Day: 17

an emerging ability to smile--don't know if it will last but the experience is here this morning in spite of circumstances to the contrary--the love I have felt online, from so many wonderful friends stopping by to say hello and offer a kind word has been invaluable--my conscious effort to see thoughts as thoughts has been helpful--to know that everything we think is not necessarily true--to hold thought in the hand, to examine it for usefulness, to keep what is good and let go what is not--this feels like a step in the right direction--to know that if I stay in a particular circumstance that I am making the choice to stay--rather than allow frustration to grow with my current, and hopefully temporary anorgasmic state, I've directed my mind to take advantage of the opportunity to explore concepts of intimacy and love and relationship as seen in this state, as contrasted to the biological drive toward consummative copulation--in my med induced state, where cognition and sensation has been altered, as I have observed facets of my former self attempt to emerge, there is no doubt in my mind, and I suppose I can only speak for myself, but the desire and need to procreate remains the single strongest biological function

images come as snapshots, not as movies--single images hold my imagination and my mind fixates upon them like paintings--just the image held--as dew holds the morning light--thought too seems to come in discrete units rather than a flowing of ideas--a concatenation of boxcar like thought--my body has been craving sleep and I have given where asked and the intuitive sensation is one of healing, as if my mind and body has asked me to go away so that the house can be repaired--knock on wood, I am feeling better today than any day since I started on Zoloft--same side-effects remain, and they will need to be addressed, but still there is a light and a lightness I've not known for a long, long time--I am cautiously optimistic that I am heading in the right direction but I am also prepared for setbacks and bumps in the road--I want to thank again everyone who has stopped by and offered words of encouragement--all I can say is they mean more to me than I know how to say--there is power in a sincere kind word and I have felt that power--thank you

Day: 16

as mentioned before, the creative impulse is lacking--there is no poetical spark--even writing in full sentences is a labor--thought comes like boxcars, each separate--poetic prose, the flow of language seems lost--even reading poetry feels flat, forced--the beauty of language, of my perception and appreciation of language has changed--what remains is the memory of that beauty, of knowing the beauty is there whether I can see it or not--the feeling is like having lost one's tastebuds, eating, knowing the food has flavor but unable to taste--this is how reading poetry is--without taste--simply words--but not just words, my mind feels the construct, the hand behind the words, the artificiality of the form (more so in bad poetry than good)--but all of it seems manipulation--or I should say a lot of it seems contrived--and perhaps this is what separates the good from the bad--I watched an interview with Paul Auster and he made an interesting comment about his own writing, his own intent or goal, which was to be so clear that the words disappeared and the reader experienced the work as something other than language--how to make words do their work without being seen--in bad poetry or prose, the words are front and center--I suppose this is the magic of 'indirect style,' of third person masquerading as first person narrative

emotion still rises or tries to rise--there is still the sense of a bud that does not bloom--yet, the roots of that emotion seem entrenched, lying dormant, waiting for spring perhaps--I can't control what the meds do but I can work on my own thought processes or perhaps work on the awareness that I am something more than just my thoughts, that I can choose which thoughts to invest in and which to let go--to be the gardener of my own mind--learning again how to water and weed--in many ways I feel as a child, relearning lessons I remember learning more than a quarter century ago--in moments of clarity I wonder how and when I got so far off track

I am comforted that libido remains strong and after two weeks I am starting to accept that on Zoloft, I am one of those who is anorgasmic--my new word of the day--I know this is temporary but it is interesting to explore the idea of love, physical love, in this state

started reading Roberto Bolano's 2666--I'd like to quote one passage from last night:

"In the letter she asked his forgiveness for what she called her egotism, an egotism that expressed itself in the contemplation of her own misfortunes, real or imaginary."

