Posts? We got ’em. Out the yin-yang. I’ve got a post written in thanks to the folks who made it out to the book release last December. I’ve got one written in thanks to the folks who made it out in June. I’ve got links, photos, letters and a hulking, 22, 000 word document called “Spungen”-chock full of newsworthy quotes and incredible things I felt I had to document.
The wasted summer shimmers on and I’m still out on the roof, jettisoning any and all progress me and the life coach have made toward writing smoke-free.
Tuesday I was like some rockabilly bowling ball, knocking down strikes of Lonestar beer with Wing, up on the roofdeck at Rattle Inn and listening to Robert Appel kill it. Life is good but it’s not my own yet. As much as I swore I’d never be like my old man, and as far down this artists road as I’ve gone, I still can’t shake the karma of his generation. I go to the office. I drink coffee and smoke. I do work. Then I blow it out drinking beer and shooting my mouth off with a good friend.
Ain’t living long like this.
-Waylon Jennings
Aho I have heard the call. There’s nothing left for me to do but answer, head back down and live in wisdom for a while before I start up the next peak. No one told Siddhartha to turn around. They wouldn’t if they could; or, rather, he would only answer that presence is the continual turning within, that the path winds many ways and for the candle flickers, the flame is never gone.
I have sworn off the oft-penned self-help blog, thank Christ, so there’s nothing really to write or talk about. There is only the next step. I’ve already started this journey. I’ve been called to higher and I’ll never live it down. The price I pay for my coping mechanisms is too great. This much madness is too much sorrow and my days left here only become less, if not richer and harder to kill.
Throughout my drinking career I’ve tried to forget or somehow not see. It didn’t work. I saw everything. I remember it all too well, and on soaked nights laying in bed it’s like a circus of catastrophe and a Calliope of things I’ve done wrong. It’s a cheap fix that’s only afforded me temporary blindness to your pain, foolishly thinking I could fortify myself behind a wall of dread&apathy. I don’t blame myself for wanting to turn it off ( or down ) every day of my adult life. There’s a lot of pain in the world and there’s a lot of boredom that comes from watching you go through your shit and never get anywhere.
What has changed? Nothing has changed. This used to be bad news. Not anymore. If nothing has changed then I’ve still got a chance to make things right. I’ve still got some fight left in me, even if it’s buried under the tar from a pack a day habit and usurped on silly teenage nights in bars with friends. I’m not admonishing. I’m not apologizing. This isn’t a self-help blog, nor is it an apology, thank Christ. Whether or not I need to be forgiven is a tall order and infinitely more or less difficult than something as stupid as quitting smoking.
Nothing has changed. I have heard the call. I’m answering it. I’m also out here on the roof writing this, smoking and drinking coffee. Just another day at the office.
All the colors lie
and I’m an only man
the lies hurt my mind so I think you understand,
color driven madness was all I used to see.
Living in the black and white
breathing in the black and white
being what there is to be.
-Henry Rollins, Black&White
“Up on the rooftop,
they won’t know if you jumped or you fell off!”
-9353
Going for the Throat 