th.

I remember the Canadian Mist, one night, plastic cups, hers with soda, mine straight. And then, passing around her bottle of chardonnay afterward, too drunken at that point for any mention of cups. A night outside of time, outside of our histories, our futures, just the drink, the talk, sporadic and beautiful, existentially tailored to our whims, unobserved and unrecorded, unimportant, and it could've spanned on for years, it seems now, without our noticing.

And getting into bed with her, not what came before or after, but the act itself, the lying down in her bed, waiting for her to change, the anticipation, the thinness of her sheets, the foreign pillow, and the mattress takes her weight so gracefully, her hair, finally, the smell of it, the silk, the feeling that tomorrow could burn but right now, the silk on my face, breathing it, and for a brief minute I am not alone.

Hemingway said that drinking wine from the bottle instead of a glass is like a girl swimming in the nude instead of in a bathing suit. And I think of this now, the beauty of something that is free, without constraints. A world apart from today and these strange middle-aged people I now share a kitchen with, fruit pies for dinner, the hostility of this city, that night. Some people live a lifetime in a minute, he said, and I wonder if it's possible to spend 26 years preparing for one minute, 26 years as some sort of legend, some canvas, a background of sorts that somehow allows the one minute to have meaning, redeem the 26 years that preceded it.

Outer Space II.

My mom called today, doesn't understand why I'm out here, she says. I am wasting my time, hanging around people who don't have connections, low-lifes she calls them. She talked to Kelly, Peter, Uncle Mike, Granny, and it just so happens that all these people agree. I am wasting my life out here, I have potential, but am wasting it. Then she called my book a "long shot." Because my book is such a "long shot," I shouldn't take my chances with it. I should play it safe and teach in St. Louis.

Which, of course, makes it 200 times harder to be out here, knowing that no one supports what I'm doing. Knowing that no one understands even the slightest sliver of what the project is about, that no one has even a morsel of confidence in my writing.

City of Snakes.

Today my roommates warned me to look out for the kidney robbers. Some hookers work in teams. Two girls show up for an unbeatable price. Then they drug you, slice you open in a bathtub, steal a kidney and sell it on the black market.

Outer Space.

I got an apartment today, month to month. Now that I am officially here, established, I think about why. This reality before me exists because of my book, I thought, driving down the Maryland Parkway today. I am not halfway done and have received no evidence that it will see print, but yet I've let it dictate major life decisions. My life revolves around it. I rendered $400 for it today, in cash, which means twenty $20 bills, surrendered from my hands to those of my landlord.

And a feeling comes over me at the red light, that suddenly I am in outer space. That I have no net below, that if I fall, I hit the ground. That this is, in a sense, my entire life in binary form. That this is my one chance, and that I am the sole procurer of this chance, which means there is no way of knowing my chances. No statistics to look at, no way to gauge the extent to which I am wasting years of my life.

One of the guys I live with was nice enough to give me his "tool bench," which is now my writing desk, pictured above. He is a half-Mexican handyman in his 40s who drives an early model Dodge Neon, purple. I wonder if I will get along with him, or the others, or anyone in this big beautiful desert.

The Buddhists Were Right.

I thought it was change I have trouble with, but really it's the transitoriness of things, the fleeting-ness.

I love change, in fact. Something new, I always welcome. The difficult thing for me is coming to terms with never again. "Never again will such and such happen."

There is a definiteness, a hardness in never again that is scary, and then sad, immensely.

I sometimes interpret this scariness and sadness as difficulty with change because I have difficulty replacing that thing that will never happen again. Really, my trouble is difficulty with replacing. It is difficult to look back on a span of time, and then its product, and wonder how perfectness can ever be reproduced. And then sad, not only from the loss, but from the despair, the realization that I am so far off track from where I need to be.

Signs.

As I was leaving the library, I stopped off in the bathroom. There was a sign on the door that read, "This bathroom is locked 15 minutes before the library closes." I entered and on the mirror another sign read, "Hand-Washing Only!" The exclamation point is not mine.

Homeless in Vegas.

The downtown branch of the Vegas Library System maintains an outdoor "movie area," probably at the request of the city, as it gives some of the homeless men something to do during the day. The area is a courtyard of sorts, four two-story walls, a 24" TV in the center, no roof. As the sun moves across the sky the men move with the shade of the walls.

None appear to be friends. Folding chairs are stacked in the corner, and as each man enters the area, he takes a chair and finds a spot in the shade. No two chairs are so close as to suggest a friendly relationship. No one among the dozen men is talking.

I am now in the area with desks. Almost every chair is taken. Half of us are homeless. One man walks to another at a desk, hands him a newspaper, walks away without saying anything. The man receives it as if he were expecting it.

One man sits down next to me and shows the man across from him a card, says it was only two dollars, and at least it gives him a place to stay. The other man, looking up from his newspaper, says, But you have to be over 50, don't you? The man responds that he thinks so. The conversation is over, and the man with the card puts it back in his wallet and opens Mann's Magic Mountain. A black transvestite walks by in a skirt.

All of these men know each other, it seems, in some capacity, perhaps in the same way the residents know each other in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. None are necessarily friends, but all are acquaintances, all know of each other, if not each other himself. They run the same game trails, frequent the same shelters.

Some of these men, though, I'm sure, are much better read than I. The desks are clean, bright fluorescent lights shining down, and it seems they have nothing to do with their time other than to sit and read. When they're done with one magazine, they go to the rack, pick another, and return to the bright, clean desk, perpetually lit by the City of Las Vegas. Everyone is calm, relaxed. No one is frantically looking for a job and apartment at the same time, as am I, and I am suddenly jealous, a fool, it seems.

There is a certain comfort here, though, as nothing I can do will surprise anyone. Nothing I can do will outcast me. One man shouts to himself, and the man across from me neglects to look up from his Freemasons for Dummies. The transvestite walks by and nobody gawks, like I do. Each man is an irreplaceable character from a famous movie, but no one seems to care.

Down the Road.

Looking out My Front Door.

Living in the Past.

Desert Solitaire.

And the memory of telling her about the dream becomes more precious, poignant even, the more alone I become, exponentially, insidious. I have difficulty letting things go because when they're gone there is nothing to replace them, and it's hard for me to replace things.

By now I have enough experience to know that I will not do it on my own. And though in my head it seems I can make it work if I go through the motions and follow the right textbook passage, experience tells me that I will suck water if I do not make connections. It tells me that my body density soon exceed that of this current, that I will soon be ripped against rocks on the riverbed.

The energy needed to overcome the inertia astounds me, though. The wattage requirements for this machine of mine is a constant strain, and in a new town, I can dim the city lights when I crank.

And in the midst of all this there are new definitions. New definitions of self-respect, of spirits, and of faith. None of these things is what I'd once suspected.

Faith means that you abandon yourself. That you leave all those secret shortcuts that make the fabric of your life seem your own, refuse the private, pitiful feelings you allow yourself to have in times of despair, that you stop allowing yourself to do certain things simply because no one is looking.

You not only make the choice to refuse the old fabric, but now you read code every day, not only read it, but need it, not only in public, but in your motel room, alone, faith that this will fix something, allow you to be OK with your situation when you wake in the morning.

Being a Man.

In telling me about CJ, Dave explained the hardships he was facing: No job, no house, his cousin's death, addiction battles, etc. Dave got a call from CJ, Dave explained, and could tell from his voice that he simply was not doing well.

Then he explained that CJ wasn't about to cry, though, wouldn't break down, that he would "take it like a man." CJ would not be explicit to Dave about things not going well. It's something that Dave had to pick up from implicit clues. CJ was being a "man" about it.

Pearls.

In Steinbeck's book, the pearl itself eventually comes to symbolize greed--wanting too much. At first it means everything for Kino, his family, a symbol of hope, but in the end he tosses it back into the water for all the evil it's brought.

In my letter to her I told her that our time in Colorado has been a bright spot in an otherwise seedy and seamy decade. And now that it's officially over, sequestered in another state, another time period, I think of it as a pearl, back in the ocean. It's gone but was perhaps the one perfect thing, the one pearl I'll ever see.

Unlike the pearl in the book, this pearl is both good and evil. I think of it, the fact that it existed, and am grateful to an extreme, perhaps like a mother is grateful that her little boy laughed and played before dying under a truck wheel. I can't remember it, though, without also being reminded that it's over, gone forever, that all I have now is pictures, which brings an indescribable sadness.

At the airport, it was only we who saw our goodbye. All of our co-workers knew we'd split, but no one witnessed the final minute. No one knows if she cried, if I cried, if it was only superficial, cheery, or if we made promises like in pop culture, or if, later in the day, I was able to throw out her McDonald's bag of trash sitting on the passenger seat.

And I am glad for this, their ignorance. I simply want them to remember us driving off down the road together, the Weezer song blasting out the windows. If this is how they think of us, it is almost as if our time together never ended, as if something perfect is still spanning into the horizon.

For the same reason I am afraid to call her, email her, afraid to taint this perfectly pearly white iridescent ball of calcium carbonate. I want to frame it, encase it, donate it to the aquatic museum, bask in gratitude for its existence. The one thing this pearl will not symbolize is greed, wanting too much.

She wore a silver-and-pearl-ring on her right-hand, something I at first mistook for a ring of engagement, and I'm not just making this up for the sake of resonation in the post. When I realized it was on the wrong hand, and that it was a pearl and not a diamond, I made a decision that is still affecting me, every hour. Didion was so insightful, I now realize, to include the bit about accepting risk. Self-respect, or spirituality, entails taking responsibility for the risks our decisions entail, regardless of whether the outcomes are favorable or otherwise.

From a Shit-Stain Vegas Motel.

A new one started yesterday, a chapter, a triangle of pie, a segment of a line. The beauty is overwhelming here, not of physical things, but of the orchestration of things, the intersections, the individual motives, how the million random parts fit together perfectly, the melodies in a symphony. I marvel every minute of the day.

I drove down Fremont yesterday in search of a residence, a pay-by-the-week lean-to. Places with Magic-Marker signs that read Ring bell for service, and when I ring someone with an accent comes to a 10x12 plastic shield, a slot at the bottom for money. Does that include a fridge and microwave? I ask. Wi-fi? They are puzzled.

Other signs inform me that only MOs are accepted. Cash would invite robberies, checks would be forged, plastic would be stolen. As I'm walking back to my car, I wonder if it's still around the corner, where I left it, yes or no, yes or no, yes or no, but either way the mixture of hair-dryer heat on my face and anticipation is crushing me with its beauty.

The owner of the Desert Star Motel is a Greek Republican Jew--yes, curly hair--who talks to me about Obama, how his first plan failed, how his second has no hope. I am impressed not only that he knows who the president is, but also with the teach-yourself-French handbook splayed face down in front of him. He locks the lobby behind him as he comes out to show me the room, air freshener in hand. He opens the room, sprays it before we walk in. I test the kitchen faucet as I hear him spraying the bathroom.

The price is $189 for the week. I go to the Wells Fargo down the road, take out $200, but put exactly $182 in my wallet. I return to the lobby, the door is locked, I ring the bell, but don't see him. The chambermaid sees me, puts a cell phone to her ear, and he appears around the corner, smiling, pleased to see I did not find a better offer. We go into the lobby, his office, and I open my wallet and count the money, I am unsure how much I have. He's annoyed at the shortfall, and I say I have quarters in my car. I return with $1.95 in change, and he takes it, $183.95. I am proud of myself for saving $5.00.

I am exhausted from the driving, the search for a motel, the heat, don't bother to unload my car. I walk into my room, turn the deadbolt, blast the A/C, fall onto the bed, and as I slip under I wonder how many crack whores have sucked dick on this bed.

Donnybrook.

It seems that my mornings at work are better when I wake up in her bed rather than alone in mine. I hum to myself, have energy. Waking up alone, things are forced, motions.

I'm not talking about sex. I feel better because there is evidence that I am wanted somewhere, that I belong, that I must be worth something, which is unhealthy, this dependence, spiritually speaking.

Then, a part of me says no, it's only human to want company. When the learned part counters with no, you can't depend on something external for self-worth.

What happens next is I realize that I will always opt to sleep with her when given the chance, even during that time of the month, always opt for hair being on my face rather than not on my face.

That I will always feel better in the morning with the hair than without it, regardless of any spiritual maneuvering I can manage.

And so on.

Anti-Romantic Gratitude.

If we could take the time
To lay it on the line
I could rest my head
Just knowin' that you were mine

Why It Might Be More Than Motions.

I have to admit, as if I'm ashamed, that when I started the book I had no coherent vision of anything. I simply followed an imaginary set of instructions I conjured in my brain. I put the nuts where they looked like they should go, greased where I thought the chain might squeak.

I suppose it was a matter of maturity, spiritual maturity, in overcoming this lack of vision. Spiritual maturity, which of course is also aided, though, by what I've written so far. I got an email this morning from A reminding me not to analyze my life too much, which made me laugh. It's only through writing, through life, picking it apart that I can begin to feel my own spiritual fabric.

The fabric, meaning, my experience of each day, my daily sense of what it feels like not just to be alive but to find peace every day, to come to terms with my situation, in the same way you'd tread a blanket through your hands, feel the stitching, the texture, the weight. Meaning, for example, the daily decisions I make about my attitude toward C, or how to interpret what she said, or how to conceive of myself today, project myself, or what it means that I am away from home, transient, the effect on my self image, what kind of person I am morally, if morality counts, how honest with myself I have or haven't been, if I am happy or not, or will I be in a month? How have I been treating others? And of course, is the world good or bad?

And a thousand others. Of course I can think of specific questions, issues, as I've done above, but my task in writing this book is to whittle it all down so that I can wake up in the morning without the confusion, without the issue of whether I should get up, and walk to work with the confidence of knowing that it's not all just motions.