Likewise, I too would like to ask for forgiveness

Day: 15

so far I've been under the impression that my cognitive functions have been spared--I'm starting think otherwise--as I read books and watch movies I can see my mind moving slower to solve issues of plot--now, this is a very, very interesting point--I have always maintained that plot held little interest, for both my reading and writing--that the 'how' trumped the 'what'--yet I find now, especially in reading, a desire or a need to get to the point, the point of plot, skimming over 'purple patches' as if they were superfluous--this left brain view is virtually the opposite of my views before--the sense is as if the meds have shut down or strongly diminished right brain activity and that I am now functioning on my left brain, which is not my dominate hemisphere--the feeling is similar to a right handed person having their right hand tied behind their back, or having that right hand/arm numbed such that its effectiveness is greatly diminished--the result, is that I process information differently--I see stimuli differently--my responses to events are different and therefore my behavior is different--good or bad is a value judgment but the net effect is I am different on meds than not--I know it seems I just stated the obvious but to know this from experience is very different than to know it academically--likewise, the changes are not just changes of sedation but changes in the circuit-board of cognition such that input is not outputted in a kinder way, but outputted in a different way--I am not a facsimile of myself, a muted version, but a different self, a self with a brain that functions differently

can cognitive will overcome chemistry--can I observe my chemistry and act independently--is this a matter of education, discipline, observation and awareness, of habit and conscious choice, helpful/skillful/right choice--can I drop every story I've ever told myself about who I am, leave all the baggage of the past at the door and act from this moment, act from a clean slate, act from the present moment creation of my own reality as processed by my own cognitive functions--can I separate myself from my thoughts--can I see the brain as a tool and not as me

Day: 13-14

day thirteen:

odd day--emotional response still blunted--everything happening on an intellectual level--found an old journal from the spring of '89--makes me wonder how long I've suffered--darkness visible when I take naps, like breakers pounding the seawall of meds and I wonder if nothing has changed other than this chemical barrier that keeps me from feeling anything


day fourteen:

watched TV last night--several scenes that in the past would have moved me to tears--last night there was no movement at all--listened to 30 second clips of John Mayer's new album, every song, multiple times, trying to justify buying it--although it was clear this is very good work and I enjoyed the artistry, the lack of emotion, not in the music but in me, in my reaction to the music, not just his but all music, kept me from purchasing--I've bought almost no music in the last two weeks, notable because this is not the norm--what disturbs me the most, even more than the sexual side-effects, is the seemingly absence of any creative impulse, an impulse that has been in full bloom for almost four years--this dullness of mind, of emotion also seems to exist in the physical body too--at the risk of TMI, I find that the nerve endings in both my nipples and penis to be numbed, where before my flesh was alive and vibrant in touch, in sensation, now, the feeling is as rubber and sensation seems several steps removed--I feel as an artificial person, my chemically altered self--kinder, gentler, but dumb as stone to sensation, art, creativity, passion, a place where love is just an idea, a concept, a sentimental outcrop from a biological function--and none of this is the person I know myself to be

I would like to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and again to express my gratitude for all the heartfelt comments. They mean more than you know. I am committed to staying the course on Sertraline (Zoloft) until my next doctor's appointment on 3 December. And to the best of my fuddled brain, to continue to document my individual experience on anti-depressant medication.

Day: 10-12

day ten:

as normal as I have felt in ten days--I cannot tell if a blending has occurred and what was yellow and blue is now green or if familiarity breeds a dullness of perception--levels of irritation seem to be returning to a less drugged out state, which seems healthy


day eleven:

I cannot help but feel I am living behind a chemical facade--subdued by science--that a large part of who I was has been silenced--over the weekend I watched the LSU/Ole Miss game with a clinical detachment, which was a marked contrast to watching the LSU/Alabama game pre-drugs--the feeling is akin to having both the high end and low end of emotions removed--nothing moves me like it did, good or bad, just this insipid blandness to stimuli

sensation on crown of head remains--drowsiness is a constant as is a sense of living behind a medicated filter/screen/wall/fog

