where can i write?

[whorella mundane]

i still have a notebook right by me for when i want to write but can't face the computer.

"can't face the computer" - i have no explanation for this state of mind. it's like the computer becomes so heavy, so huge, that i can't even look at it, and indeed, have stuffed it in a drawer as i loathe looking at the cords.

the computer, like the body, can't jump up and hurt you. both vehicles need the mind in order to perform its hurtful or joyous tasks.

i am still, always looking for something to appear in my email box that will change my life! notice that i've won something. or a big publisher who stumbles across my posts and wants to offer me a book deal. or a certain gord who finally tells me ... finally tells me ... i don't even know anymore. he already told me and it changed nothing. oh i got so close ...

people could get lured into my writing and stunned, even, but in a way that made them terrified of me. and i still don't understand except that i think the writing had an awful authority and a mean eye, weeping as it was for all its knowledge.

and yet, every day i want to write but journal writing ... writing just to me, for me ... i have tears in my eyes to think about it. WOW. wasn't expecting that. why would i weep? why would that make me weep?

i guess because it seems so lonely ... writing to yourself, as if there is no one left to reach out to. as if there is not a single person you can write to/with. i know i know ... diaries ... i think most americans have dabbled into it, sometimes as an assignment and were then asked to share with the teacher. pointless. then it becomes about saying what they want to hear.

or you write in the journal ... but it feels dead. sure, it's safe. but are you always hoping someone will find it, read it and come to you full of love, professing that they understand?

it's not ... relief ... if it's just to me. and i think about emailing you, jim, taking it there, but that, too, feels like ... dead. even when i wrote to GD ... in email, what's the point? isn't the point to connect to people? to have them read. have them recognize themselves in it? those parts of self they hide in shame. in fear.

and oh! the celebration when they realize they are not alone. that they are normal. that there is nothing to be ashamed of. that weak is not weak and strong is not strong and under it all, we are all the same. same fears. same needs.

but of course no one is doing this now ... a few of us. and yet, if anything were to happen, i could easily be found here. luckily, at work, especially in my new job, i am so entirely forgettable. even in the job i got after my small celebrity, when i thought the novelty, or malice, would have them looking here, no one did.

and back then i just wrote with no ... well i was worried but i was so compelled by my search for love or SOMETHING that i didn't care. i couldn't help myself. in fact, i thought poorly of myself for doing it. i was wasting my gift on this slop and yet ... each day i woke up and couldn't wait to sit down, put on the tunes, smoke a bowl and find my happiness.

even though i knew i was going to have to go to my awful job where i knew i would be blamed for everything except when i did really well, and i did.

i had a lot to prove in that job ... how could i be a working class hero if i never worked? well i had jobs - waitress, clerk, cleaner, landscaper, census taker, library tech, mr. rogers' secretary of sorts but none of the jobs for very long. oh, and bartender! mud wrestler ...

anyway ... so here i am in my job and according to GD people who fall back on something always built something to fall back on and what a bunch of losers we are ... but sure i needed something to fall back on in terms of the writing. i had a kid. and sure ... i am not his fall back.

i have to live with my decisions. and only me. other people are affected but they don't have to live with it. i mean decisions ... things i feel i would have to "answer" for when i die. huge things.

as certain as i sound when i would write, is as uncertain as i am. i have to verify everything in these words.

i never loved words or made a big deal about words. fuck words. they lie. their meanings change and these changes are not the work of people who walk around saying they love words. wordsmiths or whatever.

they call the morphing of words 'butchery' and shit. but words are useless in themselves ... it's a sentence that i love. a thought. and yes they are made of words but it's ... so much more.

i'm watching a documentary about nora ephron and how her mom used to read poetry at the dinner table. and i think ... my life ... it all works against words.

there are people born into writing and it's like everything was always working against me being a writer. but i remember, even as a kid, that i was chasing stories. a strange random memory before or after elementary school and something was happening and i remember thinking "it doesn't matter what is happening because there's as story and i can make it be what it should."

like as a third-grader, i knew how important it was to have stories. great stories no one would believe but would be spell-bound by. and the really good stories, they would hate me for. i could make them jealous. and i DARED them to prove me a liar 'cause then i'd really make you suffer. then, i could include you in the story.

me, as a kid ... i wanted to be an artist. well i knew i was different. i wept underwater at the pool to hide it. or under my bed. or petting my dog. i was rejected but refused to be. i would make them pay. i would make up stories about them but only after ... some dark shit.

a girl i considered my best friend 'cause we walked to school together ... how she'd egg me on to pursue a boy, who she secretly liked, ricky kohut, so she could have these conversations with him about how he didn't like me, hoping that he would confess it was her. and yet i figured he was confused because she was pretending to try and get me and him together.

of course i don't know any of this for sure except that she would arrange these little meetings or something and the next day, i heard her talking on the stairs to the other girls and they were all laughing it up and my expense. i heard ... and at the last minute they realized i had heard, and i ran. red-faced and heartbroken.

at that moment i realized what i was ... a toy. they would pretend to include me, and i'd go along as if i was as good as they, so they could later laugh it up to consider that i thought i was one of them.

one time she invited me to a party i was not invited to and they gave me shit about how "ignorant" i was to crash the party. i said somthing pithy like "well that's your opinion" and no one was going to dare ask me to leave as i was a fighter. no one wanted to scrap with me.