The book is about beauty. Before it's about addiction or escape or isolation, it's about the vision of beauty, being able to see it. It's about Schopenhauer and his beautiful, stupid Will, the only relief from tragedy, the beauty of it.

I say spiritual maturity because it used to be that I'd riffle through all these questions with no way of knowing what I was looking for, no way to organize the onslaught, no frame of reference. Part of the maturity means knowing that I have no answers to offer, only narratives, questions, suggestions. Another part means that I actually feel ready to write the book now, that I am not forcing anything, guessing in the night. But the fact that it's wrapped up in one consistent fabric, one frame, this is the vision, the orchestra, and ultimately, what I need for my own spirituality, the evidence hinting that life is worth getting out of bed for, that all of this might be more than motions.

Wonder and Surprise.

In 9th grade my biology teacher gave us a Xerox copy of Desiderata by Max Ehrmann. One line keeps echoing in my brain as I write my book.

With all its shame, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.

Which, I now realize, is perhaps the binding principle behind not just my book but my attempts to find spirits. Plato said that we derive our definition of pleasure from pain, that without the latter we can't have the former. In the same way, I want to say, It's all shit. A lot of things seem to be happening randomly, out of check, no semblance of justice. But it's not enough to follow that with, "But the world is still beautiful."

It's not the case that the world was always beautiful, and that these shameful things are simply not enough to counteract the beauty. It's that the beauty is derived from the shame. It's the shame that allows the beauty. Because, really, if it were all a gridded plane, a regimented archaeological dig, we'd probably still have the word beauty, but it'd mean something very different.

And really, I prefer the meaning I have now, the idea that people can still write a perfect song, or experience an emotion absolutely, without pollution, or happen upon a certain someone and say the perfect thing in the perfect way, and she gives you the perfect expression in return, in such a jagged, random world. That people can build something from twisted steel in the junk yard. That a sullied and torn canvas can still be stretched over an easel. That we can still make it work despite our circumstances.

But it doesn't stop there, either. If people and their behavior, their fabrications are beautiful, then it's also beautiful that we are constantly evolving, adapting to them and their imperfections. That we are continually learning how to view people, what to expect from them, and in turn, how to project ourselves accordingly--how to mold ourselves, prune our habits, our visions.

In effect, each individual is a project, a work, involuntarily shaped by lessons about how the world works. The lessons lend themselves to our sense of wonder about the world, its inhabitants, but dwindle, at an equal rate, our chances of being surprised around any given corner.

Evolution, again.

Intellectually, of course, we know that people cheat, lie, deceive. Not all people, but it's general knowledge that some do, some don't.

When a character is deceived, or someone you know, the act is emotionally distant from us, we don't care.

But when someone deceives us, we are mad. We know the precept above--that humans can sometimes deceive--but when it happens to us we are somehow surprised, indignant.

Usually the resentment is proportional to the extent to which you trusted the deceiver. If you are duped by a man on the street, you probably won't be resentful at all. If you are betrayed by someone you had trusted--or wanted very badly to trust--the result is different.

Escape via Bleach.

I don't like casual relationships. I don't like sleeping with a girl, my arm around her, talking to her late at night, knowing we have a built-in expiration date. I'd rather not do it at all.

Nor do I like casual friends. Going cross country with people knowing I will drop them off in California, never see them again--I don't like that. There is something about sharing an experience with someone I'll never see again, something that doesn't make sense, something that cheapens the experience, the sharing.

But I look at my life now, the lifestyle I've dug myself into, the transiency, and realize that 99% of the "friends" I make on the road, I'll never see again, and I wonder if it's really a bad thing. Because, when no one sticks, it is only myself who echoes back and forth. Only myself who shoots out the other end, on the road, alone in his little white car.

In this way, life stays clinical, bleached. Every time I shoot out the other end, car packed, alone, it's almost as if none of what just happened happened. I never have to go back, never have to see those people again. Oh, and the person I was with those people, I never have to see him again, either.

Jack Palance.

I do miss home, the people there, almost feel guilty being out here, especially since they don't understand why I need to be. I don't want to come home, though, because going home does not simply mean driving back to New Jersey. It means "coming home." Ryan is "coming home," they will say.

Which means I will be sheltered once again, coming home to some sort of shell. Life is actualized out here. I am living as I am meant to, being tested as I should, a variable in a petri dish, and once I return to Jersey, I am the control, the given.

I read reviews about people traveling, they're on a "spiritual journey," Liz Gilbert, Chris McCandless, nameless others, nobodies I've forgotten. I never bought into it. It was all romanticism.

But I learn about myself when the scenery changes. I used to read books and make lists about myself, my problems, emotionally. I'd read a self-help book and make notes in a notebook, and when I finished I'd highlight things, star things. Then I'd prove God's existence with mathematical formulae.

The code is the spirit, not writing, not gratitude, not any passion of mine, not compassion. The spirit necessarily has to be specific to the self, not to some external endeavor. It took me this long to realize that.

Men come into the gift shop every day, thousands of them, a phantasmagoria of faces and body types, styles and personalities, and I wonder if they are what we'd like to think men are, or if they're just smart animals putting up an elaborate facade for sex, status, indifferent products of evolution. If they really have a spirit behind them, self-respect, as some of them appear to, or if they're just smiling, tucking in their shirts, saying please and thank you while desperately negotiating their own secret hedge maze--as I've done, and still do at times.

I have pop culture in my brain. The one from City Slickers, when Jack Palance tells Billy Crystal about the "one thing."

Curly: You know what the secret of life is?
Mitch: No, what?
Curly: This. [Holds up his finger]
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don't mean shit.
Mitch: That's great, but what's the one thing?

Footsteps at Night.

The door closes and I am left alone, her footsteps fading away, and I listen for them to change direction, come back, but they don't, never do, and suddenly I am aware once again, though I'd forgotten for just a moment, that this is for real, these spirits, the utter need for them, that I am powerless, sheer impotence incarnate, that I can't do anything to change the directions of footsteps outside my cabin.

Even Metallica.

Forever trust in who you are
And nothing else matters.

Private Reconciliation.

I read the essay (On Self-Respect) about two years ago, but didn't know what it was about until I re-read it today.

The essay is a manifesto on what self-respect is, why you need it, what it's comprised of. We call it different things, she self-respect, me spirituality, but are talking about the same phenomena. One passage sounded amazingly similar to my "Out by the Dumpsters" post: Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions....The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others.

Other good parts:

There is a common superstition that “self-respect” is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all. It has nothing to do with the face of things, but concerns instead a separate peace, a private reconciliation.

People who respect themselves are willing to accept the risk that the Indians will be hostile, that the venture will go bankrupt, that the liaison may not turn out to be one in which every day is a holiday because you’re married to me. They are willing to invest something of themselves; they may not play at all, but when they do play, they know the odds.

To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out – since our self-image is untenable – their false notion of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gist for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Helen Keller to anyone’s Annie Sullivan.

It is the phenomenon sometimes called “alienation from self.” In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands to much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

Notice she says private, not public, reconciliation. We always feel that it is only the public image that matters, the show, but behind the scenes doesn't matter. No code can survive like this.

Equally important, like Nietzsche said, I need to accept responsibility for my choices, my life. When things don't turn out as I wanted them to, I need to be a grown-up about it. I can't whine and act like I've been done an injustice. I need to blame myself, not some imaginary ghoul, and certainly not her.

Most important is the intrinsic worth. Without a sense of intrinsic worth, my worth depends on others' treatment of me, which means I am easily breakable. Intrinsic worth allows for indifference. It allows for me not caring what she does, or how she does it, or how anyone else does it. Without that sense of inherent worth, I am always the person I think others want me to be, which means I have no one for myself.

John Wayne: A Love Song.

I was reading an essay today called John Wayne: A Love Song by Joan Didion.

"And in a world we understood early to be characterized by venality and doubt and paralyzing ambiguities, he suggested another world, one which may or may not have existed but in any case existed no more: a place where a man could move free, could make his own code and live by it; a world in which, if a man did what he had to do, he could one day take the girl and go riding through the draw and find himself home free, not in a hospital with something going wrong inside, not in a high bed with the flowers and the drugs and the forced smiles, but there at the bend in the bright river, the cottonwoods shimmering in the early morning sun."

Fly Fishing.

Strands of Hair.

I've never walked endlessly through the desert, like you see in the movies, a man in a legionnaire hat, stumbling, a mirage. But I would suppose that I'd eventually forget about the tiredness, if I ever did go walking through an ever-spanning plain of sand. Eventually the tiredness would become familiar, like the sand itself, and then part of me, like my hands or leg hair, and soon, no longer discernible.

I'm tired, I realized today, of always wanting to be connected. Always wanting someone to lie next to me. Tired of feeling like I need to tell things to someone late at night, things that don't matter, someone with long hair, hair I can breathe, stray strands tickling my nose as I fall asleep. I try to blow them away with short blasts of air from my lips, but of course it never works. It's been such an inherent goal of mine, it seems, to somehow negate the one-ness of my existence with these strands of hair, to overcome the existentialism.

And I'm tired of it, just tired. John Wayne hangs over my bed, walks with Duke toward the camera. A gun in one hand, saddle in the other, he gazes into the distance, over the cameraman's shoulder. No clouds in the sky, of course--he's in the desert, only sand and scag-weed, tumble brush. The dog is behind him, trailing, the sun, high, their shadows, short. Buckles and straps dangle from the saddle, swaying, jousting from his impartial gait. He walks on, no questions, blind and careless, I'm sure, of where he sleeps tonight.

Unmooring.

Seems to be over already. She doesn't care for me much, I can tell by the small, everyday things, which makes it hard to care for her. She treats me as a friend, sometimes as an acquaintance, never as anything more, which was confusing at first, considering our first week together, but now unbearable.

Lessons learned, yes. Mad at myself, a bit, for thinking I was someone else, that I could be someone else with no consequences. For straying from my code.

Dynamics.

I am at the place now where I wanted to be two months ago, not geographically, but dynamically. I am away from home, working a seasonal job, constantly thinking about where I'll go next, and when--next week? Next month? Tomorrow?

Every day is a crossroads. Every day has potential. When all I own fits into my trunk and I can be ready to leave in 20 minutes, waves of questions lap around inside my head every night. I think about tomorrow, a month from now, three months, a year, three years. Do I want this dynamic to last, or is it just temporary, a vacation?

No, I don't want to go back, can't go back. Living stagnantly is like dying.

At the same time I feel that I need something more than, Do you want a bag for that? I applied to six schools last fall and was passed over by all of them. More than anything I'd like to be in school again. Any school, really. I feel much too disconnected from the thing I love. And so my feeling is that I will probably travel around like this some more. That I will apply to school every October, and keep driving until a letter stops me.

Chipmunks.

The feeling that I don't like is the vulnerability. That I am susceptible to something, a lion in my stomach waiting, as if he knows he'll be called into action, and so sits eager on his haunches.

That she must do X in this way and say Y at this precise moment, or something bad happens inside of me. That she chose to sit next to me tonight so our thighs were touching, rather than sitting on one of the other chairs. And this registers as good, of course, but I don't like that it has to, that something depends on it.

And so, and so, and so: This is a reflection of something. If my spirituality was in tact, I wouldn't have to interpret and register. I want to be liked because it validates me. Which means I must not feel validated by my own devices. And this is the problem.

This is where it becomes clear that I was not built to code. The above paragraph is not in the window display, not even the fine print. You learn about it only after you take me home, assemble me, and ride me to work every day. Then a month later there are miles on me and you say, Is that--? Could that be?

I am learning that I need to give the customer what he sees in the window, not some defective imitation. If something registers as bad, dismal, I could turn away easily, eject at any moment. But where am I turning to? If the spirits are not there, I will just keep falling, as I've done in the past. Spirituality means having something to turn to.

What makes this so difficult, though, is that I want to put my trust in her. I want to say, OK, then, it's settled. But nothing will ever be settled, not because I am unfortunate or unable, but because the settling is a myth. There is no such thing as dependence on other people. People are animals, like chipmunks.

Out by the Dumpsters.

Still I'm learning about spirituality. Not about finding Jesus, but about learning to live with myself, about truly believing in my own code, about eliminating the discrepancy between who I admire and who I am. I've had to do a lot of work to prove to myself that the code is not just something I can put up for show, for image, but is actually something I need to believe in, embrace, even, perhaps especially, when I am alone in an empty room.

I am not quite there yet. I haven't amassed quite enough evidence, but more and more I can see how it might be necessary. I can put up the code as a window display, but when it is tested, as it always is, it's tested out back, by the dumpsters, and I always end up stumbling in through the back door, doubled over, without assistance.

Burrs in My Bloodstream.

But my thoughts keep returning to Shannon's question: Why do I want this?

Now that I have passed the threshold--evolution is tricky. The bait is constantly changing. After the courtship dance, the initial high, the trophy game, the appeal to sexual conquest, evolution is nearly out, forced to tie on its most basic, primeval gimmick.

I try to live day to day, one day at a time, though it is hard not to wonder about durability. I ask myself what I'd need for this to last, and what she'd need. My thought is that we are all looking for some ultimate connection, some Body who can understand and appreciate us better than anyone previously has. Some ultimate connection, yes, and from that connection emanates some ultimate self-actualization, self-realization, because there is finally someone to legitimize not my existence, but my way of existence, my unique choice of Being.

We want to be loved, not like a mother loves a child, but rather by choice, and not whimsically, but for those deep, intricate, one-of-a-kind florae perennially sprouting in our psyche. It's the feeling that no matter what random wrench the universe chucks at me, this person will always know the real me, that I can rest easy, that I don't have to say a word to prove anything. This person knows me, has a coherent vision and love of the "project" that is me, and that me is safely vaulted away in her brain. It's a selfish endeavor, love.