I cannot seem to shake loose from a sense of medicated dullness--music feels flat and I don't listen as much as before--outcomes seem less important--and all the while, as in a dream, I can feel, almost see, my old self trying to emerge but dissipated in a med induced fog before surfacing--I feel like someone's science lab project

interest in writing fiction and poetry still nil


day twelve:

most alert in the mornings--appetite still suppressed--food appears to trigger drowsiness beyond the norm--levels of irritation seem to be returning--libido in decline--sexual function remains impaired--ability to emotionally engage remains blunted--memory is affected but I am unable to put my finger on exactly how--temporary spikes of anxiety and fear--meds feel as a mask, as something separate and the blending alluded to in day ten seems not to be happening--there is me and then there is me as altered with medication and the two seem just exactly that, as two things, not one--doubt is emerging on this course of action--nothing seems clear, certain or solid--there is a very real sense of a life before and a life now, which is to say a life since the darkness manifested that the drugs seem only to cover, not change

I look upon beauty, anticipate the emotional response and, with these meds, it does not come--the response is intellectual and imagined--what I mean by imagined is this: I remember past emotional responses and the memory of how I should feel or used to feel or what is appropriate to feel is held in my mind, but there is no emotional energy, just the idea of the emotion and I wonder how long it will take before even the memory is faded beyond recognition--and I wonder of the quality of a purely intellectual life

Day: 9

sense of sarcasm is gone--pleasant inviting tone in my voice is surprising to myself--sadness surfaces as an intellectual experience, still felt within the body, but lacking emotional energy--the feeling is similar to being cut with a surgical scalpel, a beautiful clean cut, of a knife so sharp, no pain is experienced and the idea of the cut is strangely held in the mind as a thing in and of itself--a sharper sense of love beyond lust (equal parts or somewhere between platonic and postcoital)--cognition and perception changed--still trying to understand the subtleties--there is an element of 'not caring' that is more complex than prima facie awareness--somehow, this ties into lack of irritation and I cannot tell if I'm simply sedated or rational or some combination that shuts down emotional reaction--a need to analyze things rather than create them--to try to comprehend the effect and affect of psychoactive drugs, which brings into question issues of personality and identity, which by implication calls into question relationship, for the question then becomes, relationship with who--sense of not being completely clear-minded--certain sense of detachment (body/mind/environment)--pettiness is less--concrete preferred to the abstract

Day: 8

metaphors and similes, two of my favorite literary devices, have lost their appeal; more so the simile, which now looks distractingly transparent--only succinct, original metaphors hold interest

reading Paul Auster's novel Invisible--read over eighty pages last night--I cannot remember the last time I read that much in a single sitting--the book, by the way, is very well written--in the second chapter he employes a second-person narrative, delightful to read if only because second-person is so rarely used

I feel least drugged out in the mornings--most drugged out in the last four hours of a twenty-four hour cycle--I take my daily pill at 7pm--no issues sleeping--dream state has returned to normal--nothing new on the sexual front

desire to write fiction and poetry nonexistent--there appears to be no creative spark; the beauty found in a sentence seems other than it was and I feel a certain utilitarianism descending

with each day there is a drifting and the person I was just a week ago slips further and further away--I reflect back on impulses and behaviors and they seem alien and what I don't know is this: was I mad then or am I mad now--and the feeling is that when one descends into madness, one is the last to know and I am reminded of the words Robert Graves gave to Caligula: When they told me I was mad you could have knocked me over with a feather.

last night I held the little pill in my hand and cursed it--I wanted to curse something else but that would require a belief I do not have

++++++

there is the issue of tears--where before they flowed easily, now the idea of crying doesn't compute and there is a similar sense of abstraction toward the tear as to the orgasm, which is to say, these things are known from memory but whatever wires were connected before are now unconnected and tears and orgasms become ideas, just abstract academic functions that appear in books and movies and perhaps by other people

++++++

ability to be irritated remains low--I can see it bud, but not flower--the subtle drugged out feeling creates the oddest distortion to sight and/or general consciousness whereby there is a slight dreamlike quality to both vision and interacting, not quite an out of body experience but a sense of mind and body discrete--appetite remains slightly suppressed

++++++

to look upon the curve of a woman's breast with an odd detachment, to see the beauty of the curve, the function without the desire or lust--I cannot think of an analogy that does not sound callus but I hold the image, the beauty in pure mind, as idea--there is a poignancy in living beyond the reach of seduction

