(ready or not)

a touch of frustration as I forgot to bring the disk I prepared for work with at least twenty incomplete entries on it, so those entries continue to wait for time and circumstance to be completed and uploaded and tonight I start another new entry as if I haven't been gone, at least for all intensive purposes, for more than a week...

actually, longer than that if you count the days prior to my rushed out last two entries... so all those other entries will get edited maybe tomorrow or whenever and then they'll finally be uploaded in a mass catch-up session that will confuse us all cuz time will be suspended and all that jazz and whatever...

alas, we can only be what we are and not what we intend to be because there are no perfect people, only perfect intentions, and that line from Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves continues to remind me of the romance that is missing, the intentions misplaced, the dream undone, and the hopes waning as life continues with or without me...

obla di obla da and rooty toot toot...

I am feeling bloated and tired and rather bent (not quite broken... don't think I've ever actually felt broken, except maybe once or twice for a few seconds... but for me, the feeling was closer to squashed, like in cartoons {maybe my saving grace is that I still see life in terms of cartoons in that I still believe anything is possible, we just don't know it}... whatever the cause, luck, ability, wisdom, alien influence, something else, I seem to have a rather fast repair system internally {seriously, the closest I can come to describing it is akin to how a cartoon character blows him/herself up again after being squished flat}... externally, however, my repair system seems to be on vacation for a while now... life isn't almost over, is it?)...

loneliness is screaming in my ears louder than the tinnitis that reminds me of how much music I've loved and how much I love music which leads to how much music is missing and how much I miss music which leads back to loneliness again... do all roads lead to loneliness?... do we just get in the habit of rushing through time and not taking the time required to actually feel a feeling (except sometimes vicariously watching a movie or maybe at a funeral or wedding while we're kind of trapped just waiting and watching and then it's vicariously too)?... it that a form of madness or mental illness?... disassociation?... avoidance?... repression?... depersonalization?... intellectualization?... getting lost in big words?...

every year, at the end of another Harry potter movie, someone (Hermione, this time... has it always been Hermione?) says something to the effect of "nothing's going to be the same, is it?" which I think is a bit of genius slipped in by the author to mark the time, the passing of another year, the growth from one stage of life experience to another, the fact that the mind, once opened to a new idea, can never really become unaware of that idea, that the mind, once expanded by a new concept, can never actually return to it's original shape...

at least I see all that at the end of some events... I wonder what everyone else sees... I wonder how many people are aware of the changing times, the growth, the expansion of their minds, and the catharsis experiences they feel through this life... I don't know, maybe it's just me... but I sure hope not...

who shares that sort of thing, anyway?...

I feel like maybe some of us do in words here online... but the words online are just words online and whatever they might mean to the writer, they might mean something very different or even just slightly different in the readers mind, in each reader's mind... so what are we sharing, really?... the idea?... the illusion that we have the same conceptual thought about a specific idea?... or feeling?... it is illusion, after all, for it exists only in our minds through the words and the words exist only in our minds (except for those of us who've crossed over to another level of shared experience in the physical world)....

is this a pessimistic view?... perhaps a view skewed by the frustration of feeling out of touch and loneliness?... maybe the illusion flickers when it is not reinforced at least by daily writing... I know your feedback definitely helps in many ways... I feel less alone when you acknowledge my existence and feel like I matter when you respond and most especially feel my sense of worth rise when you leave messages when I am gone... like you really miss me, a voice in my head says, and that is so real in my head that it feels like we really know each other and are part of each others lives...

but are we?...

it's weird... some people I feel so intimately close to and want to trust unconditionally and I've barely heard from them, I've just read their words and sometimes have seen a look in their eyes when photos are posted (I know, I really should move into the graphical imagery world one of these days... but I keep scratching and saving to see my savings rise a little and I don't want to splurge on the equipment and software I'd need to do that... or is that just a mask for shyness or insecurity about my appearance?... too much self-analysis is dangerous for the writer... maybe)... some people inspire libido to wake up and demand an end to this ridiculous celibacy I've fallen into mostly by accident (I think) in recent years, but I find cybersex inadequate and disconnected and unsatisfying and I do not, as a habit, approach people merely for sex (no matter how lonely or horny I might feel)... some people do absolutely nothing for Libbo (the name I give my libido, in case you've just dropped off a cloud and into my rambling little world) and yet (and this is really odd for me because it so very rarely actually happens) I still feel myself wanting to be intimate with them (which is something Libbo strongly opposes for any serious commitment or relationship cuz it just does not work for me) based on their literary personality and those intangible unexplainable aspects of illusion I create about who they might be (not based on what they might look like)...