This is my answer to her, my answer, where all these burrs of doubt in my bloodstream are dispatched from.

Sometimes I lie in bed in the morning with some muscle memory in my right hand, some phantom urge to empty an ampule of heroin into my left antecubital. It comes and goes in waves. I may get it several times a day for a week and not see it again for two months. I won't have to deal with the day, is the idea, I can just shoot it and melt into my bed. This morning it came when I felt the burrs, and I thought, Now I am really being selfish, and so asked myself if Dave would take it the right way if I had a drunken hobo drawn on his birthday cake.

Paradoxical Intention.

Constantly I am worrying that I will make a mistake. That I will screw up somehow, that the necessary truth, the necessary character flaw in the protagonist will emerge and the tragedy will end as it must, as fate decrees, as the archetypal laws of human nature demand. Constantly I am worrying about her perception of me, has it changed since we first met, am I less of a person than she imagined me to be, am I funny enough? What is it that attracts her to me, exactly? How will all of this end? Is it a joke to think it will last into the fall? When? Like a necrophobic on a desolate island, he needs to know--When? When will it happen?

Can these neatly be classified as feelings of inadequacy? I wish they could. Rather, they are thoughts that stem from dread. Dread, because I know this, too, must pass--unless the planets want to stop spinning.

Because she's very different from me. She's never heard of Frankl, I'm sure, and hasn't heard of any writers I've ever mentioned. I showed her a poem a couple days ago, and she read it, once, almost speed-read it, in fact, closed the book, and hardly had anything to say about it. And so, yes, I know opposites attract and such, but I also know that rope can have only so much slack in it.

At the same time, though, life is infinitely better with her in it.

Frankl wrote about a thing called paradoxical intention. If you fear something bad enough, it's possible to will it into existence through unconscious intention, inadvertent action, like a bad dream, a thousand outcomes, yet the one you fear most always wins.

If It All Went Away.

I think the test is, I mean, if it all went away suddenly, I could still lie back and bask in the gratitude, the memory of it all, even if it only lasted a week. I would be happy with that. I could sit back and say there, that was it. Right there. See it?

ComePunction.

I almost want the summer to last forever. I almost want to believe that I'll live in this cabin forever, and that P&A will always live across from me, and that Dave will always knock on my door for rides to the liquor store. There is almost guilt, here, from the luck I've gotten, from the wanting it to never change, the wanting to stay hidden.

Whatever happens, though, the flurry will funnel down to beauty, as it always does, to aesthetic preference. Which for me means etching words onto paper. In this way the same rules do still apply. The instinct is to let it all go, let the flurry take it away, let myself be taken, but then I know--I know--nothing would be left afterward.

Burton.

Do what thy manhood bids thee do
From none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies
Who makes and keeps his self-made laws

V-Day.

Victory, the same rules do NOT apply! Thank you.

Same Rules Apply II.

Same rules apply. Same rules apply. Same rules apply. Shame on me for thinking otherwise. After the gamble, the rule is to always come back to this enclosure, to the bed, the desk, the door, closed, the blank screen, the book. This is the rule that keeps applying, me in the enclosure, voices passing outside.

Turgenev.

"'If you like a woman,' he said, 'try to get down to brass tacks; if it doesn't come off, never mind, snap your fingers, there are plenty of others.' Odintsova had caught his fancy; the rumors concerning her, the freedom and independence of her ideas...but he soon became aware that he would not be able to 'get down to brass tacks' with her, and as for snapping his fingers, he found to his dismay that he could not do it. His pulse quickened at the mere thought of her; he could easily have come to terms with his pulse, but something else had happened to him, something he never would have admitted, something he had always jeered at, and against which all his pride rose up in arms."

From Proud to Passive (Voice).

It has been noted that I need to work more on being a better person and less on pursuing cheap, selfish desires. The idea has been thought that I need to worry about helping people, doing things for people, rather than doing things for myself.

It has been known that pride is a selfish endeavor, a defense mechanism, really. If something is done for want of a trophy, it is done for status. And who can respect someone like that?

If you really want the model to work, all parts need to be in tact. There cannot be chinks. You cannot simply project the image of integrity; you need to believe it, as your belief is scrutinized much more closely than the integrity itself.

Inconsistency is what it comes down to. Consistency is key, because it alludes to the underlying integrity of a person's composition. Inconsistency alludes to lack of control, vulnerability to cheapness, which undermines a person's image, due respect. Whatever the code, hold its integrity, consistency above all else. Ultimately, it needs to be done by code or not done at all.

Side Note on Happiness.

But a big part of happiness is being you who are and letting other people know it, doing what you do and being OK with others seeing you do it.

Same Rules Apply.

More and more I see how it is that we learn how to live. It is not this series of of individual lessons, individual mistakes that we learn to not make again as we grow up. Rather, it is is a series of experiences that leads to one conclusion, that wherever you are, whoever you are, the same rules will always apply.

More than Three.

Note for self-improvement: I knew this before last night, but it seems that I need to remind myself again. I cannot be trusted with more than three drinks. It lets me say things I regret the next day. I let myself go. Really, Ryan, don't do that again. It happens every time. Do not think you can get away with it. Seriously.

Bedrock.

Through all the everyday clutter, the detritus, the shit-smeared slide show of these images passing like fireflies, is the bedrock. A song like Stay, and the part where he says they have truckers on CB, trailering a lifetime of meaning, the basis of my existence--all the contexts in which I've heard those words before, and the memories are always there, like bedrock.

And all it takes is the memory. The memory of him, spurred by the tunes on his CD, the one that keeps finding its way into my car's CD player. Is all it takes to get me down to the bottom, the non-negotiable granite, admitting nothing impure, nothing superficial, nothing that hasn't been tried and tested.

Whatever You Want to Call It.

The thing about it--life or whatever you want to call it--is that it's always trying me. It is always thin, breakable. There is that constant Hegelian thesis v. antithesis, and even after the synthesis, there is yet another boxing match waiting for the bell. Even after my stomach is done churning, I was born with these drives, this inherent way of structuring experience and goals, which means my stomach will churn again tomorrow. And all the while I look out over the ledges, the cliffs, at the beautiful scenery: other people absorbed in endeavors, John Grisham novels, filling up at gas stations, telling the hostess how many in their party. Table for 2, please. I cannot just lay on my bed all day.

I am an addict, as I satisfy the same drives every day, meaningless as they are, I am their slave, upholding their values without any direction. Uphold, uphold, uphold, watching the scenery. And if I don't uphold there are consequences, but of course they have to be self-imposed, of course the irony has to be cruel. Churn, churn until I die, do not stop. Just keep churning, oh, and always by itself, too, of course, alone.

Caroming off Mountain Walls.

Today Mom said she ran into Ari. Apparently they work next door to each other now. I think of them two talking outside of Gino's, the expressions on their faces when they saw each other, their greetings to each other.

They call Colorado the Centennial State, as it was founded in 1876. There are a lot of mountains here, dirt roads, rocky rivers. Sometimes I think I'll never go home, that somehow I am protected by the mountains, the fact that license plates here do not say "Garden State," the unfamiliarities on the side of the road sprouting like columbine.

"The more I see the less I know
the more I like to let it go."

Drinking Loan.

I woke this morning to the sound of knocks on my door, but I ignored them. I knew who it was. Or, I thought, maybe this is just a nightmare that he is knocking at my door at 6:12 a.m, but he is actually in bed, asleep. The knocks came back 10 minutes later, and every 5-10 minutes thereafter until 7 a.m., when I finally responded. "Rick," I said. "Yo," he said.

"Are you knocking?"

"Yeah."

"What's up?"

"Yo--where are those beers?"

"In the fridge." (Where else would they be?)

"Oh. In the--." (He was about to say "girls' cabin.")

When I came out of my cabin at 8:35 a.m., he explained to me that he was in Denver last night, and his girl wasn't where he left her. She moved out into a motel, he surmised. How is she paying for that? I asked. She has $300, he said. Then he went to the girls' cabin and came back with a Bud Lite from a six pack we split the day before.

Man, he says, I'm just gonna take off today until this afternoon. He's all depressed, in his words. Things were going so good, he explains. He doesn't understand how she's going to just end it all like this, without even saying goodbye. It is now about 8:45 a.m.

At lunch he tells me that last year he "went to a depression" (he's not a native speaker). This led him to take out a loan and go on a month-long drinking binge. Man, I'm gonna get in trouble tonight, he mumbles to himself.

He did show up to work this afternoon, but he'd been drinking screwdrivers all morning. After installing a toilet, which took 15 minutes, he said he could've made $100, $150 for that if he had his own business. I was about to say that he should start his own business, but I remembered that he didn't have a car, or a driver's license, or any tools, or a bank account, or any credit, or a phone. We didn't do anymore work after that. We walked around to visit with different employees on cigarette breaks, and eventually wound up in the storage basement, where he did a lot of yapping and dancing, and I watched.

Management II.

But I can't manage people, and never could. I can't decide who is here with me, and I can't control those who are. I can't control the job people have, or who they work with, or what cabin they live in, or where they're from, or whether they have boyfriends, or what direction they'll walk in, or whether they're talking on a cell phone as they pass me.

Management.

After I am done managing this job, say, painting the fence, I will have another task to manage, but right now I am focused on managing the fence-painting. I have a pail, and it can't be filled too much, or else it will spill. I have old clothes on because paint splatters. I have to move the drop cloth with me as I paint so I don't stain the concrete. I have to be extra careful around customers' cars. I don't want to get paint on their fenders. One more hour, I am thinking, one more hour and I will be done, and then I can eat lunch. Good, good, good so far, I am thinking. I am doing well, just don't screw up.

The owner and manager of this place is away for weeks at a time, and I am thinking of how we have to self-manage our work until he returns. Of how we have to prioritize our tasks, plan for the week, clock in, clock out, show up on time, make decisions for ourselves, use common sense.

Now I am done the fence, and like I said, there is now another task to manage: lunch. I have to transport myself back to the cabin, remove a Hot Pocket from the freezer, put it in the crisping sleeve, set the microwave on 90 seconds, pour my drink and throw away the wrapper while it's cooking (to be most efficient). When the bell goes off, I remove the Pocket and wipe the splurged cheese from the glass plate in the microwave. If I don't, it will harden and be 100 times harder to remove later. I will have to scrub it off instead of wipe it off. So, I am practicing good management by wiping it off ASAP. I am "managing" the act of cooking the Pocket.

But of course, this is only one afternoon of one day of one week of one month of one summer. The summer is also being managed, also by me, but on a much broader scale. Just like the painting, there was planning and there is careful maintenance. The plan was to come here to get away, escape, focus. The summer was a module, an isolated segment. I planned to use it in the same way I'd planned to use a paint brush. I applied for job opportunities, I communicated with the supervisors here, I arranged for my transportation out here. Now that I am here, I arranged to have my mail forwarded to me, I am signing up for a local bank account, I performed recon on the local coffee shops. I am "managing" this summer in the same way the owner of this complex would manage the operations. He would order more place mats, submit requisitions for work orders on the cabins, answer questions from the accountant about last year's postage expenses.

I have become an expert on management. Lately I have been managing my life with the utmost precision and efficiency. I have lists, grids, and memorization techniques that help me remember things I have to do. Almost all sectors of my life are systematic. In the morning, I look on my top shelf and see my toothbrush, my mouthwash, medicine, vitamins, coffee cup. These are reminders of what I need to do every morning, and so that is the system. When you wake, Ryan, look on this top shelf, and these are the things you need to do.

When I go somewhere, there should be two things in each of the three pockets in my bag. In the big pocket, my water bottle and a book. In the mid-sized pocket, my calender book and small notebook. In the small pocket, my wallet and camera. This is yet another system, a tool to help "manage" my daily life. And it seems a system has sprouted in every other aspect of my life as well, from the way I floss my teeth to the way I make seemingly spontaneous, casual small talk with co-workers. These tools have become specialized, customized, almost perfect.

I manage each sector, compartment, division, subsidiary, dollar, interaction, most of the time, inadvertently, automatically. It has gotten to the point, now, it seems, that I don't know any other way, and it is not only disconcerting but derailing to see how these old men mismanage their own lives, or, manage their lives by self-medicating--a reflection not on them but on me, a reflection embedded in my awareness of my knowledge of my own mortality as a management tool. Knowing that you will soon die, Ryan, what should you be doing with your life now?

You could almost see the scope of your life as the life of a business. It's born, it lives, goes bankrupt. And in order for the business to prosper, you have to manage it minute-by-minute, employee-by-employee, requisition-by-requisition. Only one phone call can be made at a time, and each day you have to drive to the complex. Then you come home that night to sleep. At the end of it all, there is a faint simulacrum of a business, a functional machine that churns out a product or service, refined petroleum in the underground tank, or clean, freshly pressed linens delivered to the back doorstep.

Right now I am meta-managing the business, managing the managing of it all, imposing some high form of reflection on what all the managing means, which itself is a form of management. It is all piecemeal, of course, I can only manage one thing at a time, and right now it seems it is time to manage the managing. Like some grand jigsaw puzzle, but what I can't seem to ignore is the way that its moment of completion is also the precise moment of its destruction.

It would be nice to see the Andes, I think, as I've never been there. I could run from the highway to the base of a peak, dive into pure white snow and lie there, dead, my rental car idling quietly for hours on the shoulder of some Chilean freeway.

Handyman.

Well of course the pay sucks. You have no leverage, I want to tell him. He complains as if he expected to drop out of high school and pick bills off trees. As if it's unfair. As if he expected something else. And yet, like a wife who won't leave her abusive husband, he won't leave. He needs this place, needs the cheap rent, the community of cabin dwellers to feed off.