Day: 7

if you have ever travelled to a place you've been before, one with strong memories, you realize quickly that although the geography is the same, the place is not, and what was, is not now--now, as in the present moment, is unforgivingly unsentimental

++++++

coursing within my bloodstream are little engineers--flipping switches

++++++

one cannot will an emotion

++++++

what am I beyond my chemistry--

++++++

perception of beauty has shifted--not sure exactly how--likewise, the experience of reading poetry has changed--the feeling is colder; more Apollonian than Dionysian--I wonder how this influences the grading of subjective essays--toleration for the vagaries of personality has grown--when I close my eyes my sense of balance is less steady

++++++

value scale shifting toward left brain--precision seems important; simplicity and clarity too; ornate feels distasteful--images of pure, clean water--desire to sit outside the stream of white noise--still, drums of discontent are heard beyond the horizon as I sit behind the walls of medicine--mornings are alert--afternoons drowsy--sleep is good--sensation on crown remains--feeling of being drugged, while still present, seems less--erosion of sexual desire unabated

++++++

sound remains altered

Day: 6

less drowsy--hearing still seems muted--sensation on top of head remains--general malaise just short of lassitude--awareness of being unwhole without clear comprehension--a vague fuddleness--a sense of the meds only holding moor--tethered to the dock of science--chained by a pill--a warring between what was and what is or between who was and who is--a certain cacophony between personalities--and all the while a growing frustration with what I can only call the insipidity of my existence

today feels the least drugged and the most normal and herein lies the fear: this new emotionally dulled self seen and accepted as is--sexual function remains impaired, which in and of itself is unacceptable--the impairment is not physical but mental and it seems upon examination as if the mental wires that ignite orgasm have been disconnected--desire remains but seems rather pointless--feminine charms fall flat--the entire physical and mental landscape has shifted but my memory of the old map is still clear; a cartographer with two versions of me

Still, I am more pleasant to be around and more engaging of others--what is lacking is simply a passion for anything--nothing wrong with the analytical functions of my mind--concentration is fine--mathematical abilities unimpaired--speech centers seem unaffected--touch, taste, smell and sight all seem fine--only hearing appears to me affected--music still feels more architectural than wavelike

the creative functions, of fiction and poetry, are absent, as they have been these last six days

Day: 5

first day on full dose--very drugged upon taking--sleep restless--morning same as before--pressure on the crown of the skull as if someone is pressing their palm on the top of my head--slight queasiness--sexual function impaired--creativity blunted--darkness somewhere close--no pleasure in music--slight increase in irritability--thoughts of suicide resurface-- desultory restlessness--thoughts of disintegration return; of feeling in pieces, broken, shattered as if a collection of shards of what once was--voices seem distant in the way they do from underwater--life feels filtered, everything passing through the censorious meds before they get to me--a sense of being caged--that nothing has changed other than this interminable dullery of every former pleasure--as a flower drained of hue

Day: 4

emotional
dullery (don't bother looking this one up--had to create the word I wanted)

mostly noticed with anger, sadness--certain negative stimuli do not elicit the same reaction as before--I have not looked as closely at the opposite side of the spectrum (e.g., yesterday I had an issue with the lawnmower that would in the past had led me to use a few choice words, yet, yesterday, not even a scintilla of irritation, so lacking as to be amusingly obvious before alarmingly obvious in understanding the full ramifications of what is occurring

numbing sensation on the crown of the skull still present--second day in a row without a waking headache--overall sense of drowsiness continues--overall sensation of being slightly drugged still present--motor skills slightly less adroit--appetite remains somewhat suppressed

the overall sensation, and I can't quite get my mind around how to accurately describe the experience, but there is the most subtle shift in consciousness, slightly above the state of just waking up but slightly below the state of full alertness--almost a dreamlike feel to visual input--sound, as in music, seems distant in a way I can't quite describe--the ear is working fine--everything is heard clearly but somehow heard differently as if what is being heard is not being heard by you