I have no idea where I might be going with this, but I'm just gonna let the words flow...

some people inspire me to want to regain my idealism and spark of hope that is waning badly in recent times... but the inspiration lasts as long as I am reading or commenting on their words or images and then, when I step away from the computer and return my focus to my immediate environment, to the human race without the bubbles of ideals and dreams and hopes, I fall back into the pattern of lazy apathy, of casual ambivalence, of disheartened faith, of disillusioned idealism, of jaded hopes, of broken dreams... and time passes and I walk the road of the drone from bed to chair, from chair to car, from car to work, from work to store, from store to the place and sit and sleep and round and round I go and nobody knows and who cares and so on and so forth and scooby dooby do dah day oh day aye aye aye oh, daylight might come, but I've still got no home...

there was once so much more potential to this life (still is), so much more enthusiasm for waking and living and sharing it (where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?), so much hope for dreams to come true (dreams?... what are those?... when life becomes a routine so shallow and unchanging, even dreams lose their magic)... and even the parentheses start losing their hyper-infallible indifference to doubt and infinitely secure faith in optimism and idealism and hope and... where have I gone, Joe DiMaggio?)...

so you are not here to look me in the eyes and take me by the shoulders and lift my chin so I can not avoid your face as you say the words you write in comments or notes or emails and so I cast my dark cloud of disbelief out over everything that does not exist in my physical space and that is so unfair to you, so very wrong to do to you, so mean even...

bad me, bad bad me...

no really, I feel bad for doing it... you do not deserve it... you do not deserve the doubt expressed in my words... and yet, here they are... and here we are (still hanging on the hope against hope that we are a we in some sense in spite of my physical world loneliness.... don't ask me how... or why, as Billy Joel tickles my ears with musical wisdom and Harry Chapin pokes me in the inner eye with my own folly and Elton John rakes my heart across the coals with unbelievable hope and so many others do so many other profound things to me with music as the soundtrack in my head never stops no matter how far away I get from music and the life it sustains in me, no matter how mostly dead I become � or unbecome, as the case may be)...

I've got five hours of night ahead of me and we've come this far so far towards wherever it is we might be going... I wonder if I will sustain the flow of words, if the Code Red I brought with me is enough to keep me awake... I did not sleep much today... Minnie called to check on the money I was sending her and I had just gone to bed... a few hours, or two hours later Precious called needing a ride home from school cuz she wasn't feeling well... I never did get back to sleep... but that's the external body condition and the fact that I am sitting in a hallway at work where a dozen and a half teen and tween girls sleep, some comfortably and some restlessly, is in the back of my mind, but has not been the focus of my ramblings so far on this occasion... and that's the external environment conditions and I am either seeking distraction or a pause, a breather, or perhaps just setting the scene, giving the words more of a background and real world sense... or something...

the phone rings and I push the button because it will not come through, no reception in this hospital for the wonderful five bars that claim to give such great reception everywhere... no, I can't hear you now, but then, that's the other guys, my company never asked... I see who it is and thank you so much, wishing I could have answered and hoping for a message, though I think maybe that pushing the button does not pass a call on the voicemail, but rather cuts a call off, which sucks, because if I am here (or say, in a movie) and forgot to turn off the ringer and must push the button to stop the ringer, the automatic action should be send the call to voicemail... hear that phone company?...

and I feel less alone in many ways, thank you thank you...

and more alone in some ways, but thank you for that too because I was treading water heading for the deeper end and just when it looked like I might be distracting myself, along came a nudge back in whatever direction I was going in... maybe I am fooling myself with what I think are depths... I wish I could reference some of you right now, but the disk with the past two weeks influences on it was left home, remember?... Christian, Alex, Nicole, Nici, Moo, Hissy, Sippy, emperorincxt, , , , (updating in progress) are just a few of those I recall (short term memory is said to be able to recall the last seven numbers in a sequence and no more... suddenly experimental psych textbooks are dancing before my eyes... sheesh I can use a good pensive right about now) getting to me recently... refer to my next and this is where I wandered this week... list for many more of the influences, if you have the time and interest...