It is very frustrating working with him. I was supposed to be working in the kitchen, but because this place is so disorganized, there is now no spot for me anywhere except as a handyman. Someone screwed up. Except he thinks I am working under him, as if I am his helper, which kills me, as he is so scatter-brained and myopic, it's like working for a cat on acid. Constantly I am worried that I am not doing enough work, that I will be fired for inefficiency, and I find myself rehearsing explanations that I'll spew to the boss, about how I can't escape Ricky's disheveled command, about how it's him, not me. Sometimes we go to the hardware store three times a day. It's always at least once, but usually twice per day. We make one trip per project, and pick up the materials only for that project. Tomorrow is out of sight. Three hours from now is out of sight.

He lives in the room next to me and turns his TV up loud at night, or knocks on my door at 11pm to tell me something or ask for a ride to town. I am in my underwear. And he is surprised the pay sucks.

Almost Sad.

It's almost sad, this place
where men crawl into cabins
alone
to battle loneliness
every night,
holed up in their cabin, and
from the outside the cabin looks like a peaceful retreat, but
on the inside life is stretched thin, these
aging men, graying, head in hands,
estranged from family, doing
what they can--
TV, 40 ouncers, freebasing, cigarettes, pot, pornography, blow jobs,
again and again, tonight and tomorrow night--
to pretend they're not alone,
but really
it's not sad at all
because this is how it's always been.

Sausage Factory.

But minimum-wage workers, you see, can't make those kinds of demands because they have no skills. You don't like it here? Then leave, we'll find someone else by this afternoon. The only thing a MW worker can demand is the wage and decent working conditions, whatever is guaranteed by the labor laws. But if you think you should be paid more, goodbye. If you don't like your cabin or your rent, goodbye. And you have to accept that. Don't even think about negotiating. People who work these jobs are like links in a sausage factory, if there is something wrong with one of them, it is tossed at no cost. If you really want the job, you have to come to it accepting the powerlessness that comes with it. In exchange, you get the job and nothing more.

Life in the Woods.

I'm finding it very hard to concentrate, which is ironic, here in a cabin. I have my own cabin, with a door that locks, but still my attention is scattered. I sit on the porch to read and at the end of the paragraph can't tell you what it's about. Which means I am no longer a writer, either. I sit on this chair at the end of my bed and it seems that 20 minutes can't go by without a homeless man knocking on my door. Constantly I hear footsteps on the porch, on the gravel, voices yelling about 2-11, talk-show audiences laughing next door. I am at work even on my days off. I see the same people, hear the same sounds.

The place is in constant distress without centralized management, and the employees are perpetually trying to make up for it. I find myself worrying about management issues, social issues, job security rather than my book.

All of this is overlaid on top of that familiar structure to life. There are places I am supposed to be and not supposed to be, times I should be there and times I shouldn't, there are time cards and supervisors and ways I can talk to some people but not to others. And if I want to talk to someone, sometimes it needs to appear casual and spontaneous, and other times it is OK to appear planned and motivated. If it appears that I planned to talk to someone about a casual, negligible subject, I breach a social convention and therefore my face. Some people I can't talk to unless circumstance happens to provide the opportunity. Other people I am forced to talk to every day. There are certain tones I need to convey, too, each at exactly the right moment.

People here are worried about paying rent, buying cigarettes and booze, bumming rides, finding food, and finishing their shift. It's hard to feel I am of the same species when I sit in my cabin re-wording the sentences I write here, finding just the right diction, or scraping the walls of my brain to find that abstract idea that escaped me this morning while driving, the one that has zero consequence in the real word but whose electronic inscription on a certain Web site is imperative in my own narrow universe. And then I hear the crazy voices outside, the footsteps, and I am a Jew hiding in an annex.

For some reason I need to make a list of the characters:

DC - Stands for "Double C," or CC, which stands for Crazy Chris. DC was homeless not too long ago but could receive mail at St. Francis (a mission?) in Denver, and is the 11th of 14 children. He moved here from Michigan for this job. Age: 49. Occupation: Dishwasher. Wage: $7.50/hr. DC enjoys smoking weed, yelling and jumping around as he tells stories of how he deals with co-workers he doesn't like, and on payday he buys a shooter of Tanqueray after finding a ride to the liquor store, a sort of bi-weekly ritual, and assumes the driver of his ride would rather be compensated in hard liquor rather than in cash. DC cashes his paychecks at the local supermarket, which charges a fee of $2.79, and he likes working here because his paychecks don't bounce, which impresses him. Years ago he defaulted on a government loan for school, and so now he files his taxes using the "Rapid Refund" option, which somehow prevents the government from recouping their money, but pays him a lesser amount.

David - David, the head prep cook, is 43, a crack addict and alcoholic who says he doesn't smoke anymore. He's not afraid to drink while riding in someone's car, and doesn't mind imposing that legal risk on the driver. He has six kids, none of whom he's close with, though he called Dominick on his birthday last week to say happy birthday, and so a portion of his paycheck goes to child support every two weeks. David is bi-sexual, and despite constant rejections, frequently invites the young white males here over to his cabin at night. David claims to have a registered .38 in his cabin, and has no hesitations about "shooting [my] mother fucking ass" if I try to attack him at night.

More characters to come.

$20,000 Per Year.

And when I read that post below, I think that I'd be nice to live my life in a similar way. To have some kind of job that actually pays decent money on a regular basis, something that gives health benefits and 2 weeks vacation--something that would allow me to have a family, to rent a motor home, to pay for decent, clean hotels. Because, really, as mundane as it sounds, it seems more appealing than being alone for the rest of my life.

And then I am scared because that's not me. I couldn't get into a graduate program, and I didn't get the full-time teaching job. It seems I have no skills or education that could provide for those ideals. And so again I am reminded of the importance of this book, the prospect that it could be successful, perhaps lead to more books from which I can actually make a living. Or, the prospect that I could finish, send, revise, send, revise, send, send, send for years and years, all while working these bum jobs, $20,000 a year all over the country, working with kids who are increasingly younger than I am, constantly looking for work, Internet ads, sitting in these coffee shops, alone, until I am 54 and the book still hasn't been printed. Because, really, no girl wants a man who makes $20,000 a year.

I could go to law school, I think, but on that same line of thinking, I could also hang myself. That would be much easier, and would achieve the same effect.

My Father's Calves.

And the mountains make me think of him, his new hiking boots and long socks scrunched up under his over-sized calves, the same calves that I have. The way he'd drive through winding mountain roads with his clip-on sunglasses, looking off the cliff at the scenery rather than at the road, making me worry at first, but then, no, he is Dad, so he must know what he's doing.

The way he allowed the scenery to impose a certain awe upon him, something my mother never could do. How he'd continually pull over to the side of the road to take a picture. And in the mornings he'd look at maps and mileages, hiking trails and closing times, and before he turned the key to the rental car, the day would be planned. Every day was planned from morning to night.

Late Night Poetry.

Last night I drove us to Denver because Ricky had to pay a guy $25 to keep his camper on this guy's land for another month. It was a 70-minute drive. Ricky couldn't just send a check because he doesn't have a bank account. So we had to drive, to pay cash. We also dropped his girlfriend off, in the camper. She doesn't have a home. So Ricky is letting her stay in the camper. She got out of the car and scampered off into the wheeled enclosure without saying anything. David wanted to come, too, because the liquor stores in our small town were all closed on Memorial Day. He knew exactly where to go, which store would be open. The store was called Walnut Liquor. He slammed a shooter as I pulled out of the parking lot. As we were driving the 70 minutes back home it began to rain.

Death in Death Valley.

Bill Murray.

There is something about lying on a couch at 1am, watching a 20-year-old movie with the lights out. It has some actor in it like Bill Murray or Bruce Willis who is older now, but here he looks so young. And eating chips, with a drink that has ice.

Tomorrow I will be gone, removed from all these luxuries. Living on the road is not easy. These luxuries, if I'm lucky enough to encounter them, become comforts. Here at home, I don't need comfort because the idea that I am at home is comfort enough. I don't look for it. But when I am away and happen to see Stripes on TV in a strange place at night, I am clinging to Bill Murray's pock-marked face.

Homer v. Leibniz.

I just noticed today that "The Odyssey" is almost phonetically identical to "theodicy." And I notice this just hours before my own odyssey begins. The Odyssey, of course, is the most-read secular work of literature ever, and Leibniz allocated his word to denote something like justification for the existence of evil.

Perhaps there is a link between the famous epic and this obscure theological term. Perhaps those two, hoary ancient men are up there now, laughing about it.

"Zeus does not bring all men's plans to fulfillment."
-Homer

Frank.

While in the hospital today Michelle told us about her father, Frank, who was also the father of my father's first wife. He is 85 now, and his wife died 6 months ago. They were married for 62 years.

Of course, this sad story happens every day. Intellectually we know this, but won't confront it unless we have to.

Now he sits all day on the sofa and does nothing. He's going senile, too. He calls Brian, Paul, and Kevin, the boy who lives downstairs. He used to do word search puzzles, but not anymore.

There is a picture on the end table, I am told, of him and his wife in their 20s, in front of their first apartment. He sits and holds it in his hands now, crying every day. I can't imagine 62 years.

I remember going over to their house when I was a child, seeing all his model planes, all the birdhouses he built in the garage. And on Christmas eve, the extravagant train set, with all the little houses lit up, and the snow, the cars, the little men.

Plagiarism.

Today I failed two kids out of the class for plagiarizing. I can't help feeling guilty for doing it.

In effect, the guilt vaporizes all side issues and leaves behind the wonder of why I did it, why I had to do it. Is this why I'm here? Is this my purpose on earth? To fail kids and make them waste time and money? Do I feel better about myself now? Am I really doing more good than bad? Did I make the right choice?

One thought, I think the answer has a lot to do with their behavior. If it were a shy girl who did it, I'd of let her off. But these two ass-cracks did nothing but disrupt and disrespect me all semester. They didn't give a shit that they made my job 10 times harder than it should've been. And today as I was yelling at them (This is a big fucking deal), I felt a certain poetic justice, a satisfaction in their shock and regret. Which then turbocharged the machine as it accelerated, gaining power from its own roar.

And then, in turn, I come out feeling like I am competent at my job, that I can handle the responsibility, that I am a real teacher, not a fake. Failing these kids let me feel like I do have some control over the chaos that is my job, some power to mete out justice, some hope that the whole damn scheme is not just a sham.

Because, really, what would it mean if I just let it go?

What would it mean about my job? That it's just a facade. What would it mean about my life? My integrity? Forget it. It would mean that life is just for show.

Things I Might Feel Guilty About.

1. Not visiting Chrissy. (No, did this 5/1/09)
2. Hiding from Benjamin Franklin.
3. Failing Adam and Pat. (See above)
4. Not writing today.

Premeditated.

And beforehand, all to-do lists are oriented in terms of whether things will be done before or after departure. The answer is always before, and everything is scheduled for a particular day, all crammed in at the end, and then, take off, nothing, open, free. Everything must be clean, complete, before any new canto.

Also, of course, the knowledge that I will die on the trip. My death will follow the law of paradoxical intention, I know it. Because it'd be most tragic and least desirable (for me) to die away from home, I will somehow deliberately yet unwittingly work myself into an unconscious groove, like in a dream, that leads to my death, and if you asked me 20 minutes before it happens, I'd be able to deduce it and say, Oh, wow, yes, it's coming, it has to, but of course, you won't be there, and I will have nothing to bring that small twinkling star to my awareness, until there's half a second left when it's on my face, but of course, then it will be too late, and all I'll be able to do is chuckle to myself, I did it again!

Existential Drop-off.

My defenses against the existential forces have been very low lately, especially in the face of my plans for this summer. I find myself reminding myself: No, it's not like that, I love to do this and that, I am in a groove here, I am supposed to be doing this, this is right, I am serving Aristotle's human function. But sometimes it's like trying to hold water with Chantilly lace.

Places Like Pike's Peak.

Certain places, let's say the pier at Clearwater, the dock at Bar Harbor, the peak at Pike's Peak, the Grand Canyon overlook. Now and then I find myself there, again, unplanned, but it keeps happening, almost like running into an old friend. Oh, hey, good to see you again. And I think about these places when I am not there, wonder how the weather is, as I'd think of a friend. The visits are strung out over my lifespan, and by the time I die, I might visit each spot 5 times, sort of like pitons anchoring a life blowing in the breeze.

And every time I go there, it's exactly the same as I remember it, regardless of how much my life has changed.

It will be sad, I think, to see these places for the last time, when I know I will never make it back again.

Or, perhaps they will be in some afterlife, too, but personified, and I'll say, Hey, yeah, I remember you. We had some good times, no?

Why.

1. I need to feel control over my life, independence.
2. I need to feel as if I am seeing new things, stepping outside comfort zones.
3. I need to go beyond the world of everyday experience.
4. I need to follow instinct, bliss.
5. I need to do it while I'm young.
6. I need something to look forward to.

Thank You.

It's odd, writing. Somehow this book is not just a big project. Somehow it is the project. Somehow it is everything. It is the life I have lived so far, plus the present, plus the life I will live in the future. Writing the climax of this book will be the climax of my life. It is as though all meaning has been and will be funneling around this eye, draining all its leprous, lurid happenings onto these pages.

The difficult part is knowing that I'm not writing this for any other reason than to have something I can send to publishers. Every day, four hours, for the next couple years, and if they don't like it--. It is for nothing. Then I can throw it away. Self-publishing is non-publishing, and therefore pointless. Some people say, Well, even if I can't publish it, I will have it for myself, I'm not writing it for them, I'm writing it for myself, it's just something I need to do, or, I'm doing it because I love to write, etc., etc. But that doesn't apply here. I hate writing. And nothing I write outside of ComePassion is for myself. It is all or nothing at this point. I am traveling by chance.

