I wonder how other people do it. How they get up and go to work. Not just that, but how they justify it to themselves. Something about money. Something about security. It’s hard to relate to anymore. I feel like my room is a spaceship of some kind. An ark carrying the last vestiges of something or other out into the depths of space. But with no particular destination. Hope shot into the darkness. Xibalba looms on the horizon. Wait, is there even a horizon in outer space?

Fire Rock Pale Ale and Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town. A little bit of web work done for a friend. We’re all looking for something to fill up our days with. An occupation is not a job but something you occupy yourself with. You are a house. Who lives there? What do they do all day?

Chemicals are reliable, if boring. Phone calls to far away friends. Lovers let go to grow. Goals we create out of the dust and ashes, smoke and mirrors. Where is God in all this? Watching over me while I sit wrapped in a blanket in the June basement cold. What does He want me to do, wait here forever? Return phone calls and emails? Why?

Juggling balls I took with me when I left California. Pens and change and wires connecting me to something, some kind of shared experience. Some kind of lifeline to the outside world. Things made out of glass and plastic. Containers. Covers. Fibers. Papers. Electronics telling me that something or other is important. Are they right? Am I right? Am I living right? Am I living at all? It’s a fine line between fulfillment and self-deceit. I have a pile of movies to watch. Books to read. What am I really even looking for anymore? Why do I bother trying to take it out on other people?

This Springsteen album says to me the only thing you can do is commemorate in order to commiserate. We create spaces to be in, alone together again. And then look back on it fondly: Remember when we were alone together? Remember when we found a place in the dark where we could simply touch and that was enough? No words were spoken and when they were they crushed us into dust.

A painting with a winged sun rising or setting over a beach full of roses. “Time” rests upon its brow. It tells me “patience” and “tempus fugit“. I can hyperlink myself into oblivion. YouTube just another replacement-for/augmentation-to an alcohol-induced waking coma. There are phone calls I wait for and those I ignore. Seek beauty, he sings to me. Seek beauty and make meaning. To shoulder the weight of the world…

Look at the pretty pictures. Feel my hand across your body. The face of the beach smiling up at us from memory. The shards of something we once held. Music loud enough to drown out my internal distractions. Why do you want to do this? What are we doing? Should we get a dog? Would that simplify things? Would that unite us once again? I have two more beers left before I will be forced to take action in the real world. I can’t yet download alcohol but someday and what then? Music in a bottle. Your eyes look away distracted when I close in for the moment. Time shakes our hands, smiles out at us from the winged solar disc.

Somebody took the garbage out, which is good. My room smells like corn chips, even though I haven’t eaten any. I have color values to change for a friend of mine with a mission. My Fire Rock burns and cools and calms. Later I may head down to the bar by myself and order salmon chowder and pretend like I am living three months ago and not alone. It’s easier to be alone but much more boring and annoying. I remember the note we saw pinned to the door and imagined it was addressed to us. “Congratulations,” it said. “We’ll meet you at the salmon house.” Lions and mannequins and beers to numerous to name. Maybe what we created was a fantasy. Maybe all we can ever create together is that and then try to live according to it. I once knew a girl whose mother dated Bruce Springsteen. I slept with her sister. We were both on drugs and it was boring even if she was beautiful. I don’t know why beauty must always be so distant. You can never hold it for long. You can only commemorate it in order to commiserate its passing with old men and haggard women in dark bars as we swing from chandeliers and gallows of our own design. Take me now before I have to watch another movie about how sad and dark life is. Take me now before beauty again destroys me at the church of your feet, O Lord. I shook myself awake and now what do I have to show for it? Hold me tighter, God. I know you’ll forget about me before the cock crows. I know your love is real but also temporary. Are you sorry, Lord? Would you kiss me again if you could, dear God? Plug your wires into my stigmata. Tell me which way the wind blows. Your signal is all I trust anymore, O Lord. And all I can do is go back to sleep until I hear from you. Will your arms still hold me? Do you love me for me or because you’re as lost as me. Don’t tell me the answer, O God. Just let me linger a little longer. It’s all I’ve got. It’s all I want. My dreams are enough without you getting in the way.