“If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.” ~ Anais Nin

I think my meat has finally figured out a way to make getting sick work for me. Fevers always seem to lend me little hints to help navigate around the barricades. I’m not sure if they provide clarity of a sort, or just enough fog to cloud the enemies in my own mind, but the lock finally broke. Maybe being sick just triggers some sort of inner survival mechanism to find the path of least resistance. Whatever the cause, I can’t say I’m entirely proud of the final effort, but it touches the edges of what I want to say in a way I roughly want to say it. Having made it through the desert, I’m just glad to be drinking again and maybe it will lead to more worthy avenues now that the gridlock is gone.

January To Lament

Today was better than yesterday, which was better than the day before
I even made it out of bed, almost made it to the door
It’s all getting easier, but I kind of wish it wasn’t
Seems my head keeps healing, even when my heart doesn’t

I’ve still got all the books you made me read
Lined up all around my bed
Obscure science fiction and cheesy detective stories
About impossible women and improbable places
Told by men who’ll never understand them
It’s not the stuff that makes me miss you
But these bric-a-brac reminders of
Incomplete conversations
Make January so much colder

If memory serves, then why do we touch
And reach
And need
And feel for more
If memory serves then why do we rush
And hide
And lie
And steal for more
If memory serves then these few years will have to do
Because whatever memory serves, it’s all I’ve left of you

Before the pieces can start to fit, before the puzzle can return to norm
I have to understand the Winter of it, I have to give the darkness form
Because you left behind these random thoughts scribbled on the bathroom walls
And I can’t just keep painting over all the graffiti covered stalls

I’ve still got all this junk you sent me
Scattered all around the house
Strange little gadgets and expensive shiny toys
All moving parts and intricate endgames
For those of us that never learned to put away our childish things
It’s not the stuff that makes me miss you
But these bric-a-brac reminders of
Incomplete conversations
Make January so much colder

If memory servers, then why do we touch
And reach
And need
And feel for more
If memory serves then why do we rush
And hide
And lie
And steal for more
If memory serves then these few years will have to do
Because whatever memory serves, it’s all I’ve left of you

It’s the conversations we don’t get to finish
That make January so much colder