The Three Heads of Reverdy Johnson

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Suffering cannot be eliminated.



Nor should it be.



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I wish to free myself from the bonds I have been forging around my soul. Or, rather, I want to see the bonds as armor.

I wish for five goddamn minutes I'd just shut the fuck up and live.



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Of course, I live hard. I do. I live like five hundred motherfuckers.



Yes, I am compromised. Flawed. Recalcitrant.



That's fine, though.



I am still a certified bad-ass.




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I'ma go cook the woman on the verge some seared wild-caught salmon and lime and garlic black beans with a spicy mayo dollop on top.



Eat yr hearts out.



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Namaste.



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The Crossing

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It could always be worse than it is right now.





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I try not to lose sight of that, but it's hard to keep it in focus. Like remembering the fact of my own mortality, it requires constant reminders to keep from letting it just drift away over the horizon, like a message in a bottle that no one wants to read.


Bye, bye, my mortality! Write when you get work!








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I am embarked upon a period of deep dissatisfaction with the way I am conducting my life, with who I am allowing myself to become. I hope that it will engender a change in my behavior that might result in changing course, but I am not optimistic about that outcome.

Ah, geeze. Listen to me.


What a fucking crybaby.



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But whatever the reason, I am mired. I cain't get unstuck. I won't.


I'm going to sit in the dirt and draw with a stick and not budge until the world burns away.



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What are you up to?



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Namaste.



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I've Been Wronged

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Sometimes I think I've got the inside line on things.


I'm a cop, after all. Like doctors or politicians or string-theory physicists, I've got access to things you regular people got no idea about.

It's just part of my every day life.


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I'm just as deluded as anybody else.



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I don't got a line at all.







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I am going to make some chicken masala for dinner.  Maybe I will make something good for desert, too. While I try not to worry too much about my daughter, or the end of the world, or the end of my life, or the inevitable collapse of my house of cards.


the thing i like about hitting someone, you know if it worked or not.


everything else seems much more provisional.





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Ok, that's not all I like about it.



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Have you been watching a lot of Korean films?  


I find them technically very, very strong.


and as strange as hell.


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I am a broken angel. I am a broken man.


I don't deny my faults, nor will I use them
as any kind of excuse.


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I have signed up for life, and goddamn if I won't get 'er done.



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namaste.



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Dogface

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Anxious & depressed, I won't leave go of anything.


I have so far abstained from drink, which is, I suppose, something. Of late I have been hitting it a little harder and more consistently than is probably wise. It's become a bit like breathing. Automatic, and really desirable only when you stop doing it for a minute or two.


So, until the weekend I can just stew in my own juices.


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More than anything, I seem to want out of my own head.


I don't much like the company.


I am sick of my self.



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I know it's all illusory. It's just me. In my head, in my body. Nothing to do with the real world.


Except.


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It's the only world I got access to.




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Namaste.



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Ordinary Extraordinary

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I always wanted the world to be more fantastic than I thought it was. I remember wishing that some glowing portal would open up in front of me and take me to a magical world.


I had no idea then that I was already there.


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This weekend we went down to visit the wild woman in rehab and what did we see? Wild peacocks walking down the well-groomed city streets. Crazy old women pushing shopping carts. A spy shop. A dog with the sweetest face in the world, getting a piece of fresh-baked bread crust on a street where I used to buy candy as a boy.

The world is a never-ending shop of wonders.

And horrors.


You don't know what you're going to get.



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but something's coming down the chute!




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I know that I go on about the woman on the verge, but I swear to God, I have hit it out of the park with her. She is the best travel companion you could hope for. The best person to go to sleep with. The best to  have coffee with. The best to get lost and found with.


And the best to find wild peacocks with, for sure.


Go ahead and kill me.


I got what I came here for.



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I am no match for this life.



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Namaste.


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I Went Down In The River To Pray

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So, the wild woman of borneo is in the hands of the holy rollers. They aim to cleanse her of her unholy urges, I guess.



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It is a measure of our desperation that we are glad of her being there.


Imagine that.


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The best thing in the world to me is that she is alive and breathing and happy to see us. Starved for us, it seems like. After years of being the most hated and despised creatures alive, we are once again worthy of ....what? Her love? Her affection?

Yes. And yes.

I don't pretend to understand it. I am just grateful for it.



It is like drenching rain after a long dry spell.



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All the pain, all the anger and worry and heartache. How lovely that it can all be pitched overboard in an instant.

And I'm talking about my pain here, not hers.


She's done me wrong a thousand different ways.



I don't give a good goddamn.



I will yet love her.


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If it use us up, so be it.


Not that we will let her destroy us, not that. But would we spend ourselves on her? Of that, you can have no doubt.


There is nothing like salvation in this world. There is only the dogged determination to love, and to reach out, and to help, or try to, while there is yet breath in you.



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You don't get to know if it helps or not.



You can only put your money down, or quit the table.


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Today I was wondering if I am crazy because I think all the time about how crazy I am, or if that means I'm not crazy at all.



I have a sneaking suspicion about it.



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And on a lame note, I hope that you will stop in and comment, although I am a poor sport about responding. I read them all and I love them all. I just feel a little stupid and shy about responding sometimes.

How about that?


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Namaste.




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Wrestling The Demon of Perception

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You don't get to know if you're right about it.


You just have to plunge in.





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I think a large part of growing older is learning to make more and more room for uncertainty and doubt. Maybe some folks get increasingly sure of themselves, who they are, what they believe, how the world really is, but for me it's just the opposite.

Everything has become decidedly provisional.


Faced with the mounting evidence of my many errors- of thought, of perception, of action, of inaction, I have a deep appreciation for the fact that I am mostly full of shit. Why keep trying to hide it?

It's not like I'm fooling anybody.


Just myself.


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So, let it go. Make peace with my faulty apprehension of the world, my gift for getting people wrong, for  saying the wrong things at the wrong time to the wrong people. Not like making peace with it will prevent further mistakes, but maybe I could manage the aftermath with more grace.


Probably not.


Maybe I'm also wrong in my belief that I am basically a good person. That my motives are pure, or at least not malevolent.


In any case, making room for doubt about these things is probably good. After all, I am already convinced that 100 percent of other people can be, and frequently are, wrong about themselves and much of what they hold to be true about the world.

So, I am probably included in that group, rather than being a remarkable exception.


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Like I said, full of shit.





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I do wish I was a better person.




I can't help it.



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later, gator.


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Souls X

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"There was people sufferin' in pain and hunger. Some people their tongues were hangin' out of their mouths."






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Lately there is some kind of a membrane between me and my life that I seem powerless to penetrate.




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Everything seems to occur at one remove.




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My faults and shortcomings keep me stubborn company.




Nor will I quit them.




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Often, I am a poor friend to others. Although I empathize, I also do not let your problems penetrate. I forget that you have them. I forget what you've shared with me. I forget your birthday and your spouse's name. I don't return your calls and letters.



But you are in good company. I am just as poor a friend to myself as I am to you.



So.... no hard feelings, right?



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The world continues in its beauty, unabated and unabashed. Tormenting me with blue sky and birdsong and the sound and smell of the sea in it. Flowers nodding in the warm breeze, bees droning, worms eating the earth one miniscule bite at a time, the whole of it spinning in a void teeming with insensate light and energy off in the tall weeds at the edge of the Milky Way...


"I could be a mud doctor. Checkin out the eart' from underneat'."




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May the world shower you with blessings today.



Namaste.


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