MEMO FROM THE CREMATORIUM DESK

But passing laws to make it illegal to sleep outside, or in your car, doesn’t resolve the problems of people who have no place to live. 
–Scott Simon

He is rallying rural sections of the state to despise everything that Philadelphia is — a city of immigrants, a city that is very diverse, and a city that rejected him by 85% of the vote last time he ran. 
–Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner

…get out before you drown…
-Soundgarden

Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability.
-Ram Dass

THE FOLLOWING POST WAS WRITTEN ON CHRISTMAS DAY 2019

I’m sick.  I overdid it.  It’s not a problem.  It’s my recovery that probably did it to me anyway.  48 hours in the chair, binging YouTube and junk food.  That’s no way to recover.  Looking for the OFF button.  Can’t find it, it’s not the usual channels.  Getting texts from friends and loved ones.  I don’t want to hear it.  I could’ve used their love in the day-to-day and they probably could’ve used mine.  So it’s the birth of Christ and we celebrate in greed and sloth and reach out to each other when we’ve been working and trapped in the belly of the beast of capitalism the other 364.  I’m retaining my right to be in hate–prickly, cold and isolated this day above all others.  It’s finally quiet.  No dog or whining kids, no contractor working on that fucking mansion next door.  No subsonic alarms at the fire station on the other side.  Just me and the memories of all the war I fought to be in walls and with a locked door.  God knows it could’ve went the other way so don’t get me wrong.  There’s plenty to celebrate and I will.  Just got to get this out of my system–a foul humor and bad blood and live down the pain body.

I think this may be a precursor to depression.  I certainly hope not but I can’t otherwise figure what purpose this disassociation serves.  Then again it could just be a reaction–the ghost of Christmas past, here to haunt me ’til I shake it and I’m in the clear.  Whatever this blog post is, let it be a record then.  That today I don’t want to hear Merry anything.  I’m glad you love me but I could’ve used you before now.  Sure you could’ve done the same and I’m sorry.  There’s nothing we can do about that now though, is there?  I guess I could’ve wrote this yesterday when I still had the momentum of the last 6 furious fucking months coursing and anyway before I shut down and woke up with gooseflesh and a perma-scowl even though I’m all alone and there’s no one and nothing else but me and you here.  I’m gonna have to work this out and it’s bad, Good Reader, bad as I can remember.  Probably because I overdid it and definitely the pain body rearing.  I’m past blaming anyone anymore though I still want to and have great and swarming anger for them.  It’s this anger I’m trapped behind or the spite and resentment that keeps me from expressing it and trying to work it out.  I’m a shell and I can’t refute that and anyway it’s painfully apparent how empty I am when the rest of the world comes together to rejoice.  Unless of course you’re out there on the row which, come to think of it, maybe a part of me is, too.

I’m still out there, in the cold and terrified.  I’m not understood when I’m with them and today I’m too tired to try.  Pretty soon it’ll be next year.  I’ll have cleared out another run of corpses by then, confusing them for anything other than me.  I’ll light their effigies and send them down river and turn my back on the sun.  I’ve done enough to keep from outdoors but I never came in all the way.  It’s cold and I’m cold but I ain’t lonely, rather–I’m lonely for what never was and separating, cleaving now, even from myself and have no greater enemy than the one in here.  I’m still running Good Reader.  Still outdoors.  I’ve no recourse but to dissociate myself through this chair, go out flaming cosmonaut and spinning in this room.  I’ve rivaled these moments and we all know that depression has only ever been the reason why.  It’s why I write and fight and certainly why I fight in writing.  I’ll live to see another day.  Just got to get through the night, camp out under the black-silver and shiver my way through, until I can get back inside and get back together with you.

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