but in my own time, i announced how bored i was and left. and on the long walk home, up these enormous hills, i realized judy only invited me so she would have someone to walk with. we both lived on the edge of our borough and the whole friendship was about how she needed someone to walk with.

but once at school ... who needed me?

except there was this thing ... i was a really good cheerleader. a great dancer. i couldn't run long distances and think i had ashtma although mild, but it went ignored. but i was strong and flexible and even graceful.

but mainly i was really smart. first seat in the A row. always got the great grades but never was rewarded as the report card, full of As, was full of comments about what a bad kid i was. bad bad bad.

so like so many others, i would become great at being bad and there was no quicker route to that, than drugs and alcohol. and bad language.

then the divorce ... anyway.

none of this is what i wanted to write about.

i recently had to take drugs. it all feels so hopeless. i started going to N/A meetings every night with lolo. i mean...there is no underground rehab but if i had the money, i'd make one.

so what is left? so i'm the enabler. fine. i will enable her recovery.

of course a bunch of young kids were making fun of me and i was really upset about it afterwards ... well i am what they call a newcomer. the literature says the newcomer is the most important person in the meeting as they can only keep what they have by giving it away.

and the meetings feel sacred to me as my precious sister spent 26 years of her life at the epicenter of it. well at first she was, when there was only one meeting a week. she helped build it. she was in service. her mission was getting meetings into hospitals and institutions.

so when the youngsters are talking during the reading of the steps and traditions and "just for todays" i would be so angry, i'd be on the verge of tears, as i am now. HOW DARE THEY? DON'T THEY REALIZE HOW LUCKY THEY ARE TO HAVE MEETINGS?

but no one wants to have to go to meetings and i don't really think i am a drug addict. my life is manageable. the kids ... they don't know when to stop. they do things i can't imagine. stealing off my mother? can't imagine doing that. wtf?

so then the other thing is the other meds i'm on that come with a physical dependence although the literature says that is not the same as a drug addiction. it's in the brochure!

my sister was one of the first to be on oxycotin and i remember the brochure said how before, manufactures made drugs like dilaudid and didn't understand how addictive it was, but such was not the case with oxycotin!

and i sit in these meetings - hot, stuff church basements stuffed with young drug addicts who are being forced to be there or are there because they are bored or are looking for love in some form and i think "wow ... look at all these kids" and think about how many are still using. for each addict in a meeting, how many active addicts are there?

leo and his girlfriend are selling everything ... i stopped by his house when i had to pick up my car after hitting a deer and the furniture was gone and it was so dark. it stank. it was filthy. nothing left. so grim.

so leo will be back and it terrifies me.

on one hand, the addicts seem to overdose but not die, a lot. on the other hand, they will be doing really well, clean for a few months, on their way to work and they see a sign to aliquippa and in an INSTANT, they turn right instead of left and they are off again.

why can't we just give them the drugs? instead they are out there - and make no doubt that this is driven by the crimes of pharma executives - and we make them beg steal and lie to get this drug they once innocently consumed, or at least unknowingly, got involved in.

no one starts with the needle ... and my son.

so i go to nar-anon meeting with the parents of other addicts and it's all about not enabling and detaching and all. i still don't see how taking my son some food when he has none, is so evil of me.

seriously ... what would jesus do? jesus who risked everything to help those no one would help such as lepers and prostitutes and sure, they had to repent and change their ways but there isn't the story of jesus meeting a sinner who doesn't repent but hangs around and jesus says "i won't enable you" no ... he turned water into wine. where there any drunks in the house? had to be ...

jesus tells stories about sowing seeds but you get older and realize that you don't reep what you sow. you can do it all right and scatter your seed on the most fertile soil and love it, tend to it daily, and in a single afternoon what the entire crop wilt from rust rot or be devoured by insects or blown away by a hurricane.

oh yeah my dream last night ... i haven't been able to sleep.

see ... you chase the dragon ... a sleeping dragon. you find the dragon. you wake it to win over it. you grab your gold and escape the cave. and somewhere inside you, you know the dragon is going to be chasing you, which is far worse than chasing it. but i fail to remember how bad it is: the aftermath.

something happens to my mind ... every problem, every stress that ever existed or could exist, happens at once. it feels like there is a murderer in the room. no ... or i guess yes.

no ... i can't describe it ... the sky is falling ... something worse than death. something so unbarable ... it's not the aches or pains or the sweats ... it's impending doom unlike anything

i can't pray it away. can't shut or quiet my mind to it and just to write about it ... no.


i'm allegric to stuff i like most. it literally takes my breath away but doesn't give it back so yes i come close to calling 911 and ... it's so horrible.



anyway who cares. this is not why i'm writing.
i need to build myself back up.

i love reading the course in miracles cause it says stuff that blows my mind but i don't know how to apply it. basically it says judging things are bad and it's not neccessary. that we are here to help. that you can only find love by giving it away. extend! be nice. see people as the great rays they are. that we are still with god. that it is god's will that we are all united in our minds.

that it's all in the mind ... the body does exactly what we tell it too and yet we get mad at it. "i do what i hate and don't understand"

i can't stop thinking about how i need to stop thinking about gordon downie.