Wake up. Coffee. Turn on studio equipment. Work. Coffee for lunch. Try to relax. Stomp feet. Wiggle toes. Use table for drumkit. Deem relaxation an impossibility. Watch some TV. Strum cheap acoustic guitar. Come up with third song of the day. Return to work. Consider eating. Ponder. Decide not to. More coffee. More cigarettes. More work. Try to ignore cold feeling in gut. Fail. Try not to think. Fail. Pass out on couch. Wake up in cold sweat. Stiff dick. Stiff middle finger. Snarl. Go to bed. Repeat.
Days float on by while I ride an angry wave. Everything around me feels stale and stilted, which makes me push harder. I writhe in the stillness like electric current.
My concept of time is no longer tied to minutes ticking away. It's a blank, formless aura that fills the space between this moment and what I wish to achieve. A lump of putty I'm trying to shape into something. A veil of smoke to blindly sift through on my way to those goals in the distance. To my surprise it can actually be quite uncomfortable. I suppose I was more accustomed to routine than I was willing to admit. I'm trying to introduce some sort of structure to this, but it's challenging. Few things are absolute. Even fewer feel substantial. Nothing is certain.
My map is blank and I choose a new direction each dawn, with absolutely no tangible sense of where the hell I'm going. Maybe I've used people as yardsticks of sorts to chart this peculiar terrain I'm traversing through. For that I feel sorry and accountable for, but for reasons which I'll keep to myself. The only route I tend to be intimately familliar with now is running away from my own mind. A daily exercise, though not exactly an enjoyable one. Not to mention an endeavor that inevitably turns into a losing battle. But it keeps me occupied.
Escapism feels cheap when it yields next to no reward. I use people as counterforces to find a moment's balance, only to realize it's a fool's game. Running to and from them. People break so easily and I'm trying hard to watch my step. The only stability to be found is in the safety of the once trodden path. But then every pattern seems familliar. Old footsteps are retraced as the dead air begs to be punctured by any unknown force.
Too many old words dressed in new guises. Too many secrets no one can keep to themselves. I've heard too much and said too much. Should questions be left unanswered, silence will eventually sweep in to fill in the blanks. True or false, it doesn't really matter. Isolation and saturation offer similar results. Uncertainty in the face of anything and everything. At least it's consistent. I feel like a sitting duck no matter where I am and distrust boils in my blood.
I'm hoping I'm past the point of reducing my role to that of an orchestrator & instigator of bad vibes and sour moments. I'm trying hard to remain passive. Incidental. A ship passing in the night. I want nothing from anyone and expect the same in return. Sometimes no more than my mere presence seems to be enough to function as some sort of catalyst for combustion, which is certainly not helped or subdued by the fact that these days I can be somewhat... explosive. It drains any space of oxygen. I want no part in it.
Filtering my words seems somewhat necessary to steer clear of drama and squabbles. I don't like it nor do I find it particularily true to my character, but I'm tired of feeling like I have to justify myself. What I've written here, for example, has drawn its fair share of backdraft yet again. I never seem to know whether to laugh, cry or roar when faced with other people's fearfulness of open exchange. Sometimes it makes me wonder if I'm donning a clown's attire while none the wiser. The constant barrage of echoes behind my back reminds me of truths about spineless things. The cross of my naivety to bear, I suppose.
I stood on the balcony for what seemed like hours, lost in thoughts. The smoke formed rings around my fingers and I thought about snakes. I visited recent memories of smiles and all I could see were teeth. Someone else's or my own? Doesn't really matter.
The wind swept through the snowfall, yet the downward march remained orderly. But such a path isn't for me. This is not my world.
