I Fill Those Spaces With My Lies

On the Sweet Cruise during the first week of November I slept. I slept a lot, I slept on a hammock in Cozumel in the shade for ten minutes and in our bed at four pm or maybe later, or maybe earlier, and I slept on the pool deck at all hours, internationally. I slept sandwiched between two and I slept with limbs sprawled; alone. I slept while you spoke, I slept while I spoke. I slept on the airplane to New Orleans and I slept on the airplane back from New Orleans. I slept for maybe only a minute while you slept for thirty minutes with your tiny open mouth at my back in the New Orleans afternoon the day we got back; in that high-ceilinged room of silence and your supple, warm breathing.

After hitting my head in Roatan, when I couldn't tell if the alarm incited by the humming jellyfish wearily holding my brain in place was the weed or the abrupt contact with that concrete gate (which, like getting my bellybutton pierced (I would tell people later) was So Painful but also so sudden and so momentary that I wouldn't necessarily fear it again), I did that thing I do in my brain when I try to figure out if I can act like I'm OK or not, which lately has been one of my strongest indicators of overall health -- not health or happiness itself, but my ability to imitate those emotions or project those impressions or inspire those reactions. I am not certain that I am wrong to describe health that way.

I enjoyed the freedom to be warm & silent.

The trouble with going into business with your friends & loved ones is that to be successful one must project an image of success at all times.

This is not easy, I was not prepared for this. I want the recession to be over but it isn't. I wanted Plan B and Plan C but neither exist anymore. I want to be known for something other than being addicted to work which isn't actually true, I'm just addicted to progress.

I comfort myself with the lives of legends although I'm not one.

I lie down on fields of nothing and let jellyfish ghosts eat my face alive and then I call it The Future.

I miss cash.

See I have high arches in my feet, like unusually high, which is where I'd store the money after that job I don't talk about. I miss the wads of money large enough to prop the arch of my foot right up, almost turn my foot to its side, and I miss the money fatter than my wallet could handle. I miss being casual with money -- the dollar bill rescued from a coat pocket, stored in the glass jar with pencils, or the extra ten for the waitress. I miss owning the money I'd worked for and how easy it was to secure it at the time and I wish I'd spent it on things besides debt, I wish it'd been pure and joyful and I wish it was still in my shoe, safe from East Harlem's alleged robbers who'd reach everywhere but never my feet, they told me. I loved that transaction being over and both of us squared away because I miss the ease and definitive actions of commerce. I miss being allowed to care about money, I miss the vehicle to get it immediately; the key in the ignition and the drive.

I miss the romance of money.
I miss the taste of money so
There; I've said it. And you?
Do you, too?

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I have never been as certain as I am now that if anyone can do this, we can do this.

I hate that there are people who've been able to help us who instead have gone out of theirr way to fuck us up and I hate that I can't talk about who those people are.

I love that there are unexpected people who have emerged to help us and say that we're all in this together. I honestly love those people.

I hate everything no-one can talk about. If you haven't noticed that about me already.

I wish I could write here without feeling like it meant something big or that someone I work with/for/becauseof would like be disappointed or some crap.

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Often times, it's its weirdness, its unexpectedness, its complete uniqueness, that makes it seem to hold such potential for exception.

Because for a group of people with so many words and pictures and ideas between us, we have none to describe this, are never so stunned when asked to explain why by someone who isn't with us in middle earth. Besides to say something revolutionary and naive and stubborn, which is to say it reminds us of ourselves in a way so powerful that to let it remind you of yourself would bring nothing but joy to you, or else you could get burned or scorched, too.

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I know these thoughts and sentences literally don't make sense. I try to make sentences make sense all day but sometimes I'm tired, and feel stupid