The Best Article All Year.

Click.

Wasting Biology.

Constantly I think about the time I am wasting.

Discipline.

If you let yourself take a little, you will take more when you are done.

Interpersonal Relationships.

While reading a review of Anthony Storr's Solitude: A Return to the Self, I came across this:

"His intriguing analyses of figures such as Kafka, Kipling, Beatrix Potter, Beethoven, Newton, and Wittgenstein offer compelling evidence that individuals may achieve happiness and stability through their work, even when their interpersonal relationships are inferior."

*

I ordered Desert Solitaire a couple days ago, by recommendation. Abbey and Storr seem to have collaborated on the idea that creation is not hindered by solitude, that it might actually be a hothouse for your impulses, allow the created to root.

Why I Hate It.

In writing, the hard part is when you don't know where to go. It is the searching that's hard, not the actual doing of the writing.

To be more specific, it is the inertia, the lack of direction and force, that makes it so treacherous to start, or even think about starting, treacherous to end one activity--watching TV or frying eggs--pause the day, turn around, and then begin, with no momentum but with every existential spotlight hot on your face, to think about where you will begin. This is why I hate it, why the dread comes every day, and why, when I am writing, it isn't much different than leaping around on one foot from hoodoo to hoodoo--in a great maze of hoodoos, each a million feet tall.

Eerily, living is hard at the same exact points.

The Desert Sand.

I suppose it is like pretending, at this point. For one, I cringe as I walk into class, at the sight of these kids, the thought of the futile pedagogy to come. There are maybe four kids who want to come to class. The rest are monkeys. Today one threw an empty soda bottle in a beautiful arch across the room and missed the trashcan. I have urges to scream and throw ten of them out the door at once. The change has already been made, the final evolution is near its completion, I am becoming him, and this person who goes to class, he only does it because he inherited the job from me, and he's only OK with it because there are two weeks left, and he can pretend until then.

Outside of class, there are no more second chances, I've decided. Once I am crossed, the crosser is gone. There is no more forgiveness. Here, too, I have been pretending, in relationships. I have been breathing all these pollutants only because I am afraid of what will happen if I don't.

Or, I need the purity. An open plain, just openness, with nothing, like maybe a sea would be best, where I can't see the shore. Or, oh, a desert. One with snakes and no footprints, and hotness like a sand-griddle. The desert will fix everything, a mountain on which I can stand and look down at the detritus I've climbed so far, and the other side, coming down, will be immaculate.

Finally, I don't fix anything myself. The CD player in my car remains broke. Not broken, haha, but broke. My camera remains outdated. The rear-passenger tire on my car stays leaking, and every few days I pump it, instead of fixing it. Not leaky, but leaking. The sand in the desert will take care of it.

29.

A little over 29, and creeping, every day. Not even a third yet. But if I die now, I will have those 29.

R.I.P. Harry. 1936-2009.

Today was the first time I cried over the death of someone I didn't know. Somehow that is significant. Somehow that is a milestone. I didn't even cry at my grandparents' funerals.

When you know people that loved him, the sorrow is that much worse. Not just my dad, but Phil's dad, my Uncle Bill, a thousand others.

Of course, I didn't cry because I knew him, but because of what he defined. Because it's the end of an era, as it'll be when Willie Nelson and Jim Gardner die.

I will never again hear a live broadcast of Swing and a long drive....Things will be different now on summer nights. There is no more Vet, and no more Harry, either. Yet, I am still living.

Steve called today when it happened, and we joked--"He's outta here." Our desperate attempt to cope with the tragic part of our tragic-comic lives. Desperate, yes.

West.

This is it.

Someone Frying Chicken.

The problem, if I die right now, is that there will be no one left in my family or lineage who appreciates my sad country ballads. Yes, this is the crux of the problem. My goal now should be to have sex again before I die, except it will be for a purpose, to impregnate her. Then I will play records to the kid while driving. I am serious. That way, when I die, the meaning of these songs will not die with me.

Boy with Ball.

This morning as I was driving to work I approached a small boy standing on the curb outside of his house, maybe 5-years-old. As he saw my car coming he pointed to a ball in the middle of the street, then covered his face with both hands as if he were crying, then pointed to the ball, then back to crying, alternating, so I would understand that he wanted his ball back but wasn't allowed in the street.

I stopped the car, got out, and kicked it over his head. He kept his eyes on the ball the whole time, and as it passed him, he ran after it, no longer aware of my presence.

Treatment.

I have heard of, "Treat people as you would want to be treated."

But I think this is better: "Treat each person as if he has cancer and will die tomorrow. He is mean and curmudgeonly because he knows he has cancer, but he doesn't tell people because he doesn't want their pity, doesn't want to trouble them. So he goes around conducting business as usual, and everyone thinks he's healthy, albeit curmudgeonly. Then one day, suddenly, he dies."

Fragmmentary.

It seems that my ComePassion blog has devolved from somewhat well-thought-out, meaningful blurbs to quotes from old country songs. Though, I suppose some people would prefer to read quotes. So maybe it has evolved, I don't know.

In class kids are taking advantage of my easy-going nature, talking much more than I should allow, but most of the time I am just too tired to deal with it, to keep telling them to be quiet, or to move them or talk to them or whatever I would do, so I keep doing my lesson regardless of who's listening, regardless of whether or not students can hear over the palaver. At night I rehearse what I'll say to them if they do it again, but when the time comes I don't.

The book I am reading, still, is Frank Conroy's Stop-Time, and I just noticed that I tend to read things that other people say are good rather than what I think is good. And I also notice that it takes me very long to read a book, and that I don't know what the average time is for a person to read a book, but I am thinking I would probably be below average speed.

Moving on to some other sphere of life, let's say, the coffee shops I go to, I told Steve on the road trip that I wouldn't be that guy anymore, the guy who goes to coffee shops to read and write, though every day it's all I can do. If I didn't, I'd be home alone all day, which makes me sad. But there are some considerations to consider, like, for example, eating. I have to make sure I eat before I go out, or else, if I don't, I will get hungry and even the slightest twinge of hunger wrecks my concentration and I will have to come home to eat, or else be forced to buy one of Starbucks' $8.00 sandwiches, which is a problem, because last year I didn't make a lot of money.

Writing is going OK, it has slowed down a bit, but it is still going, still creeping toward some cinder-block wall that I will hit any day now. I have never before simultaneously hated something I need so badly, and never before been so dedicated to something that will add up to nothing.

My relationship with A. is deteriorating, it seems, has been for a while, and I'm sure it has to do with the fact that 1) I am entering the Final Evolution, and 2) the basis of our relationship has changed. It is no longer intimate. Now that I am forced to see her as an independent entity in the world, a free agent, distanced from myself, our roles toward each other have changed, and we can no longer go to each other to have certain needs met.

Just now I am thinking of the game Crossfire. This is probably the first time I've thought about it in 18 years. Yet, the game pieces seem so familiar. I'd play it with Sean Murray in his basement, and I can still feel the heavy, cold chrome in my hand. We'd also put Legos together that were from a special-edition Star Wars set.

More and more I am becoming desperately attached to and dependent on Willie Nelson and the sad country ballads of my childhood. I freeze when I hear them and galaxies explode inside of me. I don't know why. It might have something to do with the Final Evolution, or the beard.

I go to the gym 3 times per week and do three sets on 4 different machines. I do a warm up and a cool down, about a quarter mile each. I stretch, too. I don't have to force myself to workout, probably because it's not really a workout. It is just my little reprieve from the real world for 40 minutes. On Monday by the track I saw this girl I used to know, Nuria. She's very sweet, and we talked for a couple minutes. She's very sweet, but of course, she cannot talk for long. She has to go. So, she guesses, she'll see me later.

If I want to make a 2008 contribution to my IRA, I need to do it by April 15th, and if I do make the contribution, then I am assuming I will live until I am 59.5, since I cannot withdrawal until I am that old, or at least I am preparing for that contingency, even though I have no real evidence of its viability.

Life, you again? Really? You again? Where do you think you're going? HA HA HA HA HA!!!

I drink green tea with honey every morning because it is supposed to fortify my immune system. The tea, not the honey. The honey just makes it taste better. I also take fish oil and a multi-vitamin, also for my immune system. And I wash my hands now after using the bathroom, which I used to do only if I got some on my hand, because my immune system is weakened, and I really don't want to get sick again, so I have to be really careful.

All I Can Do.

If I die before the book is done, then it will be OK, as I am the only one to whom the book matters, and if I am dead, then I won't care that it wasn't finished. In any case, I will keep writing it until A) I die, or, B) it's finished, whichever comes first. This is all I can do.

It's more important than my life, but I cannot transcend my life to finish it if need be. The importance stems not from greatness or uniqueness, but from the fact that it's my truth, my own subjective Truth.

Trouble.

It's gotten to the point where every couple days I feel as though the day is the final, overgrown day at the end of a long string of days. Like when you see an actor, suddenly, on TV, who hasn't made an appearance in years. He's older, fatter, and you say to the person next to you, "Wow, look at him, he really got old." I am the one you are talking about, with a beard now, evolving into some final evolution, as if the end is near.

The end is coming, of course, even though I tend to think it won't, just as I think my car will never break down, or my house will never catch fire, and my fingernails will never harbor some rare disease that makes them fall out. Every day I remind myself that I am normal, mortal, will die, and every day it seems stranger than my fingernails falling out.

Now at 26, yes, I feel as if I am walking slowly, as if into a desert, into the final evolution of my life. Somehow the beard is symbolic of this. Walking into a dry and barren desert, past all notions of romanticism, tradition, culture, sex, attraction, biology, expectations. As if one day soon I will find myself an old man with a long beard smoking a cigarette, perhaps in a desert roadside bar late at night, looking up at some newcomer as I tap ashes into the ashtray. The smoke will rise in front of my face, and I won't care about anything. Every possible permutation has been played out before my eyes at this point, and if that's the case--if I've seen every possible way the world can fuck itself--then what does it matter anymore?--my life becomes a safari, the newcomer is a zebra.

Or maybe it's devolving. Like when I hear the Willie Nelson songs in my car and want to curl up into the fetal position, vulnerable. Maybe backing down is the answer, submitting. I think about how maybe I should be a cowboy from now on, live out the fantasies in the songs, or get married and have kids and make them listen to Willie Nelson for the sole purpose of perpetuating something so deeply a part of me, being faithful to that impulse, and then maybe I will be OK with the future.

But what I can feel, what I do know, is the clinging. Descarte felt the thinking, and I feel the clinging. The desperate clinging to, the screeching search for and need to splay out onto the desert sand whatever that is that's swirling around so deep inside.

Ghost!

It has been determined that a ghost lives at my father's place. Take a look at this picture, look over my right shoulder. What's going on here? Click.

Faith.

It is amazing how much faith goes into the writing process. Think and brainstorm and sketch, etc., etc., but I never hear anything about the faith that is required. Do I think it is all done from impulse? From contractual agreement? No, it's not. The basis of every keystroke is faith. Faith, defined as the utter belief in an object, even, perhaps especially, without evidence.

One Year.

Tonight marks one year. Of course, it was anticipated every day for the past week, and now it's here. A big event, and what does it mean. One year he has been a ghost.

I was in the garage today rummaging through his old tools, unsuspecting, as I looked for the spark plug gapper, the one he showed me how to use. How do I explain something like that. How do I articulate this.

Thinking of this, it's as if I've been floating my whole life, and now, thinking about it, the iron core grounds me, pulls me to earth like lead boots. And tomorrow I will be up again, in the sky.

Coffee Shop Reviews.

Espress It - not bad, nice atmosphere, but mostly old religious people in there who are too nice and expect you to smile back when they smile at you. WiFi.

Groove Ground - feel awkward there since Ari is banned, and plus, gay guys try to pick me up. WiFi.

Treehouse - very roomy, nice furniture, though constant Jesus music, it seems. WiFi.

B&N - decent seating arrangements, but no wi-fi, and Andrew works there. No WiFi.

Panera - more of a restaurant setting than a coffee shop, and you sort of have to buy something. WiFi.

Haddonfield Starbucks - nice anonymity there, though it is small and cramped, lots of obnoxious kids, too. Sometimes WiFi.

Cherry Hill Starbucks - run by a bunch of lesbians, nice booths with tables, non-free WiFi. Lots of outlets. Close proximity.

Grind House - nice seating, nice food, quiet, though lots of Haddonfieldy snob types. WiFi.

Three Beans - good coffee house, though no wi-fi, and sometimes people try to talk to me. No WiFi.

Wegmans - best anonymity around, though I miss the personal touch there--too desolate. WiFi.

Discharge Instructions.

Had to take another pill today, this one much more potent. One item on the discharge instructions:

"No prolonged cuddling of small children for 14 days."

Progress.

This feeling is so precious because I know it won't last. I have plenty of ideas right now, plenty of direction. Plenty of force. But I am surprised it's lasted this long, and I can't imagine it will last longer than a couple weeks more.

Coffee Shops.

Nine criteria for determining the worth of a coffee shop:

1. Will it be awkward if you don't buy anything?
2. Is there free wi-fi?
3. How far is it from your house?
4. Is it quiet enough to concentrate?
5. Do the employees there insist on talking to you?
6. Are there outlets for your laptop?
7. Can you eat outside-food without employees seeing you?
8. What are the chances of running into someone you don't want to see?
9. What seating is likely to be available? Tables and chairs? Leather couches?

Statistics.

I am 13,272 words in, which means I have been averaging 251 words per day. If the book will be 100,000 words, then I will be done in 345 days. Which is really not that long at all. (That's not what she said.)

Jewish Girls.