I find it is easier to be nice; that verbal interaction is not as strained and there is a kindness or patience to my voice that was not there before--the experience is almost startling--my tolerance for being around others has increased

++++++

odd observation: prior, I needed quiet to read, to concentrate--now, as if I can put external noise on a different channel or, more accurately, it goes to a different channel

++++++

emotional blandness; numbness--one is not happy so much as not sad or perhaps blank to the point of being no thing, just a hunk of flesh breathing, eating and not much more

nullness, to feel nothing--good or bad, right or wrong--imagine eating without taste; or a boat in drydock, scaffolded within sight of the sea, dry as powder; or a day without breeze, nothing moving, not even a daisy--to know things only by the logic of them

Day: 3

No headache this morning. Good sleep. Sensation on skull crown still present, more of a sense of cool pressure, skin drawn tight. A certain numbness or as if a weight were resting on my head. The feeling is not painful nor intense, but noticeable as something there now, there for three days, that was not there before.

Of emerging concern: For the third day in a row I have had no desire to write fiction or poetry. For the past four years, that desire has always been there, even on days I did not write, the desire to write was there, the openness to write always present. I noticed it yesterday and then again this morning. I don't know what to make of this other than this attitude is different. There is a contrast in my mornings, or at least the last three mornings, with the last three years. Mornings have always been my most creative time.

On the emotional front, the keel remains quite steady. The impulse toward reaction, and I can't quite find the right word, other than to say it is blunted. The same surge of emotion to certain stimuli is somehow muted. This makes me a more pleasant person to be around but the initial feeling is like a person who could walk now confined to a wheelchair.

As the meds/attitude/placebo or whatever is at work, basically a high pressure cell holding depression at bay, the oddest thought occurred to be last night. In discussing depression and medicine, my doctor had made the statement that a lot of depressives like to write about it after they had come through it, but not while in it. It is the only thing he said that made no sense to me because my own experience is different. If you have followed this blog that last year or more, you will see quite a bit of writing 'about it.' In fact, I believe one can only write about it authentically, while in it, which is why I always tried to capture the experience from within the experience. To try to capture it from memory, even your own memory is still a "re-creation." And no matter how intimate we are with something, the replay is never the same thing as the live performance and the retelling is something other than the act that is told. Well, anyway, as I was sitting in my car, feeling perfectly normal, I tried to recall or describe the darkness and I could sense that my ability to fully describe it was somewhat less than I knew I could when I was in it. And there was a part of me that felt some sadness as if a part of me was gone, was leaving, departing. It may have been necessary, it may have been lifesaving. Still, a certain sadness, like a selfing, a cleaving of personality before and personality after and the two seem as brothers rather than as a single entity. And in that way, I miss my brother.

The above comment regarding authenticity seems a bit harsh. So I'll revise it this way, the writing about depression while depressed and the writing about it after the fact, no matter how small the degree of separation, perhaps even so small as to be unnoticeable, is still a matter of two different things, each, perhaps worthy in their own right for what they are, but not to be mistaken as one and the same.

On perhaps an unrelated or coincidental note, my teeth have been painfully sensitive. This has happened before but of note here is my reaction. It just doesn't bother me as before.

++++++

Not an idea in my head
plate glass blank
only the reflection
of memory
of a drifting away
of eyes that no longer look
like my eyes

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Early afternoon:

I cannot shake a very subtle drugged out feeling. Felt drowsy most of yesterday which I attributed to a poor night's sleep. Slept well last night yet still, now, feel like a nap. Not the kind of nap when tired as much as when taking meds.

Metaphorically speaking, the first cool breeze has come across the plain. The first in three days. As before, I cannot put my finger on it.

Day: 2

Drowsy upon the hour of taking. Intensive dreaming. Restless sleep. Sensation of a beam of light on the crown of my head similar to the night before but more intense. The beam appeared in my mind as a pointed instrument, similar to a tent peg. The sensation feels as if under the skull, almost a teemingness, the brain as a bucket of minnows. The feeling is localized roughly to a two inch circumference and is felt shortly after going to bed. Upon waking and even now, early afternoon, there is a sense of pressure on the crown of the skull and a cooling sensation, again localized to a small circle and felt from the inside out.

