Not for Sale

A dreamy paralysis from hacking Sunday night and pressing on...seeking a moment of clarity...I've done everything I could to avoid looking at the white background on a laptop screen...I cleaned this place...folded my clothes...paced the floor...glared malevolently at the screen...do I dare go into Word and start it again?...it's too late to try...I'll never get to sleep...I don't know if I'm too empty or too full...fleeting impressions of stone & concrete & glass & lights & other cars flying past my vision all night...finding a driving rhythm...the right speed and the right path and getting there as fast and efficiently as possible...looking far ahead...seeing traffic jams develop and avoiding them...concentration...looking everywhere...outpacing the other cabs...feeling pride in it...and subtle interactions with passengers...reading their postures and what they say and don't say...keeping my mouth shut and listening...and feeling my life slip away before I can describe an arc...my mind in a dreamy paralysis looking for a mood...I'm still lost in Tracy Chapman's voice..."it's only smoke and ashes, baby"...God I can't stand it sometimes...the intensity of my life the relentless humm in my head...intensity thriving in my spine and vibrating in my being despite sore muscles and dying lungs...the tension of my lifeline stretched like a chord on a geodesic sphere...the hub my tetrahedonal mindset...aloft here miles above the fray for decades watching involved but detached ...understanding suddenly and seeing a veiny path through dense forests of depraved society to a separate peace...sometimes I feel indestructible like two pyramids base-to-base...even knowing that almost anything can crush me, still feeling like nothing can smoke me ...nothing can make me fall apart or explode me...nothing can defeat me and death will be my victory...the essence of me is untouchable...I can't see and can't understand it but I can feel it...I seem to soar even as I plummet crippled hopeless broken alone and unknown to the hard ground that will absorb me or my ashes...sharing our common fate to be forgotten.

"It looks like I'm moving, but I'm standing still." (Dylan)



First-person-writing is personal...it's not as easy as you might think...you have to take risks and be honest...or be at least a convincing liar so you can write truthful fiction...but as someone I've forgotten said, I have a one-track mind...you might think you know the track but baby you don't...I wandered alone and blind in the dark through a deadly railhead while silent boxcars whizzed by missing me by inches before I found it...I'd be a fool to tell...you wouldn't understand anyway I think...it would sound ridiculous to you...besides you don't have a need to know...it's my own private obsession and it means the world to me...it would betray my only principle to tell anyway...it's one thing I can't talk about yet..if I do I might lose it...it's the thing I think most about...it's the reason I been keeping on for so long...it's really the only thing on my one track mind...it's my reason to be as far as I can see...it's not love...it's not sex...it's not for sale.