Tuesday, December 11, 2012

The Alcoholic's Apology -

I'm sorry I don't go out and get fucked up anymore.  Mornings on the rooftops of brooklyn, a blazing golden sun just hovering into existence that illuminates dancing and laughing and occasional philandering of certain pleasure seeking friends with means. Fights over taxi rides and all the glory of a central belief in the centeredness of it all, at the moment, 5:30am.  The bagel shop is opening, and the earth is spinning; can you feel it?  From your inertia.  From your propulsion.  Without you, the earth might, well, you don't think structurally.  Inserts and gasps and wet kisses are more your style.

Am I bitter?  Only when I don't get my correct ration of Omega-3.

These days I have all the trappings of an objectively lovely existence, carefully pruned and masticated until swallowing and digestion are proto-conscious activities, slipping and dipping in the pooled layers of multi-hued ecstasy lolling about,, and are those your headphones in my ears, split in two, ready for a commercial if we were even half conscious of our duplicative essentialness?  Or are we too submerged in the moment of bliss to rectify the hue, which has blasted into the purplish green arena, such that our skin isn't so human anymore.

The wind is blowing in at me.  The day after the party.  When I slept until 5pm, woke up with a stranger in my bed, told her, no, unfortunately  there were no "army-navy" shops in this neighborhood, and she could just take the subway away from here as fast as possible while I take the remaining 5 beers left in the 6 pack SHE insisted on buying (not my fault she left them, or the half of the sixth that i had to finish too; she left that open anyway) and sip them tentatively, as if I'm not doing it, really, and I'm finding my rhythm again, in the third, and wondering why she left so abruptly 

My messiness is still on the extremely hip side of acceptable, and I've goosed myself into believing that a trip to the local dive to meet a few friends might be acceptable, now that I don't have to spend so much money on the beer, except maybe I'll smoke that joint I've been saving, on my own roof, and maybe it is colder than I thought, and maybe the rope that keeps the door open was foolishly recalcitrant, so I just unhooked it, and maybe now I have to find my way down into the iron maze of fire escapes and knock on my window in hopes that my own stoned 64 year old room-mate will open the window, and what a weird sight I would be right now.

And maybe my head is throbbing while I finish remembering, in graphic and then distorted echoing waves of lush detail, the beginning of the night before, and my heart is slamming in my chest, and it is morning again, and I've found myself well on the way to a full-fledged bender, maybe, a few weeks back, and left it like a rest stop for fuck sake, because we love our road metaphors, and now I'm alone again and nobody is here and my head won't be quiet and won't be pain-free either, and I just have to deal with that shit, and there's  an easy way to deal with it and a hard way to deal with it, and I don't know why I have to apologize to you, my so-called friends, when I chose, out of my own volition, the hard way of doing it, and when I make my own life harder than I thought it could ever be, even when I also know that the shards of my former life, however much they cut and however glittery they once were, also have sunken, amber-like into my roots, and when the light hits them in  a particular morning, with a particular breeze, they offer a kaleidoscope of rosetta stones to unlock something minute and fractal in intensity, and I can't stop wondering how it might be if I let myself get sucked into them again and I'm sure the beauty would compound into a miasma of sheer light that I could climb up high.

But I've got a few things to do now, that I've quit going out so late.  And I keep waking up at 7am, no matter what time I go to bed, and I like routine, and I'm boring and I don't have to indulge you, audience, anymore, not like it used to be, though I do favor some degree of empathy, if you please, and when you find my lost watch, just wind it smartly and be on your way.

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