For the second morning, I awoke to an intense headache in the back of the head on either side of the area above the neck. These headaches are more intense than I usually might have and the feeling is of tentacles reaching into the lower soft tissue of the brain, grip tight, pulling tighter. Likewise for the second day is a very subtle queasy feeling that has the net affect of reducing appetite as opposed to the noted side-effect of an increased desire to eat. On an emotional level, there is a sense of a very subtle dullness as if viewing the emotions from the other side of a glass. The feeling is similar to sedation but not quite the same. Also, my motor-skills seem to be slightly less sharp and my movements slightly slower as one might experience under cold medicine. Now, what is interesting is that when taking cold medicine, as the body feels lethargic so too the mind, in this case, where the body and emotions seem blunted, my mind feels exceedingly sharp or trenchant, to use a word I'm trying to working into my vocabulary.

Thoughts of suicide returned this morning as they had not yesterday, but there was no energy to them. Perhaps vestigial but something to keep an eye on. Upon waking and through the morning there was a grogginess as yesterday as one would feel when taking nighttime cold medicine. Listening to music this morning, as too yesterday, was enjoyable, but the emotional edge is not the same as before and I don't know what to make of this but to continue to observe. I do seem to be more talkative, more willing and desirous to engage conversation, and this is a very pleasant change. I also find I am less reactionary and there is the sense of holding a greater perspective than before--and this is a very good thing.

Day: 1

Took my first pill last night. Drowsy, cotton-mouth, light sleeping with heavy dreaming, waking several times thinking it should be later than it was. Nothing unexpected other than the density of the dreaming--all too vague to remember with the exception that the dreams were in color, a point of interest because I could never recall before if I dreamed in black and white or in color. Also of note, I don't often dream or at least don't often remember that I have dreamt. There was one other strange sensation and I cannot tell if it was physical or just imaginative since the sensation came after I slipped into sleep and awoke the first time, namely that the top of my head had become soft such that if you placed a colander on my head like a helmet, and pushed down, my brain would ooze through the holes. Likewise, the dryness in my mouth, which is a known side effect, feels more like powdered chalk than cotton.

This morning, mood is perfectly normal. The meds take at least a week to show result, but I'm not returning the gift. Feels like fresh air in the morning, in the mountains, standing on the porch with the first cup of coffee of the day. There is a slight grogginess akin to having taken an antihistamine the night before and a very slight queasiness but my mind seems clear, cogent, concise. Nothing feels diminished, which was/is my fear, the fear of compromise, that to have one thing would mean the giving up of something else (creativity, sexual drive, the ability to experience the full spectrum, depth, intensity of emotion, etc.) I have these concerns under observation. I am hopeful this is not a zero-sum game.

Hope, I believe is a very powerful thing. I had it yesterday, before my appointment. I had it after the appointment as I did last night, as I do this morning. It is too early for the medicine to be palliative. So, I think there is some combination of the placebo effect amplified by hope. More good news, so far, I say with extreme caution. I am listening to music, enjoying it without being tossed to and fro. Fettle I feel and fettle I have my eye on. I am using 'fettle' in a dual sense/meaning: in the former, as condition or shape, such as one would say 'I am in fine fettle; but I am also using it in the latter, "nouning" the verb, 'to trim or clean the rough edge of metal or pottery before firing.' From a grammatical point of view, I do not know the proper label for taking the verb sense of a word and using it as a noun, which is what I have done here and called it 'nouning,' which is not a word. So if anyone can enlighten me, you would have my appreciation. Perhaps gerund is the proper term, only done here without the 'ing' ending.