Our relationship is curious. One that seems to both jab and comfort at the same time. I feel bad for the pain we have caused each other. More than ever I just want peace in our lives, no drama. I want to forget about the crinkles in our history. And that's all there is. That's all I have to say.

Tonight she mentioned something about losing faith in humanity. I've had this happen so many times, though I've learned that I am happier just knowing and accepting that humanity is off-kilter, getting on with my life, rather than trying to always seek its redemption and crashing when I fail.

Family.

How nice it would be, I thought, to have kids, if only to play Willie Nelson when they are young, and when I die, they could say, "Remember this song? Dad loved this song."

I was reading an essay last night about a man whose wife died, and his fear was that she never existed. I don't fear that he never existed, but I do fear sometimes that all traces of Willie Nelson's voice will vanish, even searching eBay I won't be able to find a cassette or CD or vinyl.

I told him as he was dying that I would have kids. He was unconscious, though. I'm not sure if he heard me.

The Squinting.

At the gym I backed off from a machine, something swishing underwater in my head, though I couldn't peer deep enough to see what it was. Something that had happened earlier in the day, something I'd overlooked, perhaps a social faux pas, or an unintended offense to a student, I didn't know, but something wanted to surface, and couldn't.

While passing the elevator on the way to class a student was in the elevator and the door was closing. She saw me and held the door, and I said no, that I take the stairs, thanks anyway. "Gosh, I was trying to be nice..." she said. "Thank you," I said.

When I get to class I tell them, "If I see you in the elevator and don't get in, it doesn't mean I don't like you. It just means I'm afraid of elevators," which was a lie.

Could this be what's trying to surface? A qualm from lying?

During class I wrote on the board, "Might there be a quiz on Monday? Perhaps." A couple kids said, "Do you mean 'There might' instead of 'Might there'?" No, I said, as they claimed it didn't make sense. "It's called the subjunctive tense..." I tried to explain. As one kid continued his protest, I snapped, "Look it up," and from his surprise I gathered that I must have said it curtly.

Could this be it? Guilt from snapping?

I realized it was neither of these things. Instead, it was the shimmer of light squinting off the brass nameplate of my ship, which had been pitching back and forth all day, yawing in the people who were now around me in spandex and cut-offs.

The El Salvadorian Way.

I am coming down the library stairwell, Nury is climbing up. I am coming from the 4th floor, she, the first. From a cross-section of the stairwell, it must have been exciting, like two cars on a collision course, watching from a helicopter over the city blocks. You know their fate, but the drivers are happy, dumb.

She turns on the landing and I glance up from the floor in half a second to pretend she is an anonymous passerby, preferring not to face the embarrassment of our history, saying hi as if she is just anyone, as if my glance was too rapid to recognize her, returning my eyes to my feet.

We pass. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. "Ryan?! Ryan F------n?!?" I hear from behind me.

"What? Huh?" say my eyebrows as I turn around. Why would she do this to me? Why would she insist on forcing poor me to face our history, her denial of me? "Oh, wow, Nury? Hey, how are you?"

"Oh, good, I'm back in school now, after a year off."

"Oh, yeah? You took a year off?"

"Yeah, I have cancer," smiling.

My eyebrows leave my face, leap above my head, like a cartoon. "What?" At this point I am more concerned about my reaction, about comporting myself in the proper way, saying the right things, rather than the malignancy of her cancer, her health, which is selfish. I say some things to express my astonishment, my sympathy. Then, "Where is it?"

Smiling again, shyly, "Oh, it's...well...on my body." Of course it's on her boob, Ryan! What are you doing!? You don't ask a sweet young girl 'where.' In a chance meeting that is awkward enough, where else would it be? On her body, Ryan, isn't that enough for you? Why do you insist on embarrassing this poor girl?

We crawl out of cancer-talk after she explains that it is basically gone, dormant, stretch out on safe ground, talk about classes, graduation. My questions are like interview questions, bullets, one right after the other, anything to avoid pauses in the tempo, and as she is talking about her Shakespeare class I am thinking about the storm of traumatic stress this encounter will rain on me for the rest of the day, like a Tempest, I suppose.

"Well, it was nice seeing you," I assert, unsure if the conversation is supposed to end yet.

She reciprocates, smiles in that El Salvadorian way.

Thyroid Blast.

My thyroid will be blasted tomorrow. Starting to have second thoughts, wondering if this is the right thing to do, realizing the permanency of this choice. Though, there wasn't much of a choice.

The Kafka Influence.

Today at Wegman's I saw my cousin's husband, who I've talked to maybe three times before. I was writing, or trying to write, he comes up, Hey, I know you.

Oh, really? I didn't know you worked here, I said.

Blah blah blah blah blah, we said to each other.

So, how are you doing, he says in the middle of our talk. Not like you'd say to a toll taker, but like you'd say to someone who just came out of tragedy. The funeral, almost a year ago, was the last time I'd seen him, so of course only one thing comes to mind when he sees me, and he says it very sensitive-like, in a low-tone, as if his question is a secret.

When he leaves my heart is a-race. It's not because I had to talk to him, but rather because it was in the context of a surprise. Surprise! It's me, hey, how are you, and by the way surprise, I caught you when you least expected me! As if I were being tested somehow, by chance, someone keeping me in check, Were you doing anything you weren't supposed to be doing? The Kafka influence.

No, OK, good. I was just sitting here on my laptop, innocent-like.

Style.

More and more, as I grow older, style is becoming less important in some areas, more important in others.

Was Michelangelo Gay?

Today Mom calls, So, did you find a volunteer job yet?

No, Mom.

She says that I am too isolated, that I need to meet more people. I try to explain to her that it’s OK, I am a writer. I am supposed to be isolated. She doesn’t understand what writing has to do with isolation.

You never know, she adds, you could meet your future wife.

What!?

Ryan--trust me. I have a lot of years under my belt. I know what's best. You need to get out more, you're in your 20s, you know?

I have so much to do, though, Mom. I'm always busy.

With what? Your writing? You’re not going to meet anyone just staying in, doing your writing, reading all the time. Kelly (my sister, who met her husband while volunteering) thanks me every day for making her volunteer.

No she doesn’t.

Yes, she does. Ask her. I'm serious. It could be wonderful, you know, to have someone to travel with, someone to cook with, someone you really get along with. At this rate you’re going to be an old maid. You don’t want to be an old maid, do you?

Old maid? What am I, a girl now? Mom, I don’t—

That’s what people do, Ryan. They find a person they get along with, they move in together, and it makes things a lot easier. What do you want, to live alone for the rest of your life?

*

They think I am gay, my family. Kelly said something once about one of our old neighbors, who turned out to be gay. Can you believe that? she said.

There's nothing wrong with that, Mom said in return, happy for the chance to assert her acceptance of gays in front of me.

I can picture Dan reminding them, after I left the room, how a lot of writers are gay. A lot of writers are gay, he probably said. James Baldwin was, Allen Ginsberg--Michelangelo was gay.

*

And what can I say in return? How do I say that I've seen enough? How do I explain to my mother that the image has been soured?

The grapes are shriveled, I could say.

*

Though, she might interpret this as a sexual dysfunction, make me see a doctor.

Olfactory Factory.

I was in the basement late last night looking for envelopes in Dad's cardboard box, "Office Supplies." I peeled back the four folds, and the scent sprung out, shot through my nostrils, stinging. I smelled his house, his must, his hobby. Dry and powdery, like baking soda. Supposedly, all sensory inputs traverse about ten neurological steps before the signals reach the limbic system, which converts that signal into emotion. Except olfactory input. Olfactory signals take only one, instant step.

Thomas Edison.

Today I received all the information from Tommy Edison. They want me to write an "Introduction Letter" to the class. OK, I guess that makes sense. But they also want me to send a picture of myself, too. Are they serious? What does it matter what I look like? Will a picture of my facial features help the students to be better writers? I guess so.

Perhaps I will send one of me with a brier pipe and newsboy hat. Then they will think I am a real professor. Or maybe I will go the other way and paint gang tattoos on my forehead, the teardrop from my eye.

Fell asleep at about 3:00 a.m. last night, woke up at 4:00 a.m., read, fell back asleep at 7:00 a.m. and slept until 11:00 a.m. Not sure what's going on.

Made it to B&N by about noon, the Cherry Hill Office I call it now, and after an hour of writing the power went out. I sat and typed in the dark for a few minutes, and a redheaded girl came up to me and said they were closing, that I needed to get out. Why do the lack of lights necessitate closing? I suppose they'd be liable if I tripped over a hobbit on the floor.

I am now at Wegman's, hating these scribblings, this whole project, wanting to throw my computer off the balcony, into the fruit aisle, onto the orange stand, and watch from above as the orange spheres tumble off, and people look up to see where the mysterious computer came from. Grrr. At times I think it is good, and then I think, what am I doing? Why am I wasting my life writing this junk? Why do other people lead regular lives, and I go to the Cherry Hill Office every day to write the jabberwocky that appears in my dreams?

Insomnia.

Very strange sleep patterns lately. Can't sleep at night, and fall asleep during the day. Loren Eiseley was an insomniac, supposedly. He turned out OK, though.

This place is quiet at night. I am living with an old bearded man named Peter. He comes home at midnight and goes up to bed, falls asleep, and leaves early in the morning. I see him on weekends. While he is sleeping above me, I am downstairs going into the kitchen for milk.

I am tired of feeling like I should be asleep in the twilight hours (pun, will accept the charges). I sit up in bed and stare and think, "Grrr." From now on I think I will carry on, reading, writing, making phone calls, cooking meals, and pretending it's not 3:00 a.m. If I wake up at 1:00 p.m., OK.

Today I leaned my head back on the couch when I got home from school, about 4:00 p.m. I woke up in my bed at 7:40 p.m. My tail bone is sore, too, for some reason, and, to be sure, when I cough it hurts.

Photo of the day.

Six Facts.

Phil & Shannon will be homeless come Feb. 28th unless they find a new house.

Thomas Edison offered me more classes today, which will begin March 1, if I take them. They are online courses, which I've never taught before, which means I don't have to drive anywhere, which is good, though I am not sure how much time they will consume, though Eleanor tells me the job's a plum.

Steve is "serious" about Road Trip '09, and serious about buying sangria along the way.

I am at Wegman's, and people around me think I'm typing something important.

I have to write now, and won't procrastinate any longer. I will eat all of the vegetables.

Except to say, thank you.

Naked with Students.

It seems that my father's generation is OK with being naked in the locker room, yet my generation is afraid to bare their balls. I wouldn't mind baring all if people my age expected it, but they don't. A naked man in the mind of someone born after 1978 registers as Ack! Don't show me that, whereas for someone born before 1978, it registers as Oh, yeah, that's normal. Somewhere in the historic evolution of high school locker-room-changing-for-gym-class procedural protocol, there is the sudden drop-off of showering. In my high school, there were showers in the locker room, but the bay was used to store soccer nets. It's like the extinction of the dinosaurs. What caused it? A mystery.

Anyway, I have so far been successful in my goal of not seeing any of my students in the locker room at the university gym. I just joined last week, so today was only my second time using the gym as a faculty member, so I don't know whether or not I will run into any students in the locker room. Of course, it wouldn't be bad if I had boxers on, but if one were to catch me running from the shower bay to the locker area, i.e., the time when I am a naked Indian, that would not be good. What do I say the next day in class? How do I explain?

I considered that perhaps my fears were unfounded, so last week I asked them, "How many of you go to the gym?" in the guise of, "Oh, is it nice in there? I've never been," but my fears were indeed founded, as about 5 or 6 of them raised their hands, all guys. And so I think, well maybe I'll just wear a bathing suit, but then I realize that would be worse, as I would rather them see me naked than letting them know I am afraid of them seeing me naked.

There are these two professors who stand ass-cheek naked talking to each other every time I go in there. Just gabbing and palavering about the weather and whatnot, everything hanging out, no concern in the world. If only I could one day learn to be like them.

NEED magazine.

On my daily visit to B&N today I picked up a copy of NEED Magazine, a magazine that tells the stories of people who give humanitarian aide in third world countries. Again I am reminded of how small these things are called creative nonfiction, poetry, fiction. Such a tiny cranny we operate from, and when it's all you know, it seems large. But really, what good is any of it when other people are saving lives? Am I supposed to feel guilty? Then I am doing what I am supposed to.

Willie Nelson.

Am I the only 26-year-old whose top three recording artists include Willie Nelson? There is something so palpable in the memories his voice begets. There is something so reminiscent in his voice, like something is over now, and we are just looking back and remembering. I grew up like this. The crackly sound of my father's vinyl in the living room, the hi-fi stereo speakers, the clips in the back where the wires hooked up. I think of the brown tape-cassette carrier my dad kept in his car in the 80s. The skin peeling off, the rusting metallic clip, I still have it. The tapes, too.

I think about how he will die soon, Willie. He's 80 or 81 now, and what that will mean to me, my life, what it says about how old I am getting, how far from my childhood I am. Like falling into a well, a wind-storm when I think about this, about the man who would play the cassettes in that Notre-Dame colored van, takes me in, takes me under. I never would have thought that one event could cyclone so much mental energy on a daily basis, even a year after. Take a minute to think about it and it pulls you, take another second and you are torn under, ripping away with its sheerness. So difficult to come back, to force yourself out of a memory complex that slices you but warms you, stabs you but blankets you. I listen now to the same song over and over.

"Little things I should have said and done, I just never took the time."

The Girl Across from Me.

I saw B&N early this morning, sat on one of their love seats to write. Chapter 4 is done, and for #5--the direction wasn't coming. All the notes, all the backtracking, nothing. There was a short-haired girl sitting across from me, and all I could write about was her. I described her, what I imagined her background to be, what the deep underlying reasons were for her coming to B&N, only I stated them as fact, not as imaginings. I stepped back, wrote about B&N, why people go there, etc., etc., which eventually led me to think about the time in 2006 when I went there to buy the two recovery books for Dad. Amazing, the connections that come if you just close your mind and write.

