Stranger Than Fiction

it seems we lose the game before we start to play.
-Lauryn Hill

Christ with the hem and haw.  I fucked the silly minutes staring at a screen, they stacked into a pillar of days and now I’m up against a tower of years.  I fucked the time away and now it’s fucking me.  It’s true that all the strides I’ve taken against depression have leveled the playing field.  There are no more advancing ranks coming to whittle me away and usurp the mission.  But the true enemy is revealed and he is within.  Anxiety.  I feel lucky to uncover the REAL bugger, a fly in the ointment that pulls me back from the brink of living fully.  My shrink warned me.  I was diagnosed with a moderate to high level anxiety disorder.  But I was wrestling with the bull of depression and putting out fires.  I was dealing with such a high frequency of pain that I couldn’t afford a long range solution.  I needed it to stop now.  I needed to stuff the sun back into its dirty hole, drink away the nights and lie in self-loathing throughout the day.  Maintain my identity as a hard-drinking halfmad who couldn’t come through with the strong verse unless I suffered for it.  Thank Christ that’s over with.  But now this can of worms.  Point is I can’t believe how far I’ve come but I’ve still got so much further to go.  Not particularly blue, but stuck here waiting…for?  Anxiety’s a real bitch.  It’s insidious.  Takes your time.  Gives you nothing back but an excuse, some lame rationale for you to fuck off, not make it.  Well I’m over it.  I’m renewed and ready.  Punch a hole in the ceiling and leap out to where the wind blows tall.

Obviously my flow’s been backed on here.  I haven’t exactly posted in a straight line.  There are some things I’ve had to gloss over, and more than persuasive reasons to stop posting altogether.  What can I do but pick it back up and resume where I left off?  August, the terrible summer, dealing with Caitlyn and taking sojourns to Pensacola in a Honda 2 door.  I saw the bitch on Friday, standing by the glass doors like a golem.  And Crazy Rainey was behind the bar when I got there.  I texted Caitlyn, told her I missed her and I couldn’t walk two feet in this town without tripping over a corpse.
“Who’s fault is that?” , she asked and I still don’t know.  Just sucks to spend the day looking at hundred dollar flights to NOLA and bumping into an ex-girlfriend as I’m leaving only to be greeted by an ex when I get there.  We had a good run, a good summer.  It’s almost February and I’ve got 2 poems accepted in the mags and twenty-five copies of  September‘s first run.  She’s gonna have a go at him, see if she can make it in Vegas.  She’s young and in love and she should be.  I can only hope to be here when it all falls down, get a little residual non-comittal in the high rooms, pretend my days aren’t numbered for a hot night or sticky afternoon before I have to get back to work.

 

543

Welly well well.  The axe has fell.  It’s do or die.  The publication schedule of this blog went from daily to every other, twice-weekly to weekly and then sadly to nothing at all.    Allot has happened since the last time we met on here, but it’s no excuse.  The pathetic truth was I am unable to write when I’m happy.  Better, I am unable to post to Going For The Throat when life is good.  Anger and depression, isolation and rage were this blog’s raison d’etre.  I railed against: politics, the big business of news reporting, the music industry, rock and roll, ex-lovers and dream lovers, the catastrophy of a world gone wrong, spinning wildly barging in and obliterating my sensitivities.  The blog was at best a refuge and at worst a whipping post, some anchor in all the madness, my own way of framing trouble and the bad blues, wrapping it up and nailing it down to 600 words.  The other thing that kept me from posting on here was the usual suspect of transparency.  While I have had to amend my stringent policy of never editing anything I post, I never wanted to keep anything from you, good reader.  With the fourth wall down, we were finally able to BE together, from Philadelphia to Bahrain, ATX to the PDX, from NYC to Dublin, Norway to New Orleans.  I never lived down being a soldier for the New Journalism even though I was certainly a card carrying member.  As mentioned, most of the time spent on here was trying to rope the bull.  I couldn’t offer any critical thought or reassurance, the darkness was full blown, I had ’em on my neck and I was flanked on 3 sides with only one round left.  I was dealing with my own blues.  While they bled in Syria and died of thirst on the Great Continent, and the police in this country averaged 3 deaths a day on their watch in 2015.  We all said our peace and moved along.  It was a temporary fix, but one I couldn’t afford and barely stomach.  I’d already been cheating my brothers and sisters by not answering the Call, I’d be good and goddamned to participate in the general jacking off that passes for activism in the New Century.  All that said, it’s great to be back.

The daily tugging of this blog I had been feeling suddenly lifts and none of it matters as I have found a flow.  The words are coming easy. They’re quick words and urgent.  I can feel it.  There is lots to uncover.  I have so much to share.  On the other side of the void of my absence, caffeinated and writing in the easy afternoon, glad to be alive but unsure how long this can go on.  Of course I’m talking about blogging, ’cause I’ve been shook.  I don’t know what to report on when everything is fine.  No bull to rope, no petition to tend, nothing to nail down and send down wire into the hungry land.  Looking at the word count it seems I’ve done it for today and it’ll have to be good enough.  For today I have won.  Hope to see you soon.

Your Blogger,
Jim Trainer
Austin TX

 

almost taken by the frost

for a witchy reason
she leaves the tall panes wide
and thick gulf air washes
over us as we sleep
her black stockinged legs
cobweb over me until
I’m dreaming of our Fathers

always get so lost in this city

that, as she says ,
“The dead can visit.”
never land in her eyes
over hot cups of chicory
in the damp morning
with the Crescent City on my skin
New Orleans my always love.