++++++

Note of interest: In the last several months I've not been able to read more than a handful of pages, usually only one or two, sometimes as many as five, at any one sitting. Last night I read thirty before overcome with sleep. It seems in hindsight, as silly as it is to say, a significant accomplishment, especially for someone who likes to read. Take whatever it is you love to do and imagine that joy taken from you except in small, teasing, frustratingly minute doses. Reading last night was like drinking water, drinking as much as I wanted. It was like riding my bike outside of the confines of the cul-de-sac, riding as far as I wanted to ride.

my path has come to a fork

Tell me where you stand and I'll tell you what you think. Show me your feet, and I'll know your eyes. Can you see the strings? Do you even feel the pull of a brain interpreting your world from a wealth of data only a dram of which you know? The kitchen is relative to my hunger, is it not? Can you free your will from your environment? Can you go underwater and not long for air? Can you see a sunset and not layer it with your past? Tell me you can and I'll come sit at your feet.

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A few months ago I had the pleasure of viewing the performance below, live, from about thirty feet away. I struggle to recall anything I've seen first hand as beautiful as Lucia and her violin, playing this song, live, just as you see below. And I remember thinking, and this is how my brain works, but I remember thinking, this is how I want to die, this is how I want my last moment to be, that violin taking me into the fade to black, not in a recording or imagination, but to have rented the hall and the performers, to sit front and center and to be able to time one's last minutes to the song. This is what I thought and there was no shame.



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The concert and the thought occurred before my reacquaintance with Keats or any knowledge of his love for Fanny Brawne nor, of course, of any letters written between the two. So when I read the excerpt below (Keats to Brawne), it made perfect sense to me, as it does now:

excerpt:

I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your Loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute. I hate the world; it batters too much the wings of my self-will, and would I could take a sweet poison from your lips to send me out of it.

Isle of Wight, July 25

observations

Some voices are like light rain, a gentle murmur, soothing; some like hail.

Can it be different? Of course it can; but to know this only on the logical plane is rather worthless.

My brain is turning in on itself, like a black hole such that even sight no longer sees. Or I should say, no longer sees out. Instead there is a looking within and the image is of a dark unknown forest, lost, searching, cold, alone, a place where the sun provides no warmth and the path only leads deeper into the darkness.

To lose the ability to differentiate between right and wrong is terrifying. I now understand the need for prison as never before.

There are days when all I want is this pain beaten from me; mainly by whip upon my bare back; as if this pain inside me could be banished or killed or run from my body; a battle of wills; either it goes or I do; I'd be satisfied with either result.

And on these days, I see myself sitting at the racetrack, alone, everyone has gone home; just sitting in the stands, soaking in the flow of life that goes on, my memory fading as the day. Everything moves on.

The KKB series of poems was written in this spirit. All twenty-one poems focus on the singular motion of a sword falling upon shield. During the writing, each morning I would steep in this sight, the sound, of holding that shield, of the shield splintering, of mud, of knee, the sound of a horse turning, coming again, sword raised.

Find your joy she said. That is when I knew she didn't know the path I was on. Nothing wrong with the advice--I had reached the same conclusion ten years before--even wrote it on a index card like some great discovery. But this path is different. The way out is not through joy. It is not in the putting together but in the breaking apart. I feel it in my rigid back. The need to be broken, to shatter the stress, pick up the pieces, put them in a pot of boiling water, and refill the mold with something new.

This is how it feels. This need to confront the pain, not run from it into joy or happiness as one might play with some friends but not others. Those other friends don't just go away. I feel some vague sin that must be atoned or some debt that must be paid in the coin of suffering. This is not a place where logic is welcome, wanted, or needed.

This morning there is a stillness, the kind you feel under medication, only I'm not under any medication. Bad news comes at me and passes through me as if just words. I know it is not just words, (interrupted)

694. to the lake

They walked the path to the lake, along the shore, flowers everywhere and a few bees going about their work. The pier was of grayed wood and the small row boat, lacquered some time ago in merry-go-round tincture. There was no breeze to speak of and the lake laid placid as lakes are wont to do when writers write of them. He helped her into the boat, which gently rocked with her step, only the sound of water and wood and their breathing. He would push the boat from moor and they would drift under the sun and the two of them would fold into each others arms and just drift and rock of their own breathing. Her hair on his shoulder, his hands around her waist, cheeks rosy from an unclouded sky.

