11/30

I spend a day with Melancholy.  He appears in sweatpants and a hoodie.  We mull about the apartment.  Roll around.  Toss about.

The day is passed on the floor.

We go on treasure hunts together.  Picking pebbles of kitty litter from between the cracks of wood.  Inspecting them.  Analyzing them.  Which came from where?

We perform patrol duties by the open window.  Asses threats as people march by with coffee cups in hand, gabbing on about how Davey isn't improving in math at the preferred rate, or how the break room at the office is always such a mess.

We perform interrogations in the bathroom.  Bear down on my reflection.  Apply pressure.  We ask him what happened that one night last week at the bar, when that girl with dark rimmed glasses kissed him on the cheek after they had finished their fourth last beverage.  But he doesn't remember.  Too many missing details.  Too much whiskey.

We lay on our backs and pretend to be corpses.  We pick a spot on the ceiling and dissolve into it.  Let it take us.  Let it devour us.

When it spits me back out Melancholy is gone.  I've been abandoned.  Left.

So I rise and begin pacing.  Check the time.  Only five in the evening.  Leaving me with several daunting hours to wade through.  To chop down.  Escape from.  Church bells resound off my walls and with all the dings and dongs I'm suddenly spinning in cacophony.  

Then I feel a slap on my shoulder.  It grounds me.  And I turn to see the broad smile of its owner.

Restlessness.

11/29

My head.  It's throbbing.  Creating pain rhythmically.  I pull it from the floor.  Try to steady it atop my neck.  The room bends.

My beard is saturated with drool.  Empty beer bottles lay between my legs.  The cat bites at my toes but I'm too occupied removing the crust from my eyes to pay him mind.

I reach around for a water bottle.  Agua.  H2O.  Sustenance.

I feel cigarette butts.  Miscellaneous wrappers.  Bags.  I knock over half a beer.  Let the liquid fizz and spread about the floorboards.

When I grab the bottle of water there's not much left.  I drain it.  Hold the open mouth above my own.  Shake.

I remember a restaurant from the night before.  The big glass store front.  The big breasted hostess in the polka dot dress.

I remember the whiskey.  Always the whiskey.

I remember, once we were seated and had placed our beverage order, telling the dinner party that I'll be right back.  "Just going to the restroom."

I remember strolling past the Men's door, turning the corner, and hooking around to the bar.

I remember smiling at the slim brunette, standing behind the taps.  I remember her smiling back at me and although this immediately created a weightlessness to my gait and a tingle down the back of my neck, there was this unwavering certainty that her smile was nothing more than programming from a chapter in the service industry's training manual.

Then I remember a shot.  A smile.  Another shot.  A puzzled expression from the waiter tending my party as he rounded up the drinks for the table.

I remember strolling up to him.  Removing my beer from his tray, patting him on the back with a wink and turning towards the restroom.  

It gets a little blurry after that.

11/28

I wake before the sun this morning.  Rise before it does.  Begin moving with the moon.  Through darkness.  Through cold.

Baltimore awaits.

So I grab what I need.  A bottle of water.  Some marijuana.  Cigarettes.

Then I'm out the door.  Into the frigid morning air.  

Ice covers my windshield and I bash at it with the scraper from my car.  Shards fly at my face.  Into my eyes.  I'm blinded.  In a rage I bash harder and when I regain my vision I see the scraper has lost all its teeth.

Then I'm in the car.  Then I'm driving.  Squinting through the frozen mess before me.  Puffing smoke out the window crack.  

I take the one-hitter from my pocket and load it.  Hit it.  Close my eyes.  Sink into my chair.  Swerve between lanes.

The sun is rising and the silhouettes of the mountains beside me tempt me to make a hard right and never look back.  To speed down the dirt road till I reach the feet of their forests.  To strip myself of clothes, products, and materials.  All my notions and philosophies.  All my beliefs and disbeliefs.  Obligations and recreations.  To walk on the fallen leaves and broken branches of life before me.  To scramble up blankets of boulders and hike through legions of trees.  To take in lungs full of air and worlds worth of sight, all to stand high above and look down with the knowledge that this journey accomplished absolutely nothing.

I press on the gas.  Focus on the black stretch ahead.  Drag on the cigarette.

Baltimore.  Will you be my mountain? 

11/27

It's quiet Thanksgiving morning.  I don't think I'll be seeing anyone today.  No family.  No friends, though it is debatable whether I actually have any left.  Not a soul.

Of course, it is daybreak and for the past few years of my life I've displayed that I really am a poor judge of future events.  Of using present conditions to hypothesis a later outcome.  Not so good at it.

That's why I'm squatting in this empty apartment with a cat.  Why I don't have a change of clothes.  Or a clue as to where I'll be tonight, though I seriously believe we don't need to dispute that.  Why I've lost all hobbies and aspirations.  Friends and foes.  A sense of identity.

And where the hell did all my cigarettes and whiskey go?

Every living moment is a chance to turn it all around.  Yes.  Absolutely.  But this hardwood floor seems to be getting softer.  And these clothes seem to be losing their smell.  My hunger is waning the more and more I don't appease it, and sleep is becoming a welcome nourishment.  Maybe happiness has come to me.  Maybe this is it.  I just had to wait it out.  Patience.