At mid-day I transferred across the parking lot to Panera Bread, as my stomach was beginning to eat itself. I got a blueberry bagel and put way too much cream cheese on it. The girl said, "Anything to drink with that?" "No thanks," I say. Then once I sit down I take the cup out of my bag, go over to the soda fountain, and fill up for free, as I've done close to 100 times now. Doesn't anyone else know about this? Why do I always feel like the only one who does it?

And then the locking horns in my head, the making of fists, the clenching of jaws, until I could somehow make this piece work for the book, the blind alleys, the disbelief, the doubt, and then the familiar feeling, the tent splits open, the Lord's light blinding the naysayers, merciless. It didn't seem that dramatic from my seat, but I might have made it work. Tomorrow's reading will tell.

Radioactive Iodine.

Turns out I will have to swallow radioactive iodine next week, in order to kill my thyroid gland. The medication I was taking gives me hives, so this is plan B. People tend to take this seriously when I tell them, when I say I will need to take thyroid pills for the rest of my life. It's really no big deal. I already take a multi-vitamin, so what is one more pill? But the phrase, "for the rest of my life," of course, is a bit alarming. The picture below is of the thyroid gland, a gamma-imaging photo, I think, though it looks more like Big Foot on some kind of Ghost Hunter's ESD scan (some generic acronym I made up just now--it could stand for Extra Sensory Detection or something. Feel free to play around with this).

Mosquitoes, Goats, and Nick Flynn.

Bill Gates set free a swarm of mosquitoes today into an audience at a TED conference. He was trying to prove a point about malaria in poor countries. He said something like, "Why should only poor people have to worry about being bitten?" Then the mediator said--no, quipped was the word in the article--"The headlines will read, 'Gates unleashes more bugs into the world.'"

I have been introducing myself to Dave Eggers recently, him and his memoir. Probably the funniest and saddest book I've ever read, both at the same exact time. I used to hate memoir, but yet what I have been writing has turned itself into memoir, and everything on my reading list is becoming memoir. I have also been killing myself trying to figure out why the goat in Brad Land's memoir resembles the bull(?) in Nick Flynn's. Look for yourself. Flynn's is embedded in a tree, but is very similar-looking to the goat. Well, not killing myself.

If the Snow Was Sticking.

Snow fell today. This is a tree just outside of the house I'm living in. I remember being little, sneaking out without a coat at 11 p.m. to see if the snow was sticking, if there might be a snow day tomorrow. Tonight I sneaked out to remember. Thank you.

As of Late.

As of late, I have been hungry for literacy to a fault. I almost feel guilty for ignoring friends and family. Whatever I feed myself does not quench. Constant go, read, write. The book is coming along fine. I am on chapter 4, though the chapters are short. Each essay could almost stand alone. Still, even after this much practice and education, I still have questions, am still feeling for the ocean bottom, am still bewildered by the depth of the complexity, possibility.

Students.

More and more I am identifying myself by how my students see me. I worry about who I am to them. Am I another boring teacher? What are they writing in their texts that I see them send? Do they dread coming to class? This is my only job.

Today one of them asked me how old I was. I made them guess. They guessed between 22 and 28. One of them said, "No, I think you have to be at least 24 to be a professor."

Daily.

There are so many things to do daily. I could make a list. Vitamins, medicine, and dental hygiene. Drink 8 glasses of water. Read, write, and exercise.

Perhaps I am neurotic for making a grid that allows me to check off these items each day as they are completed. But there is satisfaction in knowing that I am living deliberately.

Today was the first day of school, or at least, of the semester.

Constantly I am thinking about what I want to do, who I want to be, and if I am doing enough now to achieve those goals.

Worrisome Paradox.

I am sitting here on a Sunday, still without the results of the blood test on Thursday. I am down to 120 pounds from 150. I am much more worried than I've let on to friends and family. I don't know when the results will come in, but I've convinced myself that it is something serious.

The irony is amazing, though. I am worried that I will have to tell people that I am dying, worried about depriving them of my company. As if it would be such a great tragedy if I died and disappeared from the lives of the people who love me. However, they're not worried at all. It's not even on their minds. How self-centered my worries are. How self-centered it is to think that my death would constitute a major loss in the lives around me. They're not worried at all.

Quality of Life.

But what does it mean to have a good quality of life. Does it mean waking up on soft bedding with access to a refrigerator with orange juice in it? Does it mean having nice clothes, or a roof that doesn't leak? Or does it have more to do with one's ability to pursue a passion or goal or interest?

Avarice.

I was thinking today about dying, if I died from this sickness I have, and how greedy I am. I was afraid of losing this life. As if I wanted more than what I've already had. This is my instinct, but then I say wait, Haven't I already had more than I could wish for? And my serenity is replenished.

Neurosis.

Today I made a list of every book and author I've ever read. I alphabetized the list and saved it electronically to Yahoo's server. This means that even if my laptop blows up or my house burns down, or I die, the list will still exist. I will never use the list, and I can't foresee myself ever looking at it again, but it is saved electronically.

Spreadsheet.

It is amazing: My mind spends so much time thinking about these ideals, but yet I create a life in which I am able to spend so little time working toward those ideals. There is always a to-do list with things like changing the oil in my car, or calling an insurance company.

I made a spreadsheet, as my dad would've called it. On the Y axis are the daily dates from today until 2010. On the X axis are the six things that I want to do every day. I am curious to see how well the idea will hold up.

In any case, I am ready for a new life. A life of discipline, one in which I not only dream, but do. One in which I actually write what I want to write. One in which I put an end to the frivolous gallivanting. One in which I work toward the ideals.

Christmas of 2008.

It occurs to me again today, as it has every day for the past while, that I have not been living deliberately. I have been living more for pleasure than for pain, and I am forgetting my goals. I start to question my ability to be disciplined. To stay up late and write or read. Tomorrow I will sort this out. It is now almost 1am.

Panama.

Thinking of getting out this break. Panama? I feel like my youth won't last forever, and so I want to take advantage while I am young. I need to do some research, though.

I need to do a lot over the next few weeks. From now on I will work until midnight and wake at 8.

Orientation.

I am very oriented in terms of tangible "things to do." Getting my life together means putting a "to-do list" together.

Get Back.

Part of the problem right now: I am so off-track that I don't know where to begin. Several things are important. I need to worship the D. List, which I haven't even looked at in months. That's one.

1. D. List.
2. Organize the project & its means (trip).
3. Complete list on inside cover of pink journal.
4. Compile reading list.

Long Time Coming.

It's been a while since I've written. This semester has been the busiest ever, a test of mettle. Spirituality I have lost, clarity there is no more. I spend my time now writing things like "how does this relate to the sentence before it?" on students' papers. I go right up until sleep, for fear of not finishing the task by next week. I have lost all sense of vision, serenity, order. But the 15 weeks are coming to an end, and I can feel my sanity creeping back.

Things with Ari are falling apart. It is sad, but it's the only way I can see things working out. I don't see any other solution.

Why the Daily List is Important.

Each night it is of no consequence if I have completed the Daily List. And tomorrow night, no consequence. But if I go for a month without taking heed, one night I will marvel at all the momentum I've managed to lose, and it will be that much harder to start the train again. I will be so discouraged by all the slack I've accumulated, it will seem almost pointless to start up again. This is why it's important to GWPER every day, even if the W is just a little paragraph like this.

Coming to Terms with Self.

I am learning again to come to terms with my self. Notice I didn't say "terms with life," or "terms with others." Coming to terms with one's self is different, and much more involved than I knew. To come to terms with your self essentially means being able to be happy with your life in a world with no distractions. Planning a life in which you can be happy by yourself, living off your own goals, interests, passions, visions.

This is not to say you cannot have a woman, but the crucial detail is that you cannot be dependent upon her for anything. You cannot need to be certain of her feelings for you. You must approach such a relationship based on what you can offer, not what you need.

I am learning to let the momentum of passion carry me. I need to do the Daily List every day and believe that it will take me where I need to be spiritually and emotionally. I need to write much more than I have been, remembering that writing is God, my providence. I need to keep my head down and have faith in my plans with school, my plans with life. I need to depend on those plans, those visions, to reap security, self-esteem, confidence, happiness. I need to depend upon my plans, passions, and abilities to sustain myself, my sanity, my health.

I want to dedicate my life to the written word, to crafting meaning through words. This is what I need to depend on for sustenance--this passion. Nothing else, no one else.

Soulful.

I just got back from the coffee shop. Ari closed. I feel so much better after seeing her than I have all day. Today, like most days, was a struggle to find things to occupy me, to distract me from the existential angst, my efforts to make meaning, the unrelenting choices I have to make every second of my life, the suspicion that my life is empty and void. But after I see her, it's as if life is no longer existential, as if life is going the way it is "supposed" to. Like putting your hand into a glove.

If I didn't see her today, or talk to at least someone, I would have gone to bed feeling empty. I would have laid down and prayed for sleep to take me as fast as possible so I wouldn't have to feel that feeling like I am just floating around accidental-like. This has been such a problem recently. I don't know why.

The question is how to replicate this feeling on my own, without needing anyone else. The goal is to be able to live a fulfilling life on my own. I remember when I was building my canoe. I would go to bed feeling good. I would work all day on it and go to bed feeling like I accomplished something, like I served a purpose. Nowadays I read and write every day, or run sometimes, but this does not give me the same feeling.

But at times, like today when I was feeling a bit disconnected, floating, I think perhaps I was just lonely. I felt better as soon as I went to the coffee shop and surrounded myself with people. This is what I used to do in college--when I felt alone I'd go to the library. Or back in Sept, Oct, Nov, I went to the coffee shop for the same reason--just to be around people, even if I didn't know any of them. And it helped. I'd come home feeling better.

Perhaps there is nothing deathly wrong with me. Perhaps my life is fulfilling and meaningful, perhaps I am happy alone, but that this fact is overshadowed by the loneliness I feel sometimes. And I don't know that there's any cure for loneliness other than to be around people. I don't think there's a substitute for that kind of thing.

Cold-Comfort Farming.

A profound essay I found: Click HERE.

Summer 2008.

The two forces pitted against each other:

1. The fear that, by staying here, I am in a way wasting my life in that I am seeing the same things everyday, running into the same people, riding down the same streets, putting up with the same bullshit, like babysitting or looking up stuff for Mom on the Internet, that continues to consume my life and keep me from doing what I'm here to do.

2. The fear that, if I leave, it will be unshared and therefore meaningless, done only for ego, for my present day amusement, or for the sake of something I might write. The fear that I wouldn't be foregoing just a geographical location, but also the chance to create invaluable memories with people I love. The fear that my eulogy will say more about my own adventures than those I shared with people in the parlor.

The assumption was that changes in geography would be instrumental in providing that base of varied experience that writers are "supposed" to have.

But I look at what I want to write, at Sherwood Anderson, etc. How relevant is the above assumption?

The change I need to effect is one of identity. I had previously conceived of myself as X. I need to reconceive as Y.

I've made the decision to stay here for the Summer of 2008. The goal now is to get a job so I can feel normal again, establish structure in my life.

Life or Death.

March 11th plays a huge role in this decision of what to do, to move or not. After being so emotionally entwined in the eulogy and the ceremony, I have to think about my own death and the death of everyone I love as I'm making my next life decision. Will I be remembered as selfish if I go off on my own? Or if I go to Maine, will it be seen in retrospect as a pocket of my life devoid of meaning, impelled only by some evolutionary instinct? Will it be a waste?

People are everything. Friends and family are the most important things in the world. If this is the case, why is it the assumption that I should go off alone to new territory, leaving everything that is important to me?

If I were to die up there, alone, or if someone were to die down here, without me, I would never forgive myself. This is my biggest fear. If I could have a guarantee that I'd be able to see everyone again many more times after I return home, the decision to leave would be much easier.

But at the same time I feel stifled here. Not learning much, not doing anything new, not meeting new people, seeing the same things everyday, I feel as if I'm throwing away what the world has to offer.

Stream.

Recently it seems like the more I am around her the more upset I get. She has a right to do as she pleases and that's fine. But I also have a right to allow myself to feel my feelings without telling myself I am wrong for feeling them.

I enjoy her company but it upsets me that she is close to other guys, especially if they are more than platonic. I was under the impression that at one time we had something inimitable and I can't stand to see that impression dispelled. To feel betrayed. I don't want to feel this way. It'd be much easier if I didn't. But it uproots my world to hear things like what I heard today.

If I had girl friends who were interested in me I would feel guilty hanging out with them so soon after Ari and I decided to just be friends. It makes me mad that apparently she has no qualms about hanging out with guys that might be interested in her. It makes me think that what we used to be was much more special to me than it was to her.

I'm learning that I am very sensitive in these matters. It would be best for my emotional health not to see her anymore, no matter how alone I might get. I become upset too easily and it's not good for either of us. Maybe I am unjustified in feeling this way, but that doesn't change anything. I have to give emotions the right of way regardless of whether they're justified.

I feel I am losing my spirituality, very alone and pissed off and uncertain. I feel I have gone up a big mountain but have fallen down to the bottom to that same place I used to be and now I have to force myself to start over.

It was such a relief to see Steve sitting in the coffee shop today. He was like steady ground in a maze of buckled floorboards. I can't deal with the upheaval anymore. I would rather be alone and at peace than have company and risk feeling again what I feel right now.

There is no magic formula for this. Nothing I can mix up in the bathroom and drink. What would be ideal. What would fix things. A gap of time, I think. Some time away from her to murder the closeness I feel toward her. I told her things and did things with her that fostered an emotional intimacy between us, and I can't stand to see her having that same kind of intimacy with other guys when the one between us is still breathing.

