dayuniverselifechocolate experience

the idea of sitting down to write a journal is… write for ten or fifteen minutes what happened to you today, or what you’re thinking about.

I get the idea. I just don’t think it’s so easy. it’s not that I want to over complicate it, either. but first of all, I just don’t see what’s so exciting about today. and I don’t see anything exciting what I’m thinking about at the moment.

what about thoughts from all time? thoughts from ALL of time? what about what has happened from as far back as you can possibly remember, just pick anything you like and go to it? how does that sound?

now you’re talking about a journal entry I can relate to.

so… what are you gonna write about?

oh, nothin’.

just sittin’ around chewin’ cud on uh fence.

write your dayuniverselifechocolate experience
tell us how that
makes you feel

okay, here. sold many records that I had collected when I was young, and with the money up and flew off to India for three months with some rock star friends and wondered how the hell I made it back. did a lot of traveling all at once, then watched it taper off. but it was under false pretenses. what the hell I mean by that is, I couldn’t continue in that direction forever. I had do settle down and switch things up at some point, right?

what else? what else is coming up to the surface? let’s see, it is March. think of other March experiences. you’re reading this while eating mashed potatoes, aren’t you? are you? me too. wait.

this March the weather is strange. my cat is talking out of the window. no he’s not. but he’s got his head poked out of the hole of his little apartment. he might as well be. “quiet down!” he’s yelling. “keep it quiet down there! I’m trying to get some sleep.” he is a grumpy old man, like my grandfather. what he said was law. he was a boxer and an electrician. he was responsible for building one of the major subway stations in D.C., Dupont Circle, if you’ve ever heard of it. yeah, Saturdays are for name dropping. old R.J.

after he passed away, I had a dream with him in it. he was towards the end. first I was at the other end of this room, a dentist office of sorts, preaching Krsna philosophy, I think, to a woman at the counter. not heavily, but in an informative kind of way. I went and used the bathroom, urinated blood, and at the sink I washed my hands, rinsed my mouth, and what do you know . . . my mouth was just falling apart all out into my hands. teeth, gums, more teeth. when I cleaned up the mess and exited the bathroom, the room was now a dark library. towards the back of it (and my grandfather was never a person known to be surrounded by books) was my grandfather, getting up from one of those musky old chairs in a very ominous manner. “I am so glad to see you,” he said. “How are you doing?” I was also glad to see him. “I’m glad to see you, too.” but I had to admit, “I’m not doing well. I’m not feeling well.”

that bathroom incident scared the crap out of me. many dreams reveal much of the worry and dread we hold down inside us. we talk a good game, but it’s the dreams that get the best of us when it’s time. “hold onto your dreams!” people say. depends which ones, I say. comes time to dream and the dreams are giving us a serious whooping the second we step into the ring. that’s why I’m not a proponent of all dreams. they are just as complicated as anything else, I suppose, if not more so. especially when you try to read them. I tried writing them. you know, keep a dream journal. it’s funny but, I got tired of it. maybe there’s something to say for that. I’m fucking slipping. I don’t know.

there’s all these choices. dreamweaver. weaver of. it fascinates me how a stand up comic weaves material together and makes it flow. most people don’t even have a conversation that beautiful. a good comedian puts some effort into it in the beginning maybe, but then it just becomes fluid. I envy that. no, I applaud that. that’s right, big ups to Bill Hicks. that’s who I’m thinking of directly right now. no need to be vague. I really like what some people are doing with their lives. I envy them. no. I mean. I. I emulate them. I reflect them. I am them.

how’s that for some new age prose? daily affirmations. there’s a lot of truth in that. in some of that. in bits of it. I don’t know, you decide what you’re going to take. if I say daily affirmations again and instantly you shut off, then . . . what can I say? I’ll have to package the idea differently. or I come back to it later. let me put it like this. others are affirming so many things for you as is. especially growing up. there is a lot of pressure to achieve or just survive, and most of us go the mainstream route because it is easier. in one way or another, we are giving in or compromising just to get along. along the way we build upon many subtle or not-so-subtle attitudes about ourselves that this is the way it has to be because this is just who we are. sure, if we were bigger and better, perhaps there would be more choices for us out there and we could do exactly as we want and feel better about ourselves, but the truth is we’re just a bunch of low life. . . we give in, resign ourselves to an idea that suits a current condition, solidifies our notions of comfort. we’re all about affirmations. just negative ones. I am this, when you’re really not. I’m born to lose, destined to fail, when you’re really not.

you’re really not anything.

is that true? – I don’t know for sure. but if you’re really not anything, and at current you are something, why not make it something decent? no, why not make it something incredible?

it’s just something I’m thinking about. like a fountain filled with coins, in you, you contain many positive and negative ideas about yourself. unfortunately, most of them are probably negative, dealing with how you appear, a worry that the rest of the world is seeing right through you somehow, that you don’t amount to anything, they’re sizing you up and putting you down. and oh yeah, putting you in your place. what is your place? do you have one? why not throw in positive ideas and make those real?

in March I am reading books so intensely and every problem at work I deal with calmly and am able to assist others while I watch all the panic die down as it seems to do naturally. I’m still standing. in March I am listening to hip hop and drawing on the flow of styles how these wordsmiths sync up with various beats track after track. I rock out like this at night, losing sleep.

in March I start saying happy new year because it is the right thing to do. in March I am finding that thing that you and I have in common and strengthening our bond.

in March of 1973, I was born and inherited many unique experiences and situations. my grandfather became the first person I was scared of because I was just a small bibby and he was all “I’m an irritable boxer turned electrician and I joined the union, dammit, blah blah.” and I’m all, I don’t know, quiet quiet baffling school teachers with more quiet quiet, and this makes for quite a show. by 1993 I am staying with them, him and my grandmother, on Bradshaw drive off a newly constructed road in a newly constructed neighborhood after fleeing the Potomac temple scene, regrouping my thoughts. he was shaking his head when I left the first time. I should be working hard, working my fingers, every inch of my body, down to nothing. like him. he worked hard and got a lot of sun working out in the garden. when he sat down at the table he didn’t have much to say. my grandmother made him eggs and bacon. sometimes they’d turn on that small ass little television over by the sink and ask each other what was going on. or she would tell him, this is what she just said. they would scream at each other because they couldn’t hear well. this is where I get my loud voice from at poetry readings. I’m just hoping everyone can hear. it’s all hitting me now.