For a long time they laid to the sound of gentle lapping water, the texture of textiles, wool, cotton, of wove and weave as crumb and crust, pure as must or wort, sweet as golden mead. With closed eyes they followed the dancing of lids, the smell of fresh washed hair and fingers turning circles, of thumbs on temples rubbing stress with tender strokes, pressing and kneading sweated flesh, mixing salt with oil.

friday: 6 nov 2009

thinking life is overrated
or
perhaps
just mine

but I've been wrong
before
often
so I have that in my favor

++++++

days seem like leaves on a tree
each leaf, a day
and as the days go by
as leaves slip from trees
so I feel
this slipping away
waiting for another gust of wind
to take me into winter

++++++

my poetry is not so good
but it is mine
and it is all I have (of me)
and maybe if I would open my eyes
I'd see what it has to say:
you are not perfect
never have been
never will
and this ideal
is killing you

++++++

unremitting
my new word of the day

++++++

in my mind
I see my tree:
many leaves
or just a few
I cannot tell;
but there are days
where I feel cursed
either way

++++++

I suppose what is most scary
is not the fog
the unseeing and unknowing
but paradoxically
those moments of clear seeing

or perhaps the memory
of those moments
of clear seeing
that I take with me
back into the fog

++++++

every noise has become amplified
not so much in my ear
but in my chest
as if sound were a rope
and each wave a pulling
a constriction
that makes breathing
more difficult
and requires all my energy
all my effort
and concentration
to breathe
to place my hands
on either side of the two walls
of stimulus and response
trying to
breathe in a gap

++++++

from time to time
I have memories of things
I used to know
so called wisdom

and I see that life
that wisdom
as one sees another land
another shore
from across a river

I recognize it
know that I have been there
that I know that place
and have walked that path
and as close as it is

I cannot swim
and there is no bridge
and I have no option
but to walk away
to start anew

to where
to what
I don't know

pain

what is more true?

remembering tuesdays

some days are darker than others . . . I've never seen a blue sky so white, so white as to be of no color, of no thing, of nothingness fading from consciousness, only the song of wind, as I remember a quarter century ago, one afternoon in Iowa, standing on a porch, nobody home and nothing between me and the horizon, but wind, just the blowing . . . as one breathed as if breathing loneliness. I wore jeans and my hair was longer and most all I know now I didn't know then, but the wisdom of darkness doesn't count years or skin or even bathrooms with locks . . .

work in progress: peaches and apples

version 1:

the peaches are gone
those conspiring bitches
sluting their summer heat

as if they had wings
and flight was theirs
slating their shat upon

us lowly land luggers;
but peaches have no wings
and when they fall

as they will
and squat the earth again
I'll squish them like worms

or maybe like slattern snails
grinding their seed
for a better brew

because peaches don't fly
and no amount of thinking
gonna make it so

such a shame they
had to fuck the apple
stem and all

version 2:

the peach is gone
that conspiring bitch
sluting her summer heat

as if she had wings
and flight was hers
slating her shat

upon lowly land luggers;
but peaches have no wings
and when she falls

as sure as shit she will
and squat the earth again
I'll squish her like a worm

or maybe like a slattern snail
grinding her seed
for a better brew

because peaches don't fly
and no amount of thinkin'
gonna make it so

such the scarlet shame
she had to fuck the apple
stem and all

++++++

version 3

there never were any peaches
nor any apples

quote:

"I don't want to persuade the reader that it's a real thing; I want to show it as it is. In a sense, I'm telling those readers that it's just a story: it's fake. But when you experience the fake as real, it can be real. It's not easy to explain . . .
I'm not pretending it's the real thing. We are living in a fake world; we are watching fake evening news. We are fighting a fake war. Our government is fake. But we find reality in this fake world. So our stories are the same: we are walking through fake scenes, but ourselves, as we walk through these scenes, are real. The situation is real, in the sense that it's a commitment; it's a true relationship. That's what I want to write about."

- Haruki Murakami

me, too

as days slip from autumn
and leaves from trees

me, too