I love you in a way I find challenging to put into words... would I lay down my life for you?... yes, if it would genuinely make your lives ideally happy and rid you and the world of the fear that condemns human nature to be inherently selfish and corrupt and a failure if Shangri-La is to be considered a successful stage of a species culture, at least for the time being... would I give more than I can afford, travel, give up my security and/or share what little I have risking losing everything for you?... yes, if you asked... perhaps I should say yes, if you convinced me you genuinely needed and were not going to waste it, but I still am not sure I am wise or selfish or whatever, mature enough to say such a thing... who am I to judge, anyway?...

would I write to you regularly in email?... I don't know... so far, my unpleasant history with email communications and the floods of SPAM get in the way of any start to a continued consistent frequent email correspondence... would I pick up the phone when you called or call you?... probably, I am feeling closer to over it when it comes to my trepidation and aversion to the telephone (it was the tool that drained me of everything, and I mean everything leaving me destitute on the street not caring if I woke ever again, once upon a time... definitely not a fairy tale I'd want in my story book), but my being nocturnal and not being able to take calls at work and sleeping odd hours when i sleep does get in the way... or am I just still avoiding?... or maybe nobody really wants to anyway...

visits?... heck, I haven't said no yet... the real (physical world) is where I live... the closer to sharing space a sharing gets, the more open to the sharing, the less resistant to the sharing I am... I don't mean intimacy, however if you turn libido on and are so inclined to follow through (I'll leave that thought hanging out there cuz that's what it's like out here, just hanging out there, here, naked for all to see... metaphorically too)...

what I want most, more than even your hug or sex, is your eyes... your ears... your mouth... I want to see who you are in your eyes as your lips tell me what is on your mind and in your heart and as your ears listen to my response I want to seem your eyes and lips and face and whole being react... I want the sharing of honesty... openness... with no intent other than to do no harm and share... with no expectations other than to experience the sharing... I want to be friends... can anyone do that anymore?...

I mean anyone who is not five years old...

every year I have more and more doubts about the human race... I used to have hope that enlightenment would come to our collective consciousnesses in my lifetime... that idealism would win out over fear... that cooperation would win out over suspicion... that love would win out over hypocrisy... that sharing would win out over greed... I truly believed it was possible, that the best part of sixties was real and not just history... I felt it in my heart... I believed it in my mind... I gave it my life with all my everything � spirit, soul, anima, everything...

I feel like I slept with the devil... is that what this life is in the end?... the hell that the supposedly good book seems to be all about for so many?... is collective enlightenment truly out of humanity's grasp in my lifetime?... can I come back again when we're all doing a better job of living?... or was this my one shot at it and oh well, I was born before my time and suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and the madness of believing in the goodness of the human heart...

what is real?...

are you?...

I believe some of you who come here regularly do understand much of what I try to express in my angsty rambles... I am running out of ideas as to what we can do about it... I feel like I've been singing Gethsemane (from Jesus Christ Superstar, the show by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, in case you really did not know what I meant) for a long long time... long long time (Linda Ronstadt, but who wrote it?... Elvis C?... memories, may be beautiful and yet... when they start to disappear, where do they go?)...

thank you Pippin... whether I'm right or whether I'm wrong, I've got to find my place in this world or never belong... I've got to be me � what else can I be but what I am?... and through it all, when there was doubt, I bit it off, and spit it out, for what is a man (woman), what has he(she) got, if not him(her)self, then he has naught... not to say the things he(she) truly feels and not the words of one who yields... or kneels...

and I still believe that people who need people are the luckiest people in the world, but where are they really?... dependency has replaced true need (the first being a subconscious powerlessness, the second being a conscious choice, an empowerment... who understands that?)... am I just dreaming an impossible dream?... what else can I do?... what else can I be but what I am?... I'll go it alone if that's how it must be cuz I can't be right for anyone else if I'm not right for me... and this is my quest, to follow this thought, this dream, this star I wish upon whenever I wake and find myself... no matter how hopeless, no matter how far... to fight for the right without question or pause and to be willing to die for a heavenly cause...

and what is heaven?... is heaven a place you go after you die if you follow some book of rules?... is heaven a promise that may never be fulfilled, can never be fulfilled in this life?... is the point of this life really to prove one deserves to get in?... well thank you very much but as Groucho Marx (no relation to Karl, but who's family was the inspiration for the naming of Libbo) said (and I still don't really think they understood), I do not want to be part of any club who wants me as a member... when I think of heaven, when I use the word heaven, I want to believe heaven is a place on Earth... that it is a way of living and sharing we can consciously achieve in our lives...

and damned - by their own decision to empower fear over love - anyone who does not have the guts to leave the temple to do it...

