wish you were here

Z-Trip is the man.

I’ve been working on a project for work. That is good. It’s creative. That’s good, too.

I’ve been working on the novel in tiny bits. That? Okay.

But I’m tired. That, not so good.

It’s funny. I should be in bed right now, but I feel the need to update.

But I won’t. I really am that tired.

Be assured that good things are happening, and that by keeping myself busy (and it looks like it may be busier pretty soon [and I can't talk about it because it's in the embryo stage]), and by regular workouts, I am feeling level-headed about things, albeit a little sore around the edges.

There are a lot of things to write about, family especially, but I just can’t right now.

And in the next couple of weeks? This guy in Pasadena, this guy for my brother’s 31st, a first qualifier (finally!) and these guys at the Joint with Really Good and Cheap seats.

Things are good. Maybe not what I want ideally, but they are moving in a direction that I dig.

I mean, I know some talented fucking people. But I mean it when I say I know some Talented Fucking People.

Actually got writing done. So that’s good. About 3 more months to get about 49,000 more words in. Woo. Okay, not really, it’s more like 45,000 at this point, but who’s counting really?

There’s been a lot of family stuff going on this week, which has basically made my silence.

I may write about it this week, but I need to figure out a way to do it that reflects on myself and not on my family. Does that make sense?

But I read this at my Grandma’s birthday party last weekend. I need some help with a title:

our favorite number should be love
but instead we choose not to look up:
the space is black up there
so heaven must be
the spare unused ink
for the poems god writes
and you and me should be the rhymes
we
the heat and the hugs
and the water we bear
and the shadow we cast
and the tears
that time turns to laughter
and this earth
too small for goodbyes
too big for never
hanging in the universe
for us to get it right
we
word made flesh
in a freestyle so good
we should stop believing in coincidence
we live in between
venus and mars
and venus is closer to the source
and we can get closer to love
we can be poetry
us these gatherings of stardust
and every time I fall in love
it’s like god’s pen
scratching a new verse across the earth
and all the dead are all the fates
holding those golden scissors
while my creativity hangs by a thread
and you
every time you tell someone they are beautiful
your youth returns
’cause god decided to stop the aging process
when truth finally started coming out of our mouths
wouldn’t it be great if our regrets were erased
by turning the page?
god’s pen poised to give you amnesia
’cause she saw you sigh just so that one time
and we forget that we can be poetry
we forget that we are beautiful
we forget that we are the words
our skin the stanzas
and when we shed dead cells
every 7 years we will become
a whole new verse
so look at me
your eyes could tell the story
that your hands can’t
and I will smile
’cause you are good poetry
and goddammit good poetry should make you smile
one
two
love
see�the smile
the favorite number
the favorite verse
that you can’t explain
look up:
there’s a lot of unused ink up there
so get to living
’cause we need more beauty
and more poetry
’cause god’s hands never get tired

Man, I really should update more often.

Work’s been going well. When I have things to finish, even with a soft deadline, I tend to get really focused and blaze through things. I just want to get stuff done and out of the way so I have time to budget for other things.

Right now I’m on the second day of a 3-day carb clense. I haven’t really noticed anything so far except a craving for salt, which isn’t too cool. But I’m hoping not being at home right now will help me. I mean, if I can get through three days of the Master Cleanser, I think I can get by on meat and green vegetables for that long. And I can drink decaf tea and diet soda, so it’s not all terrible. I can’t drink. That is good and bad.

I had a nightmare last night that my upcoming gig at the Beauty Bar this Saturday went horribly wrong. Of course, I ended up there in ragged clothes because I had forgotten about which day it was, right when I got there I had to go up on stage, with my book, because I didn’t have time to memorize, and I was up there with the piece of paper in my hand with my poem on it trying to remember what I had remembered and using the piece of paper as a guide, and I started rambling and apologizing about how unprepared and fucked up I looked. And then some big burly cowboy started playing “Rhinestone Cowboy” (a song I had heard in Waking Life earlier yesterday while catching a bit of I Love the 70′s) and I lost it: I yelled as hard and loud as I could on the mic, making everyone cover their ears, and I stormed offstage, throwing my cel phone across the room. And then I woke up feeling like an idiot. I mean, “Rhinestone Cowboy”? WTF mate?

I hate memorizing poems. It’s the worst part of the process, because I get so sick of the words sometimes. But I have to do it, or it won’t get out there the way it should.

We haven’t found a solution for a new venue for our qualifying slam yet, so that drama continues. Right now I just want it to be over.

And there’s a lot of family stuff going on this weekend, for both sides of the family. If I don’t feel like an appendage is going to fall off by the end of next week, I’ll tell you all about it.

I forget that most of you don’t read the LiveJournal. Here’s the bad week:

Monday: walk into the Pride Factory. I have about 10 people asking me if there’s supposed to be an open mic. I go inside, and this is the exchange:
ME: Can you set up the mic for poetry?
THEM: We shut down the open mic because nobody was coming.
ME: Well, I’m one of the hosts of the open mic, and nobody told me it was shut down.
THEM: I’m just a new assistant manager here, and I guess nobody’s been asking to set anything up or show up to read.
ME: Over the past couple of months, we’ve been promoting having slams here.
THEM: Can you give me the dates so I can tell the store manager?

And such bullshit. So much for fucking support. And I am a bit miffed from my own community, who really didn’t represent or help get our reading off the ground. We wouldn’t have been shut down if we’d have had some kind of consistent attendance. But I won’t bring that up to the community, just because they’re the only ones giving us any support at all at this point. Though my first impulse was to tell everyone off.

Tuesday: I’m hanging out with the boys. We decide to head to Arizona Charlie’s to gamble a little, and I lose $40 at the blackjack table. I go home pissed, only to find that there are spider webs all over my front door handle, and then a spider crawls out onto the door, and I stamp it out dead. The next day when I leave the house, I use my car key to clear out the webs, and an egg sack falls onto the front porch. I stomp that dead as well.

Along with these things, there’s been an overall theme of me dropping the drink that’s in my hand, and a general feeling that I am an asshole and a fake (that’s not a cry for help, it’s just an admittance, and it will pass), and that I can’t seem to lose more weight, even though I’ve been upping the intensity in my workouts.

And how to fix these things? Nothing I can think of. I feel pretty helpless. So I guess the only thing to do is to wait it all out.