And what do you take from it. To be more careful in the future, as usual.

Maine.

My to do list is dwindling and soon it will be done.

Maybe I will move to Maine. For better or worse.

It is hard for me to believe that all the momentum in my live will soon skid to a halt. So far it has been education. For 19 years, education, college. Then it stops and you get caught up in bullshit but then that bullshit dwindles down, and you don't need your family like you did when you were little and you start to feel how much freedom you have.

I don't have a lot of confidence the bike trip will happen, and if it does, it won't happen as soon as I need it to. So the thought is that I'll move somewhere to start the post-25 part of my life. To start something new, to get away from distractions and nonsense and bad memories. Move somewhere where Kelly can't call me and ask me to come to her house because the electrician will be there between 10-12. Where I won't have to go to court for not inspecting my car, because I won't have a car. Where I can just get up every day live like a person is supposed to be able to live.

Said Woman.

It bothers me to know that she is probably with another guy, or will be soon. Of course we weren't "together," but sleeping with her and being close to her created a sense of exclusivity--as if she belonged to me and me only. Now I can't just hang out with her, as only friends, knowing that she's more interested in another guy. I can't stand to look at her and laugh with her when that exclusivity has been betrayed and I've been relegated, or worse, convinced that the exclusivity was only an illusion.

Maybe I sound like a girl, but when we were close to each other, when we laid on the couch together or hugged or kissed, I felt special. It made me feel like I wasn't just anyone off the street, that I had some special qualities that she valued. But now that she could be doing the same things with someone else, it means I was never special, never out of the ordinary...just some guy that she met and happened to take her pants off for.

When I was with her, I liked knowing that I was her #1 choice for company. I liked how she invited me to the Pink Floyd thing when she could've invited anyone else in the world. But now she is going to invite someone else to Pink Floyd things. This is what I need to cope with.

I had never before been any girl's #1 choice for company. Or any other #. It was such a great feeling knowing that this girl chose me. Out of all her friends and contacts, she chose me. I don't know how long it will be before this happens again, if ever.

We agreed we weren't bf and gf, but I still felt that we were more than just friends. That we had a special bond that went beyond friendship, even if we couldn't commit to anything. But I guess I couldn't expect her to be suspended halfway with me forever, though that must have been the vision in the back of my mind. I guess she needs something more secure.

And finally there is the fear again. I would imagine it's very easy for her to meet people, especially guys. Knowing her, I would say she could have a date with a respectable guy within 12 hours of when she wants one. But I am on the other end of the spectrum. It was such a huge, life-changing event just to meet her and become close to her, something that had never happened before. The first time in 25 years. The fear, that is, that something this meaningful may not happen again.

Happiness Work.

On my other blog I have these things listed as important things:

* Helping People
* Gratitude
* Sharing experience with people, relating to people
* Beauty (of character)
* Happiness

But these are not goals or means to a goal. They are personal values.

The blog also has the following list, which are things that help me to be happy, but these things are important only toward the end of my own happiness. They are means to the final value on the above list.

* 1. Exercise & health.
* 2. Having goals.
* 3. Working at what I like - R&W
* 4. Relationships, being around people.
* 5. Doing something I enjoy.
* 6. Meaning.
* 7. Helping people.
* 8. Gratitude.

The point is, if I work hard at something, it is not because it is important in itself. It is only important toward the end of my own happiness, and thus, in the grand scheme of things, not very important at all.

The other point is to see the following list of newly created life goals in the right perspective. These goals are not important in and of themselves, but only to the extent that they are conducive to my values.

* 1. To create memorable experiences with friends, family.
* 2. Work and live on a fishing boat.
* 3. Read all the books I own.
* 4. To author one nonfiction book, one novel, one screenplay.
* 5. Get an MFA and teach.
* 6. Live out west and in a foreign country.
* 7. To help a homeless person become un-homeless.
* 8. Live as a homeless person for one month, and/or alone in the woods.
* 9. Do an ultramarathon.
* 10. Find somebody to love.
* 11. Run or ride my bike across the country.

badness.

I haven't felt this bad in a while. This alone, this scared. Writing about it doesn't make it untrue, but lets me feel less alone. I don't want to do anything, I don't want to read or write or watch TV or talk to anyone. I want to just stare.

Identify your feelings. This is what they tell you to do if you don't want to feel bad. Depression is a self-destructive effort to avoid feeling, they say. You must confront how you feel.

Tonight I feel discouraged. I feel lonely and scared. I think it sucks. It sucks to feel like this. These are my feelings.

Then I think, again, I am 25. I don't know how many more days I have, but some will be like this, and some will be better. But then what does it matter, though, if the person is alone in it. What does any of it matter.

Big Project Needed.

Things are very haphazard now, scattered and hectic. I am 25. I've been here for 25 years. Most people live to about 70.

I graduated school in the Summer of 2007. It is now Spring of 2008.

One time I heard someone say, referring to a writer, "anyone can be a genius at 25, but this guy's doing it at 60."

I have a cigar box of essay ideas. But what I need now is a big project. Something cumulative, something long term.

Death and Buddhism.

I guess it's the temporariness of things that I'm trying to grasp. And after it's grasped, I only see two comforts. Company and gratitude. These are the comforts.

Then is the urge to live. Death makes me want to ride cross country. Makes me want to see the Grand Canyon again, go down into it, hug the cliffs, rub the dirt on my hands.

Surviving Death.

I'd think certain kinds of thoughts are typical after a loved one has died, but I don't know for certain.

From the beginning of my life, the deaths of loved ones had been black canyons I didn't want to think about. Dad would die, I knew, and I knew it would be a dark and precarious time. It would be dismal, I thought, life would stop, my own survival of grief, uncertain. Surviving a death was an otherworldly experience I planned on dealing with only when I had to, that's how bad it was.

What I meant by otherworldly, I realize, is "surreal." You know something is going to happen your whole life, for 25 years, but when it finally does, it seems strange, only because you knew it was going to happen for all your life. You are met with a slew of brand new feelings, ones you've never felt, and reality is not so credible.

I'm sitting on his couch now, his computer chair where he used to sit, across from me. Knowing him and seeing him die, it seems that he, and we, go through life unaware of our eventual day of dieing. Seeing the pictures he hung on the wall himself, he decided where they went. He wasn't thinking of his death when he hung these pictures.

I look at people in public, the host at the restaurant, the black guy that lives under me, as he turns the key to his door. People on TV, Radar from MASH, or Andy Griffith. What are their philosophies, how do they conceive of their death, are they aware of it. Do they understand that one day they will die. Do they take this into consideration when they wake up every morning. Do they think about how their eulogy will read. Sitting here alone with the TV muted, seeing all these faces, maybe death is not such a big deal after all. They don't seem to be concerned. How much longer do they have.

Are they OK with it. Are they afraid of it. What should they be doing differently.

Sometimes I feel like I'm not sad enough, not grieving enough, like I shouldn't be allowed to laugh. He can't even think or exist or see anything. Why should I be allowed to laugh. There are a thousand like this.

And after they die, we go on. We don't miss them like we should. We go on with our own lives, and the dead are largely forgotten. Eventually there will be no living witness, and their possessions are all that will remain. No more memories of them, the things they liked, they way they were.

I know what memorials are now, I know why we pay tribute.

Death.

Maybe it happens to anyone who loses someone close. This fear of death, the preoccupation with it. The fear of a meaningless life. The wanting to leave everything behind, change life so that I might die having had meaning and significance in my life.

When I'm caught up in life, though, in happiness, or in jokes and sitcoms, I don't think about meaning or death. I don't have these morbid thoughts.

And the feeling like it's all so important, crucial.

I don't feel it often, but I've felt this a couple times before. Like if everything went to shit, what could I rely on? What would I still have no matter what? If I fail as a writer, if I never love anyone, if everyone I know dies or if I become a cripple, what can I still hold close to my chest?

If everything I occupy myself with is just a cheap shell, will there be anything left so sustain me?

But now I'm getting self-centered.

Tonight I Finished Steinbeck to Cross off My List.

Writing about myself has become thin because once identity is reified only the work matters anymore. But I feel very afraid tonight, alone and afraid. Suspended, too, yet under so much weight. People are yelling at me. And Dad will die soon. And the girl I like will be gone soon, too. My self-control has lost out to other faculties and I'm a passenger, guilty all over for some reason, being rushed into new water, and none of these people knows my history.

What I Learned from Ari.

Bullet #1: Sex fosters intimacy if you like the girl.

Bullet #2: What I would want in a relationship, what qualities, and what kind of girl I would want, if I wanted one.

Bullet #3: I am happier seeing myself through her eyes than through my own.

Bullet #4: It is easier to get out of bed when you're under the impression that a girl like her likes you and appreciates who you are.

Bullet #5: Sleeping with a girl is more valuable than "sleeping" with her, though it's hard to have the former without implying the latter.

Spirituality.

After 25 years I learn what spirituality means. It has nothing to do with God or religion.

Getting in touch with your spiritual side means coming to terms with your Self and why you are here, relying on nothing but that which you can jury-rig from the raw materials in your mind, whether it be religion, southern Creole, Dobro guitar, writing pulp fiction, or mining for pineapples under the sea. It means learning how to be independently happy, how to keep yourself company, how to look on the inside instead of the out, how to find an inner entity to which you can be accountable. The spiritual man acts for and depends on not the Other but only his Self. In doing this, he is granted a species of peace wholly separate from the chaos that shoots through the universe. Ultimately, spirituality culminates in holding yourself to self-forged standards, being your own God's eye.

Perhaps a Project.

Perhaps it isn't what you do but how you do it.

Perhaps the problem isn't what I'm living here in Collingswood.

Perhaps it's how I'm living here in Collingswood.

I remember: during RTC, life changed. Life was no longer oriented in terms of "to do" lists, checking email, and a work schedule. Every day was get up and move. Life was shot through a magnifying glass and concentrated onto a single point--moving. There wasn't time to play cynic.

And so I'm sitting here wondering what I should do next with my life. Get a job, do a project, what. Certain things I can decide, certain things I can't. Among everything I don't know for sure, this is what I do know: I'm not happy living in one place, working a regular job, being oriented in terms of checking email, working, and compiling lists of things to do on weekends. I'm not happy with life's current orientation. There is so much more to life than this. There has to be a more efficient way of milking the animal.

Accordingly: life needs to be re-focused, concentrated, beamed down onto one endeavor. Everything else needs to be scenery.

In other words, it's not what project I choose, it's how I choose to do it, and that I choose to do it.

The ideal, here, is a life winnowed down to writing. It needs to all be about writing, and reading, too, to support that writing. Day-to-day life would be structured so that all other necessities are built-in. A life constantly on the move ensures exercise. Writing towards a bigger project incorporates the project necessity. Life needs to stop being something that reads newspapers everyday.

Forms and Categories, AFU.

Problem:

1. I'm not happy that I am earth's only inhabitant.
2. Because of this, and because I have trouble following vision, I am distracted by things not important to me.

Solution:
1. Meet someone.
2. Circumscribe. (To include: poetry, drawing, reading, writing.)
3. Resume counseling.

To do:
1. Ask someone out by October 15.
2. Writing. I call myself a writer, but rarely write anything except my blog. This is because I don't have any goals. Here:
--a. Get an essay in a mag (list essays to work on)
--b. Learn about/start with poetry
--c. Cp vs. W2P or Drug Project (prospectus and plan RT)
--d. Read in coffee shops
3. Start drawing again.
4. Change my schedule so the day is "ideal."
5. Decide on the lodestar/"little thing that is beautiful."

counseling

counseling - what i'll tell her

symptoms
sadness, hopeless
sleep a lot, tiredness
lack of motivation
no excitement, no joy
lack concentration
thoughts of death

I go to coffee shops to not be alone

feel like I need to be close to someone, feel too alone. want a girl to like me. jealous, discouraged when I see how other girls need their boyfriend, how they want to be with them, etc. I’ve never had that experience.

I feel like I can’t be alone and be happy, feel incomplete

wanting to cry, having outbursts when I think of certain things

thinking/dreaming a lot about dad

trigger, seeing the indifference in the world, letting it remind me of how adrift, alone each of use are

wanting to shoot up, escape

I do not feel grounded. want to travel/escape

Why I am here, my goal: to be happy, to be able to enjoy life, to feel like I’m alive for some reason.

I’ve always attributed this to the lack of a gf. But I don’t think this is true. I should be able to be happy regardless.

work is a distraction, then you come home to what? for everything to come tumbling down. work is useless unless it’s meaningful, unless you can come home and feel good about it.

I remember when I was a kid, waking up on a Saturday, being excited about the possibility the day held, now the day is just chores.

feeling closer and closer to doing the Ferrari rental, like it won’t matter what results from that.

maybe this is just my constitution, maybe I’ll always be like this.

What I Want.

What I want: a girl who is compassionate, interested in others (not self-centered), not materialistic, intelligent, creative, pretty, simple, laidback.

What I need: companionship

What do I need to be conscious of: those who do and don’t fit that description. Taking opportunities when presented with them.

What conscious choices do I need to make: put myself in an environment where meeting someone is more likely. A social, people-oriented work place. Hanging out in cafes, public places. Actively pursuing/asking them, not waiting for them to come to me. Making active choices.

Who I am: Life Purpose: I am oriented by beauty, character (compassionate), art. My life purpose is to experience and recognize beauty (1) and (2) show compassion to my fellow earth creatures. Also, (3) my life’s purpose is to share my life with someone. The ship on which these purposes venture is navigates by the stars of mortality.

Vision: travel, freedom, spontaneity, writing, creativity, no plan

Must be the chooser.