My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

So, I’ve picked up more new art… My friend, Sarah, actually painted it. Not Sara, but Sarah.

It’s probably best that I can’t talk, as all that I would utter of late is random swearing and non-sequiturs.

Well, I’m bidding farewell to Ativan, and possibly greeting once again my former lover, Insomnia. The Ativan is starting to, as expected, lose its effectiveness. It could also be adding to my spectacular depression.

So, I’m going to save my drug fixes for trache changes and find a better way to sleep.

The place is awash in dull-red and sickly-yellow light. A confederate flag is tacked to the ceiling, unimaginative lingerie hangs on a wire above the bar, bras of black and white. It’s loud, music you hate, so loud you can hardly hear the little voice in your head telling you you’d be happier leaving. The woman behind the bar has long hair, dirty-blonde, dressed in faded jeans and a white half-shirt. She’d almost be pretty, if she were really there, if her pale-blue eyes really saw you. You order a drink, a Cape Cod. It’s a classy drink for such a classless place. The woman, in fact, has to ask you what it is before sliding it to you in a cheap plastic cup. It’s mostly ice and cranberry juice, the vodka merely an after-thought. 

You sip your shiny red attempted alcohol, hoping to feel something rather than nothing. Johnny Cash begins to sing about one tragedy or another, you’ve heard them all and you don’t care. However, as the man in black tells you his troubles, the woman in white takes to dancing on the scuffed wood bar. You look up, she’s all motion and no life. She’s an illusion of sex, no heat, no kisses that feel like bites, or bites that feel like kisses. She’s a golem, a machine set to task. Her black leather boots slam and skitter, scratch and further scuff the pitiful bar, home to so many weak drinks.

You leave your still-born Cape Cod, barely touched, but it barely touched you, which seems fitting. The surrounding emptiness is too much, the golem too sad to watch. Lifeless life, stopping when the music stops. You leave your cash on the bar, probably too much, but enough to get you somewhere else. You don’t know where you belong these days, but you know it’s not here. You leave and don’t look back.

The night air is cold on your face, cold like you, through and through.

I have some new wall-art that I rather enjoy. I’ve been chatting with a fellow blogger who’s also an excellent artist, so I picked up a few of her prints from her deviant art gallery.

Lisa, Seated

Lampshade

Crystals 3

I think they fit the melancholy of the room nicely.

So, I’m leaving Quantum of Solace, which wasn’t good or bad enough to write about, so I won’t.

Anyway, my brother and I are on our way out when I look over and see a beautiful girl, about my age, with long red hair, in a black wheelchair. I don’t see many chair people out, but that’s not what strikes me about her. I’d have noticed her anyway, the look on her face. Still, she’s being pushed in her chair, and she looks so down, so alone in such a crowded lobby. She looks on the outside how I feel on the inside nearly all the time. I want to stop and say something, anything, but I don’t, spontaneous conversation kind of lost to me.

I’ll never see her again, never know her story. It’s a weird feeling, but not uncommon.

So, of my new tattoo my brother says, “Oh, a heart shaped box. Isn’t that a Nirvana song?” He’s 25. Earlier that day my assistant, Sarah, didn’t know who Hole was by name. She’s just over 22, and is totally into music.

Either people don’t follow pop-culture, or I’m getting old, or both.

Lately, it may or may not be obvious, I’ve been pretty down. It’s probably the longest I’ve ever been this dark, and though the rational part of me still exists, I just can’t make it stop. The rational me isn’t loud enough, the poor fellow’s nailed to a cross in a field of poppies, being taunted by a creepy girl. He’s been locked inside a Heart Shaped Box.

Thinking along these lines, I went today for my twelfth tattoo.

Not every tattoo is an etching of hope, but they all mark something significant for me. So, no matter how bad I feel right now, whether or not it stops, it’s very real, and noted.

Whenever everybody says, “Oh my God, you have to check out X right now! It’s so amazing!” my immediate impulse is usually to avoid X. I still refuse to read The DaVinci Code. Still, I’m also often totally wrong too, wrong and late for the party. I was completely wrong about Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, wrong about Pushing Daisies, and definitely completely wrong about Pandora.

I admit my wrongs.

Tonight a friend and I went to see House, by far one the best absolutely terrible horror movies I’ve ever seen. It’s chalk full of biblical and literary allusions that go nowhere. I mean, one would think that endless Wizard of Oz allusions would make for great horror, but no.