?

I stopped posting here a while ago. I felt like I was wallowing in it. I knew keeping a journal is supposed to be healthy, but I felt like I was using it as a tool for feeding my depressive side, for letting failed expectations run wild in my imagination to the point where they were feeling like the dominant part of my life. Now I'm not sure how to proceed. Part of Marcel Parcells likes scrutinizing these disappointing aspects, zooming in on them and getting closer to how they change my motivations, to why I feel this way or that way. Another part - and perhaps this is the part that believes he can he break horses and canter off into the night, prefers a more detached cynicism, an asshole, go-fuck-yourself, I may care but probably not really, arms length sort of attitude. So. . .where to go with this?

I recently drove across the country. I spent part of the trip mocking southerners, relaxing in the driver's seat, singing along to the worst possible music, and seeing how hot I could make the interior of my car. I spent another part, a large one, thinking a lot about the road trips I used to take with Janet, the most significant of ex-girlfriends, who is now taking trips with a man, who is to my impression, a monomaniacal gearhead athlete of the most boring kind. I called Janet from a lonely campspot in some west Oklahoma grassland, because I had been thinking so much about her I needed to try for contact. This was the first time we have talked in months. It was fun (comfortable), but disappointing, since she was doing that relationship thing where you take on some of the traits of your partner. She talked about scales that measured body fat, hiking twenty miles a day, weighing out your food to the gram, rationing, bear canisters, trekking poles, travel times. I wanted to interrupt the whole time and ask, "When did you play? Did you have any fun? Did you climb some trees, or skip rocks, or bet on which squirrel would lick your peanut butter covered finger?" Instead I just let it go, because for the most part, I ended the relationship, and I hurt her, so if she can be happy with someone I would hate. . .well, good for her.

It's just sad to see someone change for someone else.

today's the day

Once every few weeks or so, I decide that “today’s the day” I will begin to live my life assiduously and fully. The assumption is that every day after that will follow, like that first day just provides the catalyst for some perpetual chemical reaction. My “today’s the day” decision involves several criteria, including improving my exercise regimen and diet, working harder, watching less television, and basically not doing any of the things I regularly do that make me feel guilty, such as going to 7-Eleven for taquitos at two in the morning, watching television until even later, masturbating to the kind of pornography that makes me feel dirty afterward, and being shy in social situations. Once in a while, after I’ve made this promise to myself, I last a day or two before slipping back into my typical behavior. While I always fail eventually, the hours in which I judge myself as virtuous make me feel like I have the great power that the I Ching told me I could have.
So, today’s the day, and this time I’m going to make it last. I’m going to bend like a reed in the wind, but never break, I’m going to be superhuman, superego, Superman, leaping buildings and working like a titan and at least, when I make the inevitable mistake, I will leave a me-shaped hole in the wall. I will go down swinging. I may fall to the ground, but I will get up off the mat. I am out of clichés.
Anyway, after visiting 7-Eleven twice yesterday, finishing my taquitos and cheetos before I had completed the one block walk to my bicycle, after I stayed up late watching Battlestar Galactica, a show I have no interest in, and after masturbating twice to the dirtiest kind of smut, the kind that makes me shake with guilt and pray that god isn’t watching when I’m through, after all of this, and after I woke up late and watched more Battlestar Galactica, I decided that today would be the day. I woke up, masturbated without pornography, exercised, and went to work. So, eight hours in, today is the day. Let’s hope this sticks.

bathtime with Ching

My depression subsided a bit as soon as Albertine dumped me. I drew a hot bath and sat in it, watching sitcoms and reading books about democracy until the hot water induced sweat and thirst. I got as low as I could in the water, a rim of suds ringed my face, and I stared at the ceiling. I felt enervated. I felt as if I would never walk again. I thought about my free standing, clawfoot tub, and wondered how much it, and the water, and my body weighed together. I waited for us to crash through the floor, and as I sat, looking at the ceiling, I had the impression of that ring of water around my face, the ellipse of the shower curtain rod framing the ceiling, little shower curtain rings holding the shower. But all I though about was, “wow, what a lot of rings.” For the moment, I did not worry about outcomes, would she won’t shes, sexual theatrics and conversation inhibitions. This hadn’t happened in several days.

The water was cold.

When I got up, I decided I would like to throw the I Ching. Some people use the I Ching as some sort of soothsaying device. Others simply use the book for Taoist guidance. I think Carl Jung might have said that tools like the I Ching help us clarify our range of choice, help us filter the course of actions we will or won’t be pursuing, like a more advance version of the toincoss where, when you don’t get the result you were looking for, so you simply flip again. Whenever I’m done pinning all my hopes for a future of conventional domestic bliss on someone who ends up not being worth the daydreaming effort, I feel rudderless. All of a sudden, I’ve got all of this time to think, and nothing to think about. I throw the I Ching.

It tells me I have Great Power. I smile. We'll see how this goes.