Then the cat slurps as he chews at a knot or an itch on his rear leg.  The neighbor above runs her vacuum across the hardwood flooring.  Back and forth through my ceiling.  Back and forth.

And I see Insanity staring at me.  He's seated by the window in a black brimmed hat.  Legs crossed.  Arms resting on the chair.  Behind him, shadows slide down sides of the houses across the street.

And I have to bite the meat of my hand before speaking.  Just to make sure.  Teeth marks.  They're there.  I'm here.  Then I turn to him.

"Is today the day?" I ask.

He says nothing.  Air rushes from his nose.

"Is today the day you're going to take me?" I'm leaning forward now.  Wondering if I'm talking out loud.

But he just lights a cigarette.  Glances at a bird landing on the telephone pole outside.  Smoke splays out on the glass before him, then dissipates into the room.

"Are you going to stay for Thanksgiving?" I ask.

Then he stands.  The chair disappears.  Still facing the window, he lowers his head.  Sighs.  

The whine of the vacuum ceases.  I look at the cat, who's now curled in a ball on the sleeping bag, then back at the window.  He's gone, but his cigarette lays burning on the window sill.  A trail of smoke crawling up through the blinds.  

I rise and walk over.  The sun rests behind the clouds creating a bluish-grey hue to the morning.  Roads are vacant, besides the slosh from yesterday's snow.

I grab the cigarette.  Bring it to my lips.  Breathe in so slow and deliberately.  So I can feel the irritation in my throat as the smoke glides down, the dryness in my mouth as it sits in my lungs, and the rush to my head once the nicotine's done its work.

Then I exhale.

Thanksgiving.  

Sent from my iPad

11/26

It's the rain that'll keep me in today.  I say this to myself.  Even though the cat is present behind me, offering a groan to the situation.  I say this to myself.

As I stand by the window overlooking Cameron St., cars cruise by, splashing through each divot in the road.  Soaked garbage bags sit stacked on sidewalks and the light from street lamps inches across the early morning fog.

I turn back to the empty room.  It's dark, but I keep the lights off.  No use for eyesight in here.

Then there are sounds from the hallway.   A neighbor stumbling down the steps with her little terrier.  "We'll have to be quick today," she's saying as the dog pants excitedly.  Skitters by my door.  Then they're below my window.  Her voice carries through the rain, as I can only imagine she continues to give the dog details of the day and praises for being a dog.  A good dog, no doubt.

But I return to the floor.  To the cold wood.  The cat wanders over and sniffs my shoulder.  The side of my face.  My beard.  Then he struts to the other side of the room.  Plops down.  Drags his tongue over his back.

And I think of the city.  How this day was to be filled with it.  My time.  My consciousness.  But that was stripped from me somewhere, and although I believe I have the power to search it out and retrieve it, I lay on the floor.  I blame the rain.  Or is it snow now?  The drops seem to have gained more mass.  Grown larger.  Become fluffier.  Whiter.  I can't really tell from down here though.

And there's a despondency that slides over me.  Today is done.  I woke to see the sunrise and it turned its back on me.  Am I not good enough?

Well, there probably wasn't anything gratifying out there anyway.  Nothing to tickle or entice my being.  To fulfill these whimsical urges.  Nothing to satisfy this observational apparatus and the ghoul within.  

Snow is falling harder now.  Time to settle.  Like a frozen fragment of precipitation joining his fallen siblings on the dirty ground.

Right.

11/25

Alright.  We're here again.  Well, at least I am.  Bearded and on the floor.  Sitting.  Existing.  Occupying space on this creaky, hardwood floor.

How far have I come?  Where was I before?  Is there any direction?

And I have some company.  A witness to my decomposition.  The feline stationed to my right.  Staring with green eyes that settle on me with some unrelenting revulsion.  Some unappeased disgust.  

Am I so grotesque he can't look away?

These clothes haven't left my skin for days.  Marked by the scent of cigarettes and whiskey.  Coffee and grime.  What is this stain from?  Blood?  Mucus?  Mine?

The apartment I wake in is bare.  With my head on the floor I can see all the dust, fur, and dander in the morning light.  And I must pry the sleeping bag from the cat to stay warm.  My only other option being the half empty whiskey bottle by the bathroom sink, but daybreak seems a little early to throw some back, even for me.  There's a pizza box on the kitchen floor, though I can't recall the last time I ate pizza.  Scattered papers in the hallway.  Trash bags by the front door.  There is not much going on here.

And there never really was.  Kinda what it all came down to.  A need for constant stimulation.  A steady stream of outlets for my dwindling attention span.  For my incessant unrest.  For me.

So, what do I do?  Baltimore?  Is that where we're headed?  Back to the city?  Who the hell is steering this thing anyway?  Is there a lever I can pull to request off?

And, as before, maybe this wasn't the first entry I had intended to submit, but it'll stand as such. It'll have to.  As these days ceaselessly press into me, this will have to do.