Year End Retrospective 2009-2011

Somewhere in the middle of all the bullshit and heart break and fucked up bullshit heart break that filled the skies of 2010 like a flock of severely underfed ravens wheeling over a field hospital whose tents all blew away in a freak hurricane after the worst days of shelling the war saw since its start left a record number of open flesh wounds and completely overwhelmed the nursing staffs ability to even begin to sanitize them all, let alone beat the rats back... where was I going with that? Sort of lost track along the way in there. It's been a while since I've written any fiction and sometimes all I do is close my eyes and it comes bubbling up like gold oil in a blue toilet bowl.

2010 had its downs and its ups. I learned a lot of things about myself and about other people. I learned that most people are probably not my friends, but they are polite and a lot of times because they have to be. I come back to that a lot don't I? It feels like a lot. It's one of those things that I have to keep reminding myself because I'm not wired to accept it. In my head it's a circuit breaker that keeps opening and I have to keep going down to the basement to close it and it's a big hassle. Or is it the reverse? The reverse conditions being assigned to ... you get the point.

Back to 2010. 2009 was the break. The complete unraveling of the assumed and constructed reality. 2010 was the rabbit hole. More like the ocean. 2009 was the break from land. The acceptance that what I was leaving I will never return to because it is not only out of my control, but under the influence of things set in motion and built and conceived years in advance of my ever setting foot on the place I had the foolishness to plant a flag, however intensely the pole was thrust into the Earth and however proudly the wind took to my banner. The ground fell through as though my stupid ambition, well stupid is actually the wrong word there... my misinformed ambition were a fist and the dirt was the crust of a 99 cent store brand pot pie in a tinfoil bowl.

It's not to say that 2009 was fundamentally flawed well before it arrived. It is to say that through my and others efforts the collapse of 2009 was delayed for as long as it was because we didn't know just how thin and cheap and empty the ground beneath my feet was back in 2006. Or maybe I knew and I just did not want to believe. I think that's what it was. It was coming apart back then and I wanted to will it together and make it mine and not be the kid with a future and family so far out of line from everyone else he knew, but that kind of thinking is a recipe for catastrophe.

It wasn't all terrible. The collapse was, but there were things that happened apart from it and I tried to separate myself and compartmentalize the personal wildfire from the person I thought people enjoyed hanging out with. There was some success in that. I discovered the most intense smile is the smile mustered in the face of pains that refuse to be denied. Things burned off left and right in 2009 and then the descent to the ocean floor of 2010 was just as eye opening and faith demolishing. Not in faith in religion. That was long gone. There were still lingering faiths in parents that were systematically slaughtered, there was faith in decency that was blown away, then there was faith in systematic accountability that failed, followed by faith in language and reason, give and take, compassion, the senses, right on down to ... well, I don't know exactly where that fire ended or if it's still eating away inside of me.

Sorry I got distracted again. Just talking about it I sometimes think I can feel that fire touching the insides of my skin. It's comforting. That's all I have faith in now. The consuming flame of discovery that burns in the heat of destruction.

2010 was touching the void, but more than that it was my throat constricting and me screaming out, in a voice I wish I had 15 years ago, a simple no. 2010 was learning that I didn't have to take it. Learning that what I thought I needed and what I knew I needed were so far from what I was living and what I was living was so close to complete emotional rape mind fucking physical slavery was hard to deal with. Tracing the roots back to the abuse was even harder. Tracing the branches that grew from those roots was the hardest part. Right around there was when I finally found me. I guess I'm still the same, but I'm conscious in ways I didn't know I could be and it's made some things easier and some things harder, but it has also allowed me to move on. It was more than finally waking up to the actual dimensions of the cage. It was waking up to the universe outside of it, it's history, my history, how I got there, who put me there, what happened to me and because of me while I was inside of it, and who I was. It was like seeing for the first time with absolute clarity the person I was supposed to be, right there in the room with me, understanding that I could never be that person because of what came before, and finally being able to begin to let that go.

2010 was rage and heat. 2011 is going back to the soul that burned down to find the valuables left, if any, and started over again with free eyes. I still have a lot of letting go to do. There is still so much rage that still smolders, but I have the ability now to understand where it's come from and to direct it, at least partially, to where it must go. 2010 was also the discovery of who the people I could understand to be friends really are. One of the major reasons why I'm not dead in a basement in Queens is because of them.

The world is a fucked up place.

2011 I'm still on fire inside my head. I'm still learning to manage paranoid schizophrenia. I'm still trying to be human. The witticism of taking life one day at a time comes to mind. That's complete bullshit. Life is nothing without goals. I have some deaths to look forward to, but closer in I have the rest of Pittsburgh to look forward to and talking to you and with everything else burned to the ground I think that is finally enough to make sunrise so much less a spear through my heart.

///The Future Sound of London - "Among Myselves" I can hear myself. They were drowning me... your tracklist is up next. Three finger promise.