Emotional Weather Report

It's been a long time since I hated myself this much.
(Maybe five or six years.)

Physical pain from my belly button up to my temples.

I can't remember happiness. I hate it when people ask me to remember a time when I felt happy. Actually, I can remember some happiness.

I just answered the door to a meter reader and managed to be polite to him. Maybe there is hope. I'm not opposed to hope.

Can I haz stronger medications, plz?

Update: 10:00 My headache isn't so bad now, but I'm still finding it difficult to think coherently. (I am too dependent on my intellect.)

Late night and early morning
low clouds with a chance of fog
chance of showers into the afternoon
with variable high cloudiness
and gusty winds, gusty winds
at times around the corner of
Sunset and Alvorado
things are tough all over
when the thunder storms start
increasing over the southeast
and south central portions
of my apartment, I get upset
and a line of thunderstorms was
developing in the early morning
ahead of a slow moving cold front
cold blooded
with tornado watches
issued shortly before noon Sunday,
for the areas
including, the western region
of my mental health
and the northern portions of my
ability to deal rationally
with my
disconcerted precarious emotional
situation.

it's cold out there
colder than a ticket taker's smile
at the Ivar Theatre, on a Saturday night
flash flood watches covered the
southern portion of my disposition
there was no severe weather well
into the afternoon,
except for a lone gust of wind in the bedroom
in a high pressure zone, covering the eastern
portion of a small suburban community
with a 103 and millibar high pressure zone
and a weak pressure ridge extending from
my eyes down to my cheeks
cause since you left me baby
and put the vice grips on my mental health
well the extended outlook for an
indefinite period of time
until you come back to me baby
is high tonight
low tomorrow,
and precipitation is expected
TOM WAITS

Update: 10:30 Why do the song lyrics that seem to describe my current mood have to be about bad relationships? That's one dimension of my life where I've quite lucky. Unlike my misogynist heroes, evidently.

Sleepless Nights

My Age:

What Happened:

7

Writing. Fame. Death.
Nightmares
Sleepless Nights

It was around about the time of the Third Age of Gordie that I began to have bad dreams. I would wake up afraid, unable to breathe, and unable to shout for help. (To this day, one of the weirdest and scariest things about bad dreams is the way I try to shout for help and make no sound whatever.)

I suppose it's no big deal these days... is it? As Paul Simon once said, I don't expect to sleep through the night. But I don't feel right when I wake up in the night. I question myself, more fundamentally than I do in the daytime. I feel like I've been abandoned, I feel on the wrong planet.

I don't think I understand this song; I just like it. What's the lie he's talking about? Why is the cross in the ballpark? Anybody got any thoughts, please leave a comment.

I’m accustomed to a smooth ride
Or maybe I'm a dog who's lost his bite
I don’t expect to be treated like a fool no more
I don’t expect to sleep through the night
Some people say
A lie's a lie's a lie
But I say why
Why deny the obvious child?
Why deny the obvious child?

And in remembering a road sign
I am remembering a girl when I was young
And we said these songs are true
These days are ours
These tears are free
And hey
The cross is in the ballpark
The cross is in the ballpark

We had a lot of fun
We had a lot of money
We had a little son
And we thought we'd call him sonny
Sonny gets married and moves away
Sonny has a baby and bills to pay
Sonny gets sunnier
Day by day by day by day

I've been waking up at sunrise
I've been following the light across my room
I watch the night receive the room of my day
Some people say the sky is just the sky
But I say
Why deny the obvious child?
Why deny the obvious child?

Sonny sits by his window and thinks to himself
How its strange that some rooms are like cages
Sonny's yearbook from high school
Is down from the shelf
And he idly thumbs through the pages
Some have died
Some have fled from themselves
Or struggled from here to get there
Sonny wanders beyond his interior walls
Runs his hand through his thinning brown hair

Well I'm accustomed to a smoother ride
Maybe I'm a dog that’s lost his bite
I don’t expect to be treated like a fool no more
I don’t expect to sleep through the night
Some people say a lie is just a lie
But I say the cross is in the ballpark
Why deny the obvious child?

PAUL SIMON

Self Portrait No 3

Sex and the City

"New York, New York, it's a helluva town,
The Bronx is up and the Battery's down "

Been here for four days,and I still don't know where the plain women hang out. Seriously: there's something unusual when the ugliest crowd you see are the people at the Apple store standing in line to buy iPhones.

After work,the bars fill up with groups of well turned out women, and I feel like an extra in Sex and the City. Around my hotel, yellow cabs dispense them in threes and fours, like money from cash machines.

There are gay men around, and gay women - I'm on the edge of Chelsea and Greenwich Village. Where are the groups of straight men? In another part of town, possibly with the plain girls. Here,they're outnumbered five-to-one.

Two blondes talking with a brunette friend about the man the brunette's been seeing. She likes him, but he's married. Still, she can let him buy her dinner, can't she?

I got into a conversation with a lovely girl who recognised my accent, and told me she'd recently had her heart broken by a man from London. No, she said, she doesn't hate men. She doesn't even hate British men. She just hates him. He dumped her a few weeks ago. She has a date tonight. I wish her luck.

At my hotel, one of the receptionists is showing off a book she's had published. It's about her experiences as a self-destructive teenage punk rock fan. Or as the book calls her, a Death Rock Cutter, which sounds like a spaceship in Star Wars. Still,the book looks very arty.

I walk around the corner to Starbucks, and pass a shoe shop called Shoegasm.They don't seem to stock much for men. Another part of town. Another part of town.

"There are eight million stories in the Naked City"

The Demon That Departed

Well, that little feller's been gone for over a month now, but I have to say this week I've been feeling strange. There are times I've been confident and full of energy. other times, I've felt like a fish out of water. This morning, I almost thought he'd come back.

I was awake at dawn. I was hungry. I could do anything I want, and I didn't want to do anything I could. Life feels strange because I don't have a head full of stuff to keep at bay. That's not what i'm used to. But three hours later, I still haven't eaten. I made a cup of tea, and drank only a couple of mouthfuls. No, the demon's gone. I'm alone. It's just me now.

I feel strong, and capable, and talented. I wish I didn't.

Every now and then
you find someone you really like,
but sometimes in the end
they may not fit you right

My baby's in love with a shoe salesman
the man who works down the block
yes, she's in love for the first time, again
he's got her heart tied up in a knot

With all his talk about the price he can give
he's got her sold on the life they could live
just like the slippers in the window there
he says they make such a cozy pair


My baby's in love with a shoe salesman
it makes me feel like a sock full of holes
it all began when she window-shopped
an' pretty soon he was holding her sole

Now she's in love with that man down the street
and he's in love with her feet
I try to think everything is alright,
but who's gonna keep my feet warm at night

Oh, I love her even though
she's made a heel out of me




My baby's in love with a shoe salesman
now I don't fit her,
no, I don't fit her
now I don't fit her anymore.

Adrian Belew

Call and Response

"A regular booty call partner can be much more satisfying for a woman than a string of one-night stands, because it usually takes a few sessions to teach a new man the various routes to your happy place.

"And if you're not demanding orgasms from your casual sex,
then you're kinda missing the point, aren't ya?"

(thanks to Em and Lo for that little tip.)