if I told you how to reach the highest high, you'd laugh and say nothing's that simple... but you've been told many times before, messiahs have pointed to the door, but no one has the guts to leave the temple... life is out there... heaven is out here... it's what we do... it's how we live... it's the lives we share by conscious choice that determines whether this planet is a heaven or a hell by any standards...

believe it or not, Ripley, it is not an impossible dream... and fuck yourself if you think otherwise because that is exactly what you do, fuck yourself by thinking otherwise... it is your choice, you who doubt, you who fear, you who will not live the high moral fiber you preach and protest too much about, you sanctimonious Neanderthals who create the hell we have to live through in this life... so of course you present your version of heaven as this next life deal you make with God... but it's the deal with your own devil you make in this life that requires you to believe in an afterlife heaven because you don't have the guts to make heaven right here and now by loving instead of fearing your fellow man...

love your neighbor...

where have I heard that before?

I pause to walk and stretch and pee and wonder who is still with me...

this pseudo-philosophical quasi-rant has taken just over two hours of the night at hand... and there are many thoughts (and song lyrics) I left out... but I can tell you one thing about me that has remained constant through all the changes I've been through and caused for myself in this life... ever since I heard the song Honesty (by Billy Joel), I had a theme song and to this day it remains true to my heart... if you do not heard the song lyrics and cry out yes, yes, that is what I want � and nothing less and nothing more and feel that is me, then we should wave at each other from the train as we pass through each others lives...

somebody might wave back...

and other Waterboys songs too... don't get me started on the Beatles now... breathe deep, the festering gobutit (Monty Python meets The Moody Blues and finds the dark side of the moon that Pink Floyd went on and on about masterfully, beautifully, musically)... what, you can't get no satisfaction either?... which nervous breakdown are you heading for?... keep your mothers little helper, I want something more real... something I can feel... something that won't lie... something nothing can deny... that I'll call my high...

still looking for The Cure?... The Calling?... or The The?...

what mode is this?... speaking in musical group names instead of more creatively in lyrical phrases woven into the prose?... don't look now, but I just might shift into depeche mode... or seek asylum in the soul... when are you gonna come down?... sometimes, when all the worlds asleep and questions run to deep for such a simple man... nothing else matters... through the years my musical tastes have wandered farther and farther from the mainstream... if anyone can find a CD called Blue Solitaire by The Telling that came out around the early nineties, I will love you every time I go to bed for it was my favorite sleep music, maybe ever... I miss it so much, there are no words... one more piece of me I left in Toronto...

I know I need to be in love and I know I've wasted too much time and I know I ask perfection of a quite imperfect world... but I'm fool enough to thing that's what I'll find if I keep looking long enough (and close enough) and hard enough (and soft enough) and stay true to my ideals and dreams no matter what... cuz nothing else matters...

did I leave out any of my top ten all time song lyrics?... who knows, you'd have to have been there back in the day when I was corresponding with dozens of people each week and we exchanges hopes and dreams and tastes and favorites and hurts and pains and wisdoms and follies and passions and dumb jokes... correspondence was my life during the day and music was my life each night... with running and dancing mixed into the routine, that was my favorite monotony... I miss Happy Dog...

and wondering how to make friends... have I forgotten... or have I just given up... on people... on myself... on life?...

well gee wiz by golly poo poo... I don't mean to lay my baggage on you... but maybe you understand that although this is not planned it is nonetheless real and so true that I am not sure now what to do... sometimes I wonder just what part of my life is fantasy and what part of my life is memory and then I wonder what part of my memory is fantasy and what part really happened... ever romanticizing even the slightest chance at the passion play of hearts, I fall in love with the eagerness of a kid in a candy store and the ease of leaves falling in Autumn... each time I hope it will be the first and last time, better than the first time because it is the last time... and so far, each time has not been the last time...

I wonder if that is because there is only one time and I already used that up...

I live on the hope that there can be another who inspires me to sing, to feel, to dance, to remember who I am and to be... or perhaps there can never be a portrait of my love for nobody can paint a dream... it would take, I know, a Michelangelo, for miracles are seldom seen... and if a picture paints a thousand words, then why can't I paint you?... the words can never show...

so here I am, still crazy after all these years, still waiting for that magic moment when I can once again sing this magic moment like it was the first time all over again, still waiting for that enchanted evening... and while I wait, I write... I write about websites I find on this information superhighway that distract me from my obsession with falling in love again (that only leads to loneliness until it happens) and sites that inspire me and reassure me and challenge me to think about something other than my dream and someone other than myself...

and I go to work each day (or night, in my case) playing the happy idiot struggling for the legal tender (though not always struggling, frequently pushing myself beyond what is supposed to be healthy limits because I want more time awake for life outside of work, more time for me, more time for you, more time to dream and write and search for the one and friends... more time to find friends), giving what is left of my heart and soul and mind as well as I am able to kids who have been challenged by human insensitivity and cruelty before they had a chance to understand the difference between right and wrong... kids who may never quite understand what love is... kids who might never actually trust unconditionally... kids a little like me...

but life is falling in love and unless I am falling in love I am not living as I define living...

that is part of why I am mostly dead (I wonder how much of me you know or you understand... the ambivalent confusion... the lovewarp that lead me to the land of the mostly dead... the terribly incomplete and intermittent soundtracks of this life as I've known it... the exposure to and reflections on perversions that sometimes titillate and sometimes disgust and sometimes do both... and did I forget my heart?...

and there is more, much more... for what is on line is less than one percent of the writing I've done in this life... and while I'd like to think it's somewhat representative of my observations and reflections and thoughts and feelings and beliefs and desires and hopes and dreams, it is not nearly enough of a picture to satisfy me that I have shared myself with you (even if you did read every word...

it is all (the words) rather haphazard as well and especially this particular diary and come to think of it, most of my online words, are reflective of a very lost period of this life when apathy and self-doubt and depressive thought and hopelessness and loneliness are all much higher than they've ever been and simultaneously, self-discipline and determination and self-worth, respect, esteem, and trust are lower than they've ever been... that may not be so apparent to anyone who has only known me through the written words online or only in the last decade or so, but it is nonetheless true...

it is quite ironic (and still flattering, so thank you much) when I read positive things about my writings and about myself because I see myself as much less positive than I used to be (much less creative as well)... I am a grand disappointment to most who knew me as a younger child and in high school and I wonder if their expectations were too high (was I just a good show) or whether I simply ignored my potential for whatever reasons... I probably know, but out of sheer stubbornness (I won't feign shyness at the moment) I won't answer even myself if I ask... at the moment, at least...

but I still have the best of intentions, really I do...

if I really want an answer I'll have to run for it, literally... a few marathons, perhaps... a much higher energy level and much less bloated feeling, at least... see, I am my own most severe critic and more, my own best task-master... I shall never quite live up to my standards because I am always ready to raise them just a bit higher in order to get just that fraction more from myself in anything I do... the game must continue, for it is in the playing that the fun is and I am here (alive) for the fun... that's me, always trying to build the better roller coaster...

and therein, always changing... growing... learning... expanding... undefined, redefined, created and recreated with each moment, with each breath... so if you really want to know me, you have to be here (like the joke that you only truly get by having to 'be there')... I feel weakness, insecurity, doubt, and really stupid feelings sometimes and I go with them, I explore and express them... in recent years, more than ever...

I hope it has not been a waste of time...

I wish to believe that nothing is a waste of time if something is learned from the experience, so I hope I am and will learn more from this lost and lonely and physically bloated and creatively lean time... life, for me, has been a grand experiment so far and all the more amusing as I never really did have a hypothesis (so can it be called an experiment?... I'll leave that for the scholars and philosophers... just as I leave the editing for those who enjoy that sort of thing... I enjoy the experience, the creating, the process of living, so that it is on that I focus my time and energy... and writing, for posterity and all... because there ought to be a record of such madness... I think)...

and my self-mocking laughter return once again and that has me wondering just what kind of fool am I to think you'd take me seriously when I most often have a punch line that sort of attempts to unravel all the threads I've attempted to weave together in my ramblings... does the emperor really have new clothes?... that may just be the ultimate reason I am out here online, to lay that bait to encourage, coax, entice, lure, beg someone to come a little bit closer and find out for yourself (or tell me who I am)...

it's taken seven pages of Arial 8 font with half inch margins to get to that?...

and it's the same old song with a different rhythm since you've been gone... or, if you want to get closer to the heart, let Billy sing and so it goes and forever we'll wonder if the only one who knows is Amy or someone else or someone I've yet to me... or me?... or maybe the shadow...

of course I'll just soft shoe off stage now to the sweet soft refrains of

me...

strolling down the avenue...

and wish you peace, love, and lots of understanding...

. o O ( NOTES ARE THE NEW HAPPY PILL ) O o .
(just let me know you were here)