A lot seems to have happened, 'seems' cuz half the time I'm not even sure what's real. The darkness got violent at times, but we've become good pals, and go bingeing on everything together. We have a living arrangement with its usual ups and downs. Friends of the biped variety have had less patience and have gotten overwhelmed with this friend I keep, or keeps me, since he has an irritating habit of sneaking up on them and poof!(I included show cause clauses to curb this behavior, but no point), so they (the bipeds) have left. Winters have been long, Christmases were blizzards, springs had the occasional flights to someplace, summers were spent drinking hard and walking in circles.
Have I told you about my little blue radio? RayD is a good friend. He has a functioning brain unlike most people I know... (true, I don't know many people). But he reads me better and comes up with songs I hate myself for loving. Actually he is a sadistic bastard that makes me... um... suicidal? homicidal? depressive? manic? Check all.
B'cuz sometimes the ground caves in. The center doesn't hold.
Has it ever?
My iPod is another dear with a mind of his own, but I take the blame for that - after all I put all those songs in there, Hallelujah, Love Bites, Poison, Too Much Love Will Kill You, My Immortal... aah that order is suggestive... and I carry this guy with me. 'Shuffle' though, is a pretend function, I kind of figured out the algorithm to that one... now I know the order of shuffled songs if I start with a particular tune. Random is not exactly random.
So, anyway, it's been three years. In Gotham city. With or without my RayD and Pod men. Mostly with. Three years. That's the longest stretch I've stayed put in one place, without moving in and out of apartments like I'm prone to doing when I know it's goin' to be a long stretch... (must be the rent). But things are never a constant in this city, except perhaps for the morning coffee. Even that is unreliable, but I like it that way.
Constants are scary things. But I still need the coffee.
Three years and I've feared for my sanity on and off, for whatever's left of it. I've woken up wondering where I got the bruises, and scars (and why). I've discovered that coke in small doses is like viagra. I've read The English Patient 8 times cover to cover so far. I still watch the tango, and the manic Ferrari drive scenes in 'Scent of a Woman' every year. I listen to 'Where I Stood' everyday. I play Dido's Here With Me every night on my guitar. And know that despite over 60 hours (so far) of practicing Fast Car, I can't sing and play it well at the same time. I can never ever sing anything. I know Auden's 'Stop all the clocks...' by heart.
By heart, I haven't used that phrase in years, but yes, that poem I know by heart. I say it by heart in my head everytime I walk the piers and it is the one thing that brings tears to some forgotten pain.
......
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; .....
Never mind. Got distracted.
I haven't sky-dived (yet) cuz it was over a 100 bucks. I've paid 100 bucks for (apparently) jumping the turnstile. If I stop my daily quota of substances today, I could clear my loan in one year exactly. I could also die in that year from deprivation a la Winehouse, without the records and fame of course.
I've tried convincing friends to stay, keep talking, if only to get the noise out of my head and failed. Mr Pod puts sound in, he doesn't absorb the emanating static. So it's a weird key stuck between a diminished chord and G# in my head, and so irksome at times. I've been told to stop my obsessive humming at work more than twice. Maybe I hum wrong.
I've taken good care of my play list, the classics remain classics, newer perspectives and song-listening inclinations are carefully compiled in a separate folder. I am proud to say I have been faithful, and experimental at the same time. To Misters iPod and RayD Oh. Creates a lasting, mutually satisfying relationship. I now measure time in segments of crime shows. And I have learned that you know you're older when the nights seem longer than days.
Three years. The problem with anniversaries, passport expirations, and password changes is it forces you to consider time. Waves of new and past ghosts suddenly hound you and howl incessantly into the night. (Yes my ghosts are of the werewolf banshee types). The wails of were-bans.
And you never can seem to remember the loss, you only know the feeling.
Sure we know. The songs and obsessions tell you. And all the changes. The point is people don't really change. They just reveal the truth when they think no one is looking. Or reading. But we try. Someone who used to be afraid of the nightmares just sleeps with a night light. Or doesn't sleep at all.
And we all have a price to pay for giving up what is good for us.
Three